JKR

Alex Cheatle

Specialists, meaning and retention

Platform met again last Tuesday. It’s the monthly event where a group of us get together to hear first-hand from some of the business world’s leading innovators. This week’s speaker was Alex Cheatle, Founder of Ten Group (see www.tengroup.com and www.tenlifestyle.com).

Alex is as close as you get to the dictionary definition of ‘entrepreneur’. He set up the first in a line of businesses when he was 13. And whilst many of us might have thought that the explosion of e-mail accounts in 1998 could spawn a market in knowledge management, Alex acted on that instinct and built a global business from it.

The personal concierge service that Ten Group provides is born out of first principles: creating trust. A trust that is entirely dependent upon meeting very personal needs in a completely authentic way. You can’t recommend bars or plumbers or advise head masters on school policies without truly understanding your audience or having absolute confidence in what you supply.

The first of 3 guiding principles that we took from Alex’s talk is therefore, specialise don’t generalise. Ten Group is built from a collective of experts in their field. If you are looking to book a holiday in Paris you are essentially buying in-depth, up to date knowledge of the city, that’s then tailored to your own personal preferences.

The second of Alex’s principles is meaning over money. If you are going to do something for yourself, make it something you love. Selling rubbish Indian toys from the pavements of Covent Garden as a teenager taught Alex that if you are going to risk your neck as an entrepreneur, you have to start with a product you care about. At the end of the day quality and meaning are king. You wholeheartedly have to mean it.

Many businesses spend much of their time trying to get new customers. Ten Group rejects this principle and instead focuses all its energy on giving existing members the best possible service. Alex is far more interested in retention rates of existing customers being close to 100% than accruing hundreds of new members. If the product is of quality then growth should take care of itself. Put another way, retention should drive recruitment.

The next Platform is on 17th May when our speaker is Phil Lynas, Founder of All About Food. Places are in high demand but if you’d like to come along e-mail Amy at amymaw@jkr.co.uk and she’ll do her damndest to get you onto the list.