PP008 | Cate Richards | Team Bonding | Corporate Team Building
Cate Richards moved away from a corporate career to start her own businesses in April 2005, leaving behind an 18 year career in Market Research, Consumer Insights and Advertising Strategy / Planning.Since then she has built a large and successful corporate Team Building business (working with the corporate market) that operates in Sydney, Melbourne and soon Brisbane. Team Bonding provides fun team events for teams from 10 - 80 people and it is the most fun business in the world. Cate loves putting a lot of laughter into the world and making people happier as a result of her events.
In this episode you will discover:
How Cate found success from a financial failure.
Why systemizing product is crucial to business growth.
What you can do to increase productivity and decrease your workload.
Links for this episode:
If you are interested in corporate team building please visit Team Bonding here.
Transcription:
Voiceover
: Toby and James are involved in amazing events all over the world. You’re listening to The Planner’s Planner Podcast, where top event professionals share real world experiences and cutting-edge ideas, sponsored by
.
Toby Goodman
: Hello, and welcome, again, to The Planner’s Planner Podcast. I’m Toby Goodman, as ever, here with James Eager. How are you today, young man?
James Eager
: I am very good, Toby Goodman. How are you?
Toby
: I’m good, yep. Today, James gets all international and talks to Cate Richards from Team Bonding in Sydney, Australia. Founded in Sydney in 2006, Team Bonding run around 300 creative and enjoyable team building events per year. So, pretty impressive business. And isn’t it nice to know we can reach out to people in Australia now, who are keen to come and share their knowledge?
James
: Yeah, we’ve got a pretty growing listener base in both Australia and New Zealand, but also, kind of, what’s cool, is it seems to be opening up out throughout the rest of the world with listeners – now we know we’ve got listeners in Nigeria and Israel, along with Finland and Norway, which we talked about last time. So, yeah, it’s all very cool if you ask me.
Toby
: Yep, don’t forget to say, “Hi,” to us on
or
, or wherever else, and let us know what you’re enjoying, and what you’d like to hear more of, that would be really good. So, before we get on with the interview, bonus to anyone who can hear where James missed an absolute brilliant opportunity to have a dig at me and the wider drumming community in general. Um…cool! Here is the podcast with Cate Richards. See you at the end, James.
James
: See you at the end, mate.
Voiceover
: The Planner’s Planner Podcast is sponsored by
and
.
James
: Hi, Cate. Welcome to The Planner’s Planner Podcast. How are you doing today?
Cate
: I’m doing great, James. I’m really happy to be here.
James
: Brilliant, it’s so good to have you on the show. You’re based in Sydney, Australia, and run a company in the events industry which specializes in team building. Can you describe to anybody who isn’t familiar with what team building is, what it actually is?
Cate
: Well, team building – I guess the dictionary definition would all be around the sort of approaches you take to build cohesive teams and helping individuals within a team to work effectively together. And I think, originally, it would have started with more interventionist kind of activities to maybe diffuse conflict, or have people approaching things together and working on the way in which they communicate. So I think it’s changed over time, and team building now is more around the fun and rewarding activities that companies purchase to motivate their staff and incentivize them in a non-monetary way and have them working together, building rapport, improving their friendship within the teams. You know, the thing, why would they spend the money doing that is, I guess, to improve retention really, is probably the ultimate outcome, and also productivity within the team because people have better relationships and better communications. And, typically, we now mainly do fun things and the kind of activities that people, I guess, like to skite about to their friends and partners at barbecues.
James
: Cool. So before we delve into the details of what fun you actually have, can you just tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up starting a team building company?
