One of the biggest learnings I have had in building a business over the last few years is that everything just takes time and it generally takes a bit longer than you think it would. I remember having a conversation with my boyfriend right at the beginning of when I started this business and I thought it would take a couple of years to get sorted and he said based on his experience of seeing his dad building a business back in Kerala in India, it definitely took a few years to get it going and it is now flying and...
When I started the entrepreneurship journey video series, I said that I was going to talk about the things that went right and also the things that we did not get right from the beginning and that is something that I want to talk about today. One of the things that I really needed to get my head around as a marketer, as a strategist and as someone who has never had a revenue line with direct responsibility before was setting up processes around sales and business development. We had a bit of a bump about 18 months in even though...
This conversation took place during Road to ATS Singapore 2019 between moderator Jodie Collins and the following panellists, Niraj Nagpal, Rochelle Chhaya, Janette Higginson & Jonathan Ye. You can watch the full video on our YouTube channel here. Jodie Collins: Can I ask from your perspective, are you seeing greater interest and demand for other alternative types of programmatic inventory? Are clients pushing for this and is this something that's key on your agenda? Rochelle Chhaya: Definitely, while a lot of money is being spent on digital, that doesn't mean that alternative types of media are not being used at all. In fact, if we...
Today, I want to talk about something that is really close to my heart. I feel like it is something that we did right at the beginning and I would definitely recommend it for other people who are thinking about starting their own business or who are also on this entrepreneurship journey. In the beginning, before we started developing out our product and service offering, we had a very clear idea of what the vision, mission and purpose were for the business. This provided us with the Northstar that we always went back to when we were thinking about the...
Today, I'm going to talk about the importance of building a support network around you. This is something that I set up when I first started my business because it was recommended to me by people who have set up their own businesses and went through the entrepreneurship journey. One of the recommendations given to me was to find people who could act as my mentor, someone who had been through the same experience or has been in their business for two to three years that I could speak with. I was really fortunate because I had a number of people in...
After you've come up with your idea, decided that there is potentially a market for it and have gone through the process of developing your one-page business plan; by mapping out your business model canvas, figuring out your value proposition, who your potential clients are and how you think you might be selling this product or service in market, the next thing to do at this early stage is to start talking to some potential clients. This is a lot easier if you are already working in the industry and have a deep understanding of what your customer pain points are, and...
In the last blogpost I talked about the importance of writing down all the ideas that you are coming up with as you start to think about what product or service you are developing and want to go to market with. After you have captured all of those ideas down, the next thing to do is to start putting some rigor around whether there is going to be a market for that. The place that we generally start with is the business model canvas which I have used when I was developing out Re/Digital and with our clients as well as...
Sometimes, I get asked, "How do you come up with an idea?" People are really keen to understand what it's like to work for themselves, they want to be their own boss but they are not sure about how they should get started. Here are a few things that I have suggested to them. When I was thinking about what I wanted to do, I consider myself very fortunate because I really love what I do and that is working in marketing and advertising, seeing the intersection of technology with that and also exploring how we can use that to...
We just completed a huge piece of work in the last quarter of 2018 where we mapped out what digital marketing transformation looks like across all key areas of marketing including paid media, content, creative, data, analytics, insights and CRM. The purpose of the project was to develop a very clear map of digital maturity across all the key functional areas within marketing. We developed “Crawl, Walk, Run” scenarios for People, Process and Technology under all the key functional areas to create what is effectively a map that we use with clients to help them figure out where they are...
To be honest it never really is the perfect time. But I do have some suggestions for people who are starting to think about doing this. Starting a new business and actually building up your product offering and getting in customers will take a lot longer than you think. If you think it will take 3 months, it will take 6. If you think it will take 6 months, it will probably take 12 months I suggest you make sure you have enough savings in the bank to cover your personal and business expenses for 6 months. You need to...
