Strategic Brand Consultant and Founder of 9 Designs
I’m curious about businesses.
Occasionally inconveniently curious.
Tell me what you’re building and I’ll want to know why. Tell me everyone’s on the same page and I’ll probably ask them individually. It’s amazing what you learn when you ask three people in the same business why a customer would choose them.
That’s often where my work starts. I help established businesses work out how their brand can help them win bigger projects, give customers stronger reasons to pay their price or build credibility for their next move.
I’ve spent nearly a decade getting close to how businesses actually work. I’ve been inside Canary Wharf Group, worked as VP of Strategy in the wonderfully ambitious chaos of a growing PropTech startup and worked alongside senior executives and mentors across North America through Techstars. Along the way, I’ve facilitated sessions with teams connected to Vodafone Business, Santander and Enterprise Nation.
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Canary Wharf GroupInside a major estate business
VP of StrategyAt a growing PropTech business
TechstarsWith Colliers International in Toronto%20(1)-p-800.jpg)
9 DesignsMy own studio, since 2017I started 9 Designs in 2017, which gave me a different view of the same work. I’ve been the person helping a team decide what its business should be known for, and the person who has to turn that decision into a website, an identity or a story someone can actually tell in a sales conversation.
You find out how clear the thinking was when someone sits down to build from it. If three people come away from the same meeting with three different ideas about what to say to a customer, those differences tend to turn up again, usually somewhere around the fourth round of revisions.
Sometimes the business has changed, but customers still know it for the work it used to do. Sometimes a team has added services over the years and nobody can explain how they fit together. Sometimes everyone agrees that the business wants to move upmarket, and each person has a different idea of who that means going after.
I want to know what’s changed, what customers already value and what they’d need to see to trust you with the work you want next. If you’re being overlooked for bigger projects, it matters whether people misunderstand the offer, see you as a specialist in something else or simply haven’t seen enough evidence that you can handle the job. Each would give us something different to work on.
I also get wary when a room agrees a little too quickly. If everyone’s looking at the same competitors and asking for examples of what already works, it’s quite easy to approve a series of sensible decisions that make the business harder to tell apart. I’m interested in the strength you’ve earned that a customer would care about, and whether you’re willing to put it front and centre.
Expect proper questions, a bit of playful provocation and the occasional exercise that makes more sense once you’re doing it. I’ll make room for the person who’s been quietly watching a problem unfold for six months, as well as the person who already has a plan for fixing it. They tend to know different things.
I want people to be comfortable enough to laugh, change their minds and say the thing they’ve been trying to find the words for. That includes questioning my thinking. If the direction is going to guide what people do after the meeting, they need to understand why we chose it and have a chance to tell me what I’ve missed.
“Kiki gave a tonne of insights and exercises that really pushed me to think deeply about what makes my business unique and how I can communicate that. Things just clicked. I think it’s down to his down-to-earth and honest approach. I’ve always felt seen, heard and valued.”
Together, we work out which customers to focus on, what your business should be known for and how to show why you’re worth choosing. We then make those decisions useful to the people who have to act on them. The person writing a proposal should know which strengths to lead with. The team delivering the work should know what customers have been promised. The person briefing a website should be able to explain what it needs to help a buyer understand.
I can work alongside your team and existing partners. When you want help building the identity, website or marketing around the direction we’ve agreed, my team at 9 Designs can carry it through.
I like being there when the penny drops. I like it even more when we turn it into something.
See how I work through those decisionsI once took my son to the dentist and came away thinking about brand. The team gave him a little time to play and feel comfortable, and it changed how the visit felt for both of us. I could tell you what they were like with children because I’d just watched them with mine. I remember that far more clearly than anything the practice might have said about itself.
I take photographs and draw in notebook margins for much the same reason I write. I like noticing things and following them a little further than I probably need to. Sometimes that turns into a drawing. Sometimes it becomes a piece about what makes a business easy to choose, what customers remember or why everyone in an industry seems to be making the same sensible decision.
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Bring me the rough version, the discombobulated ideas, the directions you’re torn between and the things you’ve tried that haven’t quite worked. We’ll talk through what you want the business to do next and where your brand could help.
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