Cate
: Well, it is a funny story, James, because I didn’t actually… It was a bit of an accident. What happened...I’m that clichéd story of the corporate person who had a very successful corporate career, and I got to the age of 40, and then had this burning desire to start a business of my own for a blank sheet of paper. And the business that I hit on was a company for professional singles people, and I ran activities, like night courses, so people could meet each other and mingle in, what I thought was, a more natural kind of environment, than the other, I guess, dating opportunities that were out there. And so I went and created this, I put all my money into it, and my heart and soul, and, of course, it was a fairly spectacular catastrophic failure. And I ended up extremely poor indeed, and much the wiser.But what I had, and the main reason my business was a failure, is that I had decided I needed to create a
place
for my club, which my club for single people was housed in. And it was a very expensive rental proposition in a prime location in Sydney in the whole bottom of an office building. So, it was fantastic, and I had started to recoup that rent by renting out the space to corporates for meetings and creative workshops and what they call “off-sites” in the industry. And, so I was progressing well with that, and then I had a couple of calls for things that were, like, maybe doing cooking, or something else, and I stumbled my way into the team building industry. And after I closed down the club, one of the things I thought about, was “what have I learned to do? What can I salvage out of this great disaster?” And I thought, “What I’ve really learned to do is event management, and create enjoyable events for people.” And so I thought, if I pivot and I look for somebody with deep pockets who can actually pay for these events, which it was proving to me that individuals couldn’t, or wouldn’t…So I bought the domain name TeamBonding, because, of course, that, to me, was one step on from team building, and it had more of this idea of creating rapport with interests, and I bought some Google AdWords and I threw up a website, and I started some activities, and the phone started to ring, and I got some meetings, and had some sales, and, of course, then I had to go and deliver these events, which was very difficult. And I really had no idea what I’m doing. In fact, I think I really should find those first few clients and refund their money, or give them a free event, these days. But, I somehow managed to stumble through it, and yeah, found myself as a team builder. But I came from a marketing background and not an HR background, so I guess I brought a different spin to it than what other companies did. So, it’s been quite the journey.
James
: What year was this when you finished the dating thing, then?
Cate
: 2006.
James
: The interesting thing that I find about that is if you look at the marketing of something like Match.com at the moment, their markets base is obviously changed hugely, because it’s actually more of the activity-based dating which is happening at the moment. So, it kind of sounds like you were a little bit ahead of your time there, in some respects.
Cate
: Well, I was. And I still think the value proposition I had, James, was very valid in the market, but the problem was the cost to acquire a client, as people would know, as a business person, you know, the cost of sale, is really…you know, you have to keep that down well under 10% of your overall revenue, or you’re just going to go broke, it’s just going to cost you too much, and in this case, the cost of sale was huge, because, of course, Facebook hadn’t launched yet. Even if I had done it almost a year and a half later, and even in the early days of Facebook, I think I could’ve made much more of a go of it. But you live and learn, and I still have about 50 great friends from that time of my life, which I’m very proud of, and you know, I know – as one of my friends says, she says, “You shouldn’t say it was a failure, because it was only a commercial failure, by any other definition it was a success.” And certainly these things ascent to just the greatest life lessons you can have, really. So, it was really good. But, of course, I had Team Bonding off the ground for only about two years before the GFC hit, and that was very difficult. Everything sort of went to hell in a handbasket again, so I kind of copped it all twice.
James
: Can I just ask what GFC is, just for anybody who doesn’t know?
Cate
: Oh, I’m sorry. What does the G stand for? General Financial Crisis? I don’t remember what the G stands for.
James
: I was thinking it might be “Global,” but yeah.
Cate
: Ah, yes! It is! Sorry.
James
: That’s alright.
Cate
: I’ve put it out of my mind, it’s so traumatic! But yes, the Global Financial Crisis, which, of course, anyone who’s listening to this in Australia knows that Australia survived extremely well, but we all did have six months where everything just kind of stopped, and the wheels did start to turn again, but in some cases, for some people, the damage was done.
James
: So, going back into the events industry, before we start talking about business more than events. You said to me that you chose to productize your business. So, I’m thinking this is now the moment. Can you tell me about what products you actually offer within the events industry?
