jbsh

Uploaded on May 12, 2006 by JosephH

Another great Open Coffee despite the weather’s attempts to keep folk away. After gathering downstairs with our chosen caffeine drinks, a number of discussions quickly established.

Nigel Legg came along and we discussed the analysis of those pesky free text boxes on customer surveys. The rest of the form is automated but the free text stuff needs to be transcribed, coded and then analysed using specialist software. But the benefit from those short bursts of direct feedback from customers and clients can be critical, and that’s what Nigel provides. He’s managing a team across the UK and beyond and providing his service to the market research companies as an added value proposition.

Janice Gjertsen Caillet (Founder & CEO, Coaching Circles) also joined us for the first time to find out what happening and interesting in Bristol. As a relatively new citizen to Bristol (after 10 yrs in New York and then 4 in Paris) she’s brought her executive coaching and business mentoring company with her. Lots of great ideas about shaking up the scene and competing on the global stage.

Andy and I also had a bit of a chat about business development and financing growth in the current financial climate. As the Bristol Enterprise Network event tomorrow night will explore, there are growth opportunities in a recession, but its hard(er) work. Having been through the last dotcom boom Andy knows his stuff so it’s reassuring to hear him planning for growth, even though he does touch wood every time he mentions it. I’m hanging on to my desk as I write this.

Peter Livingston from Clarke Willmott joined us towards the end of the discussion with some thoughts on IP and the value of a good legal brief in tough times. Although neither Andy or I have retained legal counsel there is definite value in the particular focus and discipline that a lawyer’s training brings to business analysis and process refinement. This is probably especially true in a creative business where the ‘normal’ business practice is less logical and articulated and more spontaneous and freeform. Great for creativity and innovation, trickier for compliance and contract management.

All in all another good morning, and apologies to those I only got to say hi to briefly.

Uploaded on March 4,
2007 by NguyenDai

Just had an email from Craig at Podchains Ltd that, having met Mark from OK-Cool on Tues at OpenCoffee they went for a follow-up meeting and have now “struck up a working relationship”.

I think we can chalk that up as the first deal of this OpenCoffee series!

If you’d like to come along and find out more please check out the Upcoming or Facebook groups. We meet every other Tuesday in Starbucks off Park St in Bristol. The next couple of meetings are 1, 15 and 29 July.
The OpenCoffee Club was started to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow.

Disclosure: As well as Managing Partner of jbsh LLP (the business behind this blog) I also work part time for the University of the West of England on the Knowledge West project managing their QuickMark® service.]

Today was an important day for jbsh, I gave our first unsuccessful pitch. Obviously in writing research grant applications and funding proposals, I’ve had unsuccessful submissions and I’ve talked a couple of clients out of engaging me in favour of more appropriate (and cheaper or free) options.

What was different today was that I really felt that this was a great business that I could add value to.

With most funding applications you don’t get great feedback on why you’re unsuccessful. When the negative email came through there was an invitation to explore why we weren’t proceeding with the plan as discussed.

The discussion brought an important point home, you need to constantly evaluate every message across every medium to make sure it’s effective and conveying what you think it is. I’ve been working on building the QuickMark service, taking on new Researchers and more clients. I’m actively seeking ways to grow and build the service as a sustainable offering outside the funding that has provided stability so far. In doing this I’ve significantly refined the proposition, carefully positioning the service between the core activities that the Universities offer and those that are provided by commercial market research organisations.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t spent quite so much time on this blog evaluating what message I wanted it to convey. Originally it was a place to share thoughts, talk about events I’d attended and give jbsh LLP a presence on the web. This has all be augmented by LinkedIn, Facebook, MyBlogLog, Twitter, etc. Since that launch (almost exactly a year ago) the message that this blog is being used to convey has changed. Sam is using it to promote, explain and disseminate her research, and I was using it to build confidence with potential clients to trust their businesses to my advice and guidance. This last bit hasn’t worked, because I haven’t developed the blog, I’ve just used it to a different purpose (one it wasn’t designed for).

The other messages are still important, so we won’t undergo a complete redesign, but there will be some changes. Most critically I’ll be putting more references to existing jbsh clients and stories from businesses I’ve helped in the past.

It’s not survival of the fittest, it’s survival of the most adaptable and appropriate to the environment.

[Note on the photo: I grew up in Gibraltar and have fond memories of walking across the runway to catch planes to 'exotic' locations like Southend where my Grandad lived. My first thought was say something about stopping and re-evaluating, hence the flickr search for stop signs. Searches for failure weren't as nice so I'm sticking with the image.]