Kari Owers

Name:

Kari Owers

Business:

O Communications

Web site:

www.o-communications.co.uk

Years in business:

2.5

Number of businesses:

1

Entrepreneurs' Forum member

Even though I didn’t know it at the time, I think it was inevitable that I was going to set up my own business. Working for somebody else never really felt right. Plus when I became a mother I never wanted to have to say to my boss, “My child is sick and needs me, can I go now?” My children are my number one priority, and that was the key thing for me at the beginning.

I actually think that running your own business can help you if you’ve got a young family. When my husband joined the business ten months in, I made the conscious decision that one of us would be home at 4.30 every single day to have a meal with our children. I also drop my son off at school every morning, and I probably wouldn’t be able to do that if I was working in the long hours environment, and it’s all for somebody else anyway.

The downside of that is I’m working on my laptop at midnight some nights, but that’s my decision. To be able to have that flexibility to work when you want to is great when you have young children.

I came to the North East when I was 18, and after graduating from uni I worked in a small PR agency for five years, and they experienced a big growth spurt during that time, eventually becoming a national chain. I then got to experience a much different role, and joined a former colleague who was working by himself and helped him grow his company. In that job I got to work with a lot of small businesses owners around the region.

In both jobs, I was very lucky in that I nearly always dealt with the Managing Director of the company we were providing PR services for. Meeting with entrepreneurs was the bit I really enjoyed. To be able to work with the person who was making all the decisions within their business, and help them shape their image, was fantastic for me.

Also, as an employee I was very much driven to make my own decisions. I always knew that I liked being able to make them, and one day I might break away and want to do that fully in my own company.

With hindsight, I think I could have set my business up sooner than I actually did. I watched all the entrepreneurs I was dealing with and learned loads of management styles, both good and bad. But I think I lacked the self confidence to actually step out and go and do it for myself.

My friends and family were key to helping me overcome that though. You can’t underestimate how important the people closest to you are, and I think you need to have people around you who encourage you. My family know me very well, I think they knew it was going to happen even before I did! But their encouragement was all I needed to say yes, this is the right decision.

My motivation for setting the company up was that I really wanted to do things to the highest standard that we possibly could. It was really important for me to be in control of every single aspect of the service delivery, and I also felt there was a niche in the PR market for a small company who were highly creative, but who really focused on being small yet good, and not growing to become a faceless machine.

The companies I worked for in the past started out small and then became pretty big. I was keen to stick to, as I like to call it, “small team, big ideas”.

When I first started, to be honest I thought it might just be little old me, freelancing and looking after my kids. I was completely wrong though as it took off really quickly. That was the first light bulb. I began to think, gosh, this is a business, this isn’t just me tinkering about with one. This is taking off. But it was always in the business plan that we would stay more of a niche agency.

I think a lot of businesses make the mistake of growing too quickly. We wanted to be sustainable and to grow organically in order to deliver a really personal service.

I had a couple of clients at the start, and they then referred me onto other people. I found myself three months in pitching for three quite large accounts. I thought I might get one of them, but I actually got all three. I thought, I’ve reached a fork in the road here. I can either take this business forward, and I couldn’t do that alone, or I turn business away and just stay as a freelancer.

But there was no way that I was going to turn down the opportunity. It had just come a little earlier than I had expected!

We’d always factored into the plan that my husband might join me at some point. He’s a graphic designer and so would be instrumental in the creative process. Because of the business that I was getting, he joined me sooner than expected, and quit a very secure job in order to do that.

That was a big step- one person in the family going self employed was ok. Two people’s quite a risk. But that’s what we did and we’ve never looked back.

We’ve got a mortgage, two kids, staff to employ and offices to pay for, so every day you feel like you’re taking a risk, but we’ve been very lucky and the business is doing incredibly well. It’s one thing to take risks, but as long as they’re calculated, informed risks, you shouldn’t go too far wrong.

I always thought, my husband and I are both highly employable, and the North East’s a hot bed of great jobs. Worst case scenario: we go and get one of them… but hopefully we won’t have to go and do that again!

In terms of finding advice and who to lean on for support, I look to people who run their own business a lot of the time. When I first started I asked my former clients, entrepreneurs, about what it was like to run your own business and what it entailed, including the pitfalls and the bonuses.

It must be my journalistic instinct, but I ask a heck of a lot of questions when I meet people who run their own businesses. The best advice comes from experience, the ‘been there, done that’ school of advice’, so entrepreneurs are the first people I look to, and that’s been so beneficial.

I don’t think I’ve ever had somebody say to me, “I’m not prepared to help you.” Even if it’s a difficult question, I’ve never had somebody not give me a sound answer.

People have gone as far as giving me copies of legal contracts, recruitment contracts, bits of pieces of advice, processes, contacts and paperwork that they use in their business, and it’s all been really good, sound, practical advice.

Other people running businesses is the fast track way to make sure yours is a success. Especially when it comes to avoiding making mistakes. Quite often I come across people who say, “I did that, you don’t want to do that, this is how you avoid it.” You can’t read that kind of stuff in a book.

I think there’s advice that you have to pay for too. We’ve got a very good accountant, a financial adviser and a great legal firm, and as you grow you do need that building block of the right professional advice behind you.

I always go to my friends and family after hearing all the advice. You get so many options, so I say to the people closest to me, “What do you think?” They’re great at giving you unbiased support, and their advice is based on what they know is right for you.