Cate
: Yeah, so team building is a big industry, it’s a business-to-business industry, meaning that it’s businesses buying from… You as a business sell to businesses rather than private individuals. And, of course, that means sometimes their budgets are extremely good and healthy, and sometimes their groups are very, very large, but then, of course, they’re not. So I chose, once I understood my industry – and it was partly because I didn’t have any credibility if I set myself up in the HR field of saying, “I can actually help your team reconnect at this level,” or I could deliver this specific human resources style outcome, I didn’t have any credibility to do that. But I did have credibility in putting together a great, fun event, having everyone enjoy themselves, you know, getting my team to a place at a time, you know, all of that sort of stuff – so the logistics side of it. So, as I started to expand, one of my products that I’d created, which is actually called Amazing Race, which I think anyone who’s ever done any team building has probably done a scavenger hunt or treasure hunt style event where you kind of run about the city and have to do all these fun things, and then you all get to the end and you have a drink, and we tally up the scores and we say which team has, sort of, put in the best effort overall and won. I had a product like that, and it turned into a real superstar of a product. It was very easy to sell. It had extremely high customer satisfaction, you know, nearly every customer that did it said they would refer another team from their organization, so I knew I was really onto a winner.So then what I did is I thought very carefully about what elements it was that was working so well in this event, because that’s I guess what productizing is, is breaking it down and then understanding, really, what the drivers are for this very high satisfaction, or having a product that’s very easy to sell. And then I replicated that. I grew by replicating that product in three cities of Australia, and then I also expanded a little bit more geographically, and then I had a shorter version, and a longer version. So, I just….And so that, to me, is what productizing was. It was finding that formula that always worked and was creating that, you know, genuine great outcomes for the customers.
James
: Right, that is very interesting. Is it a case that a client will come to you saying, “I just want my team to have a bit of fun,” or will they come to you saying, “We’ve got…the subject of our conference is X, can you help us deliver our company message?” How does that one work?
Cate
: Well, both happen. Probably I get more of the business on the fun side, because I’m a volume player. I have relatively high volume and a sort of full-packaged price, whereas I think a lot of my competitors provide, or claim to provide, a lot more customization, and so they probably look for the higher budgets, the bigger groups, the more flash venues, I guess, which is all fine. But, yeah, so I guess… I always deliver fun, that’s very much imbedded in my brand, and in our ethos, but we can also, of course, work with companies to customize the events to suit a message, or a theme, or something like that as well. And that’s where the creative side comes into it, and I actually really enjoy that side of it. You know, last week we did an event in Brisbane where the theme was numbers, and I had to alter the normal activities we do, so each one had some link to numbers. So, things like that I often do. But in general we try… Obviously we make more money the closer that we can keep our formula as it is, because, you know, that way you don’t need to brief staff any differently, you don’t need to change anything in the way you set it up, so you know, there’s always that balance. We actually enjoy doing things a little bit differently here and there, and also that’s how I’ve grown the company, too, because people have asked me for things and I’ve had to solve those problems. And in solving those problems, I’ve improved, or I’ve hit upon some activity or another that’s actually an improvement across the board. So, that always interests me.
James
: Briefly, what would you say are your top five activities that you sell the most of?
Cate
: I’ve already mentioned Amazing Race. We also do Olympics. It’s like an old school sports carnival with lots of silly race-style elements. We do art, we do cooking, we do…oh, we have a great one that you would like if you were in Sydney, Australia, James, which is called the London Cab Rally. It’s like the Amazing Race, except people move around the city in old London cabs, which are now hire cars that have been imported from England. So, I get a lot of expatriates booking into that one, and they really enjoy driving around in the cabs, so that’s very popular.
James
: That’s made me think, I’m guessing the London cab is such an iconic thing, but you only really find it in London.
Cate
: Well, and Sydney!
James
: And Sydney, now, clearly. Haven’t thought of it that way. Gosh, you learn something new all the time. Brilliant!
Cate
: You learn something every time. But, you know, that’s a great event because that one we can travel much further afield. So you often get teams where they have some international visitors, or they just want to do something a little bit different, and, of course, that has the double benefit of getting a great view of all of Sydney’s iconic landmarks as well.
