I'm Anna, and I've seen the inside of a lot of businesses.
For over 25 years I’ve been helping businesses grow, from solo founders and start-ups through to household names like GAME, and I’ve advised more than a hundred of them across twenty-five-odd sectors.
I’ve also been on the other side of it, having started five businesses of my own since I was seventeen, so I know what it’s like to juggle client work, admin, and life while trying to master selling your products and services.
The same question,over and over.
Whoever I work with, I keep coming back to one thing: why do good businesses struggle to sell what they’ve built, and what can founders do about it?Â
After reading through hundreds of founder stories and reflecting on over 25 years of my own cock-ups, the answer kept coming back to the same three places, which is where the three leaks came from and why I wrote Building Sh*t No One Wants.
The people I work with are hands-on founders, the ones who’d rather get on with the work than market it, and who are often very good indeed at avoiding the exact things most likely to bring in customers.
That’s not laziness. You trained for the thing you do, and you probably didn’t get any training at all in selling it, so of course the selling feels harder and of course it’s the bit that slides. It’s usually those avoided jobs that would make the difference between getting sales and not. That’s where I help.
The rest of it.
I recently wrote a book called Building Sh*t No One Wants, and I co-authored The Most Amazing Marketing Book Ever with Mark Schaefer and his RISE community, which is now an audiobook and has been translated into several languages.
My first podcast, Crossing The Content Chasm, reached the top fifty on iTunes, and I now host Rearranging Deckchairs. I was named one of NatWest and the Telegraph’s 100 Female Entrepreneurs to Watch, and I’ve spoken at events like brightonSEO, The Future of Media and Re:connect, among others.
Alongside all this, I work with Oxford Innovation at Fareham Innovation Centre, supporting the fifty-odd businesses based there, which means I’m sitting down with founders and their real problems every week, so none of what I teach is theory I’ve just read somewhere.
Three cats and a biscuit fan
I’ve got ADHD, which is where my energy and creativity come from, three cats who steal my office chair, and a reputation among the people I work with as the biscuit lady, which I’ve done nothing whatsoever to discourage. For the record, it’s a dark chocolate digestive, and I’ll defend that against all others.
Talks and podcasts
If you’re after a speaker or a podcast guest, everything’s over on my personal site, including what I can be booked for and where I’ve spoken before.
Where to start.
If you’ve ended up here because the work isn’t coming in and you’re not sure why, start with the quiz. Six questions, a couple of minutes, and you’ll know which leak to go after first.