When I started the company it was just to provide PR services for predominantly North East businesses and entrepreneurs. It was written into the business plan that we would grow into a creative communications consultancy and do marketing design, publishing, and all the things associated with promoting businesses. It’s pretty much followed that, but again, it just happened a lot quicker than we expected! We thought it would take three to five years to get to that stage, but it’s actually taken us two. All we’re doing is growing what we really enjoy, and what we’re really good at.

We’ve been tempted to move in a couple of other directions, and other options will always come along, but we’ve resisted that and decided to stick to what we’re good at.

The key piece of advice I was given by a couple of people who run their own businesses was to not be afraid to park one of your ideas. You can maybe do it a little bit further down the line and expand the business, but you’ve still got to stick to what you’re good at.

Opportunities to expand into new areas do come along; especially if you are good at what you do. You’ve obviously got to look at each one and see the value in it, but if it’s not going to bring immediate value to your business, then it’s a good idea to just park it, and stick to growing what you’re good at. That technique has been a huge success for us.

It’s one thing to know you’re giving a good service; it’s another thing to be told that. Clients give us really good feedback and recommend us to other people which is the ultimate compliment. We knew we were doing something a bit different and that felt great, but to have that feedback, it was like…yeah, we’ll keep on with this!

I think you have to make mistakes in order learn and to grow your business. I’ve worked with entrepreneurs for about 12 years now, and it’s the mistakes that they quite like to share with you. Once you make a mistake, you’re damn sure you don’t want anyone else to do the same, so people share that information with you, and that’s great because you can avoid making the same errors.

Recruiting’s a minefield, but finding like-minded people is really key to a creative company like us. I once recruited somebody who I really liked and got on with, but they probably weren’t the best fit for the business. I wouldn’t call that a mistake though; it was more of a learning curve.

I think you have to be quite scientific when it comes to recruitment. Really know what type of role your business needs, and then seek the characteristics you should be looking for to fit in with the team.

I’m really keen to bring on young talent, and that’s something that I find really important. We do a lot of work within the enterprise sector trying to encourage young people to aim higher, to aspire higher in life. We encourage them to have a go at running their own businesses, or certainly to be entrepreneurial in employment.

We’re a small business so we can bring young people in and mentor them, and fast track them in to the PR and design agency. That’s been our policy with regards to recruitment, and we’ve been incredibly lucky and got some great people from the local universities. You can’t underestimate the talent that lies locally, and they can bring an awful lot of benefit to your business.

I also wouldn’t underestimate taking on professional HR recruitment advisors. It’s so important that you make the right, informed decisions to grow your business. To begin with though, it’s been a lot of instinct and good luck!

The biggest issue I have, and one that I’m getting advice on at the moment, is delegation. It doesn’t come naturally to me to relinquish control.

The key thing is to instil your ethics into other people, then give them the freedom to go out and do their job. You need to make a structure in the business to allow them to do that. Our structure is to support and mentor each other, and that includes me too.

We communicate a lot with the team and we sit down and have meetings with them every month. At the end of last year in order to be prepared for the start of this year, we sat down and communicated our core values to team, and got their input into that as well.

We’re in the process of setting up KPIs for the team so that they understand not just what the company stands for, but how that impacts on everything they do for it. You’ve got to make sure that people fully understand what’s expected of them and what the company’s all about.

We encourage everybody in the business to look at client relationships as a long term thing. I think people do business with people, and we treat all our clients as friends as well as business associates. We socialise with them, and we take a huge interest in their business and the external factors that might affect it. So we do a lot of research into the background of our clients’ companies, what direction they might be going in, and what factors might help their business grow.

As a result of that we feel quite close to our clients. We’ve got a lot of policies within the business to treat our clients like friends, but it just comes naturally to us really. We try not to let a client’s birthday go unnoticed, and we’d never let them move into a new office without sending them a gift. It’s just common sense really. You do that with your friends, why not your clients?

I get great satisfaction when we retain a client’s business for a long time. Especially with us being in the creative industry, it allows you some freedom. Clients trust you, they trust your ideas and they trust your judgement. That’s a real perk in the job.

For a lot of people, success is being in control of your own destiny. It’s true: there’s nothing like it. Personally, for me it’s about reputation. If our clients enjoy working with us and if we have a happy workforce, then that’s the linchpin for running our own business. If we can do well financially out of it as well then that’s great, but a great reputation as a company is what success looks like to me.

I think the North East is a fantastic place to do business. The people are incredibly friendly, and within the business community people are more than happy to share their experiences.

There’s also a massive amount of opportunity in the region at the moment. Economically it’s really vibrant and the future looks amazing with regards to new emerging sectors like science and technology and the creative industries.

I think it’s probably easier to set up a business in the North East than anywhere else in terms of opportunities that currently exist, the support networks, the funding, and the advice from people who do business here. It’s not that hard to find someone’s door to knock on.

I think you have to be quite an open person to be an entrepreneur. You have to be willing to listen to people and be open to advice. But you need a gut instinct too. You can get loads and loads of advice, but if you know that that advice isn’t right for you, then stick to that instinct and you can really go forward.

If you want to start your own business, it has to be something that you love. Running your own company has to be a passion. If you feel that way, no matter what age you are, just do it. Don’t put it off. I think that I could have set my own business up five years before I did, but I think I lacked the confidence to bite the bullet just then. If you’re thinking about it, just go for it.

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