James
: Do you do anything music based? Because, obviously, that’s our discipline in the events industry.
Cate
: We do some drumming. And that’s a great team activity, and we also do circus – but I’ll come back to the drumming, but both of those have a very strong metaphor for teaming, which is, you know, getting into rhythm, working in harmony, and then bringing the different individual disciplines in to create a whole. So, drumming is fantastic. Any making music together, I think, James, is a fantastic metaphor for teamwork, but drumming, I think, is very easy for people to pick up, and it’s easy for them to be good at, so of course, to be really great at music takes so many years that I think one of the reasons all of our events are successful is people are doing an activity together, but they’re set up to succeed, so I think, with music, that would be where somebody supplying it as a team building activity would have to put a lot of thought into how exactly you’re going to set people up to succeed.
James
: Yeah. I’ve also heard the drumming events described as an “energizer.” Do you use that expression?
Cate
: Yes, there’s “ice breaker,” and “energizer.”
James
: Can you explain what those are?
Cate
: So, that would be… Well, an “energizer” would be, if people are at a long conference, where they spend a lot of time in a room listening to people, they try and break up the day with something that’s completely different and is going to raise the level of energy in the room. So in that case, just say you’re in a big theatre-style room, they might be drums in and give each participant a drum, and do that. “Ice breaker” is more for a group of people that don’t know each other very well, so that would be the kind of activity – also short – the kind of activity where people can...it also raises the energy, but people are making sort of personal connections.
James
: Okay, and what was the circus thing you were going to mention?
Cate
: Yes, so circus. I work with some great circus professionals. They teach juggling, obviously, and spinning plates, and things like that. But, of course, they have a huge amount of metaphors, because a circus appears to be chaotic, but it is, in fact, highly disciplined, and things like that. So, juggling is an example of an activity where you have to prepare people ahead of time for it to be quite challenging, because not everybody can pick it up in 10 minutes. So, you have to persist with it, and you have to think about, “How am I going to introduce juggling in such a way that even the people that are taking a bit longer to pick it up are still enjoying that process, they’re still laughing and happy, their energy is high?” Again, it has a great metaphor. And art, as well. We use some great metaphors in the art, and also we use to embed messages, because when you’re choosing the topic for your master work, you have to talk at sort of great length about how you’re going to take an idea like “team unity,” and then take that into a visual space and then link that to a visual, the symbology, and then create something that’s going to remind you of the discussion.
James
: Cool. I’ve got another question regarding the scale of these events. Obviously some of these you’ll have a team building event, I’m guessing, like, the cab thing will probably be for groups under 10 people or something like that. But, sometimes these need to be done on a scale with hundreds of people, you might have three or four hundred delegates. How do you go around approaching that?
Cate
: Well, my maximum in my events is 200. And that is because the events have been designed for smaller groups, and they’ve been designed specifically that way. So, something like 400 people sitting in a room, I would turn that business down, because I don’t believe that my brand can deliver an optimal outcome for that client. So I stick very much with… I guess we stick with our knitting, we know what is absolutely always going to work, and it always does work, which is the fantastic thing. But, we do get challenged on the edges, sometimes. Certainly, you know, clients have pushed my numbers up beyond what I thought was doable. We recently did 200 people, and so what I did is I actually ran effectively two events side by side. So, this is where my productisation comes in. So, I actually ran two 100-person events, and I ran them side by side. There was two leaders, two teams, but we just happened to go through the same places, and end up in the same place. But, that’s how I managed it, rather than, sort of, compromising what I know works by really trying to stretch ourselves too far.
James
: So, what did you do for that 200-person event? What was the activity?
