As I type this, I can’t quite believe it has been a year since I hung up my employment shoes to start my own solo consulting business. The old adage is that time flies when you’re having fun, but I think it would be more accurate to say that time flies when you’ve jumped off a cliff and you’re trying to build a parachute on the way down.
Starting a business in the middle of a global pandemic was a slightly nerve racking experience, truth be told. I spent the first few months trying to build relationships remotely and while I’m a big advocate for remote work, nothing beats inviting someone for coffee and meeting face to face. Especially when you’re trying to transcend transactional relationships and build new, meaningful connections. I’ve also had to confront lurking imposter syndrome, the infuriating British tax system and running my own sales operation.
It’s been successful by many measures. Counting my Google Drive folders, over the last 11 months I have worked with 25 clients, some on a retained basis and some on a project-by-project basis. I’ve built up my revenue to over £10K a month and delivered work I’m genuinely proud of. Work that has had a tangible impact on the businesses who put their trust in me to deliver. There have been sleepless nights and working weekends, but overall I’ve enjoyed the challenge.
At the beginning, I made a conscious decision to trade under my own moniker. After all, I had some “personal brand equity” after years of speaking, tweeting and writing online. My very obvious initial strategy was to leverage this to gain early traction and provide a wrapper around my services while I figured out my longer term ambitions and offering. I’m glad I took this route as it allowed me to build revenue and test a few concepts quickly.
As I move out of this learning phase, It feels weird to say it, but I’ve now outgrown my own name.
So what’s next?
The downsides of solo consultancy are well known. If you sell your own time, there’s a maximum limit to your earnings, even if you forgo normal things like sleep and recreation time (not that I advocate for, or have done this, but the temptation is there).
I realised fairly early on that while consulting could provide a very nice income and interesting work, I wanted more.
I want to build something that scales beyond myself and become a true business. I want to help more organisations define clear strategies for growth, deliver results faster and scale best in class marketing functions.
I realised I needed a bigger boat.
Introducing Open Velocity
Anyone who has worked with me will have probably heard my rant about how marketers are overly obsessed with brand names. What matters, in my humble opinion, is the value a brand delivers and how this is articulated. As long as the name isn’t offensive, confusing or competitive, you’re probably barking up the right tree. After all, Apple by many measures is one of the biggest brands in the world but the name is hardly complex.
Basically, I think people often overthink naming companies. So in naming Open Velocity, I had a simple criteria. I wanted to evoke speed. After all, one of my favourite quotes from the tech world is:
“Cycle time compression may be the most underestimated force in determining winners & losers in tech.”
While Marc Andreessen was speaking about engineering velocity, the concept can be equally applied to marketing. Action applied strategically in the right direction gets you traction. Action applied strategically in the right direction faster than your competitors ensures you win.
Open Velocity was born.
What value does Open Velocity deliver then?
We provide experienced CMO-Level Support
We help companies achieve their goals by providing fractional CMO and marketing strategy support. Our team is comprised of experienced marketers who have held senior marketing roles at leading technology companies.
We create clear strategy backed up with a plan of action
We work closely with clients to define their marketing strategy by exploring their positioning, customer opportunities and competitive landscape. Building from first principles, we translate business objectives and customer requirements into a clear marketing direction. We don’t just focus on strategy presentations, we help you actually translate direction into action on the ground.
We help organisations build better marketing functions
From defining digital strategy and technology stacks to advising on team design and marketing operations, we consult across the marketing function to help businesses build sustainable growth engines and high performing marketing departments.
Tl:DR: We're the Marketing Consultancy chosen by high-growth technology companies looking to drive growth faster, raise their next round and deliver impact at speed.
Join us
I’m still going to be working closely with clients, but it’s time to bring additional expertise to the team and open our books to working with even more businesses.
This means I’m actively looking to work with more Associate and Principal Consultants (Associate = we bring you in on projects where you’re an amazing fit. Principal = you’re part of OV with all the benefits of being in a fast-growing business, with skin in the game to boot).
Alongside building a business that raises the standards of strategic consultancy, I’m also trying to create somewhere I actually want to work.
This means:
Treating people like adults (flexible/remote working etc. is a given in a high trust environment)
Rejecting industry orthodoxy and examine the facts to come to our own conclusions (we don’t do things because everyone else does them, we do them because they are the right thing to do).
Challenging constructively and accepting disagreement is a natural part of doing great work (empowering people to raise concerns at any level and input better ideas)
Respecting everyone who contributes, no matter their skill set or department (no “they’re only a XYZ, why should we listen to them?”)
Winning fairly and always looking for opportunities to create win-win scenarios
If you’d like to have a conversation about what joining us looks like, I’d love to hear from you. You can email me directly at bethan@bethanvincent.com.