Cate
: So, that was an Amazing Race, and that was in the Sydney Botanic Gardens, which is really one of the most beautiful places in the entire world. What I did is, we have about eight pre-designated checkpoints in there, and so I just put the teams at different checkpoints through it. Because what you would always worry about with those big groups, is you’ve just got such a massive convergence of people in a small space, and it just turns into chaos. And I don’t like chaos. We don’t like chaos, because people notice chaos, and I like all of our participants to think, “Wow, people were calm, it went really smoothly,” and that’s how I train my team members. Just keep a smile on your face. If things go wrong, try not to let people know things have gone wrong. Yeah, so, it’s good. It can be challenging. You know, we have weather to deal with, of course, and you know, in Australia we can have pouring rain or searing heat, so…and obviously, you have to be very careful with injuries. I’ve had a lot of people with disabilities at different times. So there’s always some special needs. There’s always things that need to be thought about carefully and considered, and that’s part of being a great event manager, I think.
James
: I would agree with you there. So, we’ve spoken about how you productise. I find that really, really interesting, partly because we work at the opposite end where pretty much every event we do is bespoke. One of our company slogans that we use is that “we don’t copy and paste.” But, in some respects, you’ve built a business which is doing exactly the opposite. So, with that in mind, how many events are you doing a year?
Cate
: So in 2014 we did 300, and 75 of those were in December.
James
: Wow.
Cate
: And so we did…there was a couple of days in December we did eight events in the three cities simultaneously, so Decembers are very taxing. I have to say, I don’t look forward to it, James, like other people look forward to December and thinking their year’s winding down, I think, “I’ve just got a massive mountain to climb.” But, yeah. And, I mean, it stretches us, and I have to get ready for it. Each year I get ready – I start in November bringing in some new team members and training them up so that I’m not in the position in December of, you know, having brand new people, or you know, sort of working really hard with large groups. And, of course, December, too, people get in very high spirits, so it can be hard to keep them on the move through the city and not getting waylaid into the pubs and things like that. So, all kinds of challenges ensue. Can you imagine?
James
: Yeah, yeah, indeed. Can you give me an overview of how your company is structured?
Cate
: Well, I’m the director, I own the company, I founded it. And I don’t run it anymore, I have a general manager now, and she runs the full business. She does all the client management, all the sales, and she, obviously, does all the staffing plans and puts the events together and makes sure all the staff are at their place, at their times, so she’s doing all that now. So, I now work on business development. So, my job, really, now is just to grow the business, and also do the sort of marketing strategy. So, at the moment I’m working on a new website, and I’m briefing a new partner to do my pay-per-click marketing, and things like that. So, that’s the kind of stuff I do. I feel like my job now is to keep growing the business, so my general manager’s job will always be just to take all the business that comes in and continue to improve the logistics side of it.And we have two virtual assistants. One is in Jamaica, and she is my marketing assistant, so she does all the blog post uploads, she does social media, she chooses pictures for the website, she’s also helping me a lot with the new website project. And I have a second virtual assistant who’s from the Philippines, and she’s our finance assistant. So, she does all the invoicing, she tracks all the inquiries and keeps a track of, you know, our conversion rates, and things like that, and she also helps out on the help desk. She’s fantastic. They’re both fantastic – well, they’re
all
fantastic. And then I have about 40 freelancers who work to various degrees on the events. And in Sydney, I have, I think, four or five people are the leaders of the events, and some of those people work three, even four times a week, so they’re almost on full-time wages, but most people work once or twice a week, and same in the other cities. So, yeah. It’s great. And all the people that work for me really, really love the work. They really get a great kick out of it. The fun is really infectious, you know, so, people…I have this great history amongst all my friends, whenever they’re between jobs they come and work for Team Bonding, and then they go back to their corporate jobs and they ring me up and they say, “Oh, I really miss it! I want to come back!”
James
: That’s great. I’m really interested on the VA side, the Virtual Assistant. I think the events industry, particularly here in the UK, is very traditionally run. People work from their offices, et cetera. However, there is, I think, a growing culture of people working remotely. Why did you choose to build your company on VAs rather than hiring in Australia?
Cate
: Well, I did try hiring in Australia. Australia has the highest wages in the world, I didn’t know if you know that.
James
: I didn’t.
Cate
: So even people that, yeah, so… It was just very expensive, and I wasn’t having a lot of luck with that. So, I thought I would try working with a VA – and actually the first one, it didn’t go well, and I learned a lot from that. So, when I went back and I chose Dani, who is my VA in Jamaica, I chose her because she was native English-speaking. I felt that, particularly with marketing, where people were answering emails, she could really catch my tone and match my tone, so if it wasn’t me answering and it was her, nobody knew any different. So that’s when I started having a lot of success. And then she and I got way too busy. She just got too busy in her job, she was going crazy. So, we decided to split her job up and that’s when I got Jonica, who’s in the Philippines, and I deliberately made that job not so much client-facing, but really a great supporting role. And, particularly with the invoicing, because, you know, we do generally around five to eight events a week, so there’s a lot of admin…there’s quite a high admin load, just with the invoicing and just making sure, you know, clients are always kept up with the latest step of whatever’s happening and answering their questions. And she does all that. And she’s supported us, she’s about four hours a day, so it works really well for me.
James
: Couple of questions. First of all, where do you find these wonderful people? And secondly, how do you get the time zones to match up?
Cate
: Well, I found them on
. And the secret, I found, to oDesk, was to write a really good job description. That would be a little tip. But, the time zones actually, it was really their choice, so I said, particularly with Dani when came on, she works at night, she starts around 6pm, I think, and usually works through ‘til 11 or 12. And she chose to do that. And it meant that she had free days, because she’s also developing some businesses of her own. And, you know, she actually travelled through South America for six months and she still kept her job. She just made sure she could log in every day, and you know, obviously some days there’s internet problems, you’ve have to have a bit of flexibility and have to be, sort of, a generous employer, I guess. But honestly, what they have repaid me in loyalty is ten-fold. And Dani, particularly thinking she could travel, which is her great passion, and she blogs herself, and so she she’s just working on her own businesses during the day, but she has this regular income coming in from working at night. So that works out well for her. And the Philippines and Australia are on a very similar time zone, so we don’t have that same problem coming that way.
James
: Have you ever met either of these two people in person?
Cate
: No, I’ve Skyped. And a
lot
of contact back and forth, you know. Oh, I would give them the biggest hug ever if I met them in person, but you know, I hope to.
James
: I find the world we’re working in so interesting at the moment, like I can have this conversation with me being in London and you being in Sydney, and talk about the events world, and sort of gain knowledge… it really has opened up the world, hasn’t it?
Cate
: It’s fantastic, isn’t it? You know, my dad, in his eighties, I was showing him my Google Doc one day that I was working with both my VAs, and I’d say, “Look, I’m typing, and, look, see the words coming up, Dad? They’re typing, oh, now I’m typing.” It’s just so incredible what these sharing…it’s just amazing, isn’t it? For business, you know, there’s really no limits. We’re only limited by ourselves now, I think. If there’s anything you can think of, there’s probably a way to do it.
James
: Yeah, definitely. When we start seriously growing, which I’m hoping is happening very soon, I’m definitely considering the virtual assistant way of doing all of our administration. Because there literally just is no reason why I need someone in the same company to be sending emails or invoicing, et cetera, et cetera.
Cate
: Absolutely, absolutely. So, start now with a list of all the things where you think…well, there are things that drain your energy, things you’re not very good at. Because there’s somebody there in the world just waiting for that job, James. That’s the thing, you know. People say, “Oh, how do you feel not employing Australians?” And I said, “Well, I feel these people are much more worthy of my, you know, of a job, you know? And I employ plenty of people in this country as well.” I think it’s great.
James
: Anyway, back to team building, because I think we’ve veered into the world of international business more than anything else.
Cate
: That’s alright. Everything’s in play, that’s the thing. I mean, you’re in the events industry, but really first and foremost you’re running a business, so you know, the business principles you can learn can apply to nearly anybody’s business.
James
: Yeah, I would agree with you there. So, talking about business principles. Are there any, sort of, inherent problems that you find with team building? Is it a fairly stable business to work in?
Cate
: Well, it has been, for me. I’ve been very fortunate. And I’ve grown 30% each year, year on year, so it’s quite a big business now. But, I do still have the scars of the
Global
Financial Crisis. You see that, James? I had blocked it out of my brain. But, that was in my very early years, so I was barely established, but I do still remember getting those emails saying, “We’ve got a freeze on, we can’t spend this money on these kind of things anymore,” so you are at the mercy, I guess, of a downturn, because this is very much discretionary spending, I suppose, for businesses. So, you know, we’re very fortunate in Australia. We haven’t suffered particularly badly from a recession for, you know 30 years. You know, I’ve got to keep riding that wave, I think. I mean, the other way to look at it though, because I’m a volume player, and because I do have a good price point in the market, is, I think, other people would suffer a lot worse than I would, because we would maybe get people that were sort of downsizing, but not completely deleting their events, sort of come into our orbit. That’s what I like to think, anyway. But, yeah, so far, so god.
James
: Well, that’s brilliant. So, you mentioned earlier that you have a general manager, which is running the business for you. Are you running any other businesses at the moment?
Cate
: Well, I’m working on a start-up business, which I’m going to launch in about six weeks, I think, which is in a completely different space. It’s in the business mentoring and marketing…I actually was a marketing strategist, so I’m an expert in branding and marketing, and particularly clarity, helping people find what it is…is going to be, I guess, the core and the essence of their business, and their sweet spot, and just helping them then develop that into a full business. So, yeah, that’s what I’m going to be doing a lot more of, and I just can’t wait, actually, I’m very excited about that.
James
: Excellent.
Cate
: Because that’s my great bliss, as they say, and yeah, that’s been very exciting for me. So, my manager’s only been in place since January, so she’s doing exceptionally well. She hardly needs me at all. In fact, I’m just, you know, a bit of a hindrance to her, checking up on things these days. She’s going that well. So, yeah, I’m in a very happy place with the business.
James
: Brilliant. That sounds great. I think we’re sort of coming to the end here. Is there anything else that you want to mention about what you do that we haven’t covered?
Cate
: I don’t think so. I think just, you know, thinking about your positioning in the market. We were talking about that you’ve chosen to be bespoke. I think that’s really interesting for people to think about. Just being really clear on that, what they put forward to clients, because I don’t, obviously, say to my clients, “Oh, we work – everything’s a formula, et cetera,” because that’s probably not a selling point. But there are a lot of benefits to our approach for clients. And also just the sheer volume that we do makes us very good at what we do. And I think all the events that ever have any glitches and difficulties is because we’re doing something for the first time, we haven’t been able to test it sufficiently, so, yeah. I would say don’t dismiss the idea. You can take a lot of what works and reuse it. And even though bespoke might be a selling point, people don’t need to know that the way in which that you run your business is actually to quite a strong system.
James
: I would agree with you there. It also strikes me that if you are heavily productized, what you do also makes a very, very clear offering to the client, so they can see exactly what it is, rather than the bespoke thing. I guess the downside, is that you could, I guess, overwhelm a client with too many options. What do you think to that?
Cate
: Well, that’s very true. And, you see, I think a lot of clients choose me because they don’t have to do any work at all. They don’t have to do any thinking. You know, within our system that we have, at each step we tell them exactly what’s going to happen at the next step, so if they want to put some thought and ideas in they can. But if they don’t, we have defaults, almost – default choices that get made, and things like that. So, I think managers are extremely busy, and I think they respond to us – they realize from the get go that we’re a highly professional company, and that we’ll look after them, we’ll take good care of them, and so, that trust is built up and that actually makes it all the easier for us as well. It’s interesting. I think making things easy for your client, that’s always been the key to me.
James
: I’ve just written a note down exactly like that. We do video testimonials, and it’s one of the, sort of, powerful sort of ways we communicate with people. We had quite a high powered guy that agreed to go on camera for us, and one of the things he said to us was, “Everything you did made my life easier.” When you put yourself in his shoes, and he’s constantly on aeroplanes going back and forth to China, dealing with absolutely massive stuff, to just have a company which he just knows can get on with it, it’s just very, very valuable. And what that does, in turn, it frees up his time and head space to be able to do things which are much more profitable, I’d say. Would you agree with that one?
Cate
: Absolutely. You know, this is… I’m always very conscious of the clients we’re dealing with, this is just one small item on a very long to-do list, so the more that we can do, to just say, “We need one simple decision from you here… We just need a phone number from you there,” or, “We’re always here if you’ve got more questions,” you know, I think that’s been a great secret of our success. And certainly a lot of our testimonials do bear that out. I’m really proud of that, I think they’re some of the best testimonies I get, you know, “From the first phone call, we knew we were dealing with professionals,” that means a lot to me. And it’s hard won as well, because, as I mentioned before, I really didn’t have a background in this industry. I had to learn everything from scratch, really. So I just always put myself in the customers’ seat and think, “What can I do to just make that next step easy?”
James
: Okay. So, let’s leave it there. What can we do to make our clients’ lives easier? I think that’s a great way to finish the podcast. So, where can we find you? Are you on the web anywhere?
Cate
: Well, Team Bonding is definitely on the web. It’s about to be renovated, so hopefully when people are listening to this it’ll be better looking than it is now. So it’s
.
James
: Brilliant. It’s been great talking to you, Cate. Thank you so much for your time.
Cate
: Thanks, James.
James
: Cheers.
Voiceover
: You’re listening to PlannersPod.com.
James
: So, Toby, that was our international interview on
, how do you find it?
Toby
: Very good. Although, you could argue that Claire McDonald was also international in many ways. I thought it was really good. I thought Cate was a fantastic communicator, really understood everything she was talking about. Really interesting to hear that she’d come from more of a marketing angle than a HR angle, so the team building is possibly slightly different. When you asked her what team building can actually do, she answered very directly back, “It’s a worthy investment because it’ll improve your retention and productivity through better relationships within your team.” Which is just, like, totally clear as day and really cool. Also, the other stuff about having one solution for really busy businesses and people that are, you know, working hard to make more profit for their company, giving them a solution that is professional, they know they’re going to be looked after, not going too much into that bespoke thing, I think that’s something we do quite a lot with our private clients, but isn’t it interesting the business guys just want to be taken care of, immediately understand why this is going to be beneficial and then essentially everything’s just done for them
James
: Yeah, I think that’s the thing, they’re just busy guys, aren’t they? And the other thing I just took from it, the events she’s designed just look like they’re a hell of a lot of fun, don’t they? I mean, it looks like a really enjoyable way of spending a day.
Toby
: Yeah, and that quote came out, she was saying, “Fun is infectious,” and the fact that she does have some freelancers that work for her when they’re between other contracts, and they say, you know, “I really miss coming and helping you to deliver these things.” The fun is, you know, you can’t undervalue that. When people are having fun at work, raises morale, people perform better overall. So, her message is super, super clear, and I love that. There’s one other thing she talks about, and you talked about VAs. Now some people might not even know what that stands for. So what is a VA, James?
James
: Virtual Assitant, that is what is stands for, which is a little bit like a personal assistant, but can be anywhere in the world.
Toby
: Cool, so that’s something that, obviously, Cate’s utilizing. One in Jamaica, one in the Philippines; one for marketing, one for more, kind of, paperwork, accounts and stuff like that. How cool is that? I think it’s amazing. It’s really interesting with timelines, as well. I know we know a couple of people that use VAs who are working through the night whilst the guys in the UK are working during the day. But, strikes me, that if you’re in events, and you’re running a small private business, and you’re finding that people are wanting to talk to you after work hours, which definitely came up in even that first interview with Louise Perry, who was saying, “The lines have blurred with me and my family,” and stuff. You know, you kind of think, “Actually, isn’t that cool?” If you had a VA that was customer-facing and had decent English and stuff, you could have one of those people answer the phones for you, and you could actually start to structure your life and start owning your own timeline again, which is always good as a self-employed person.
James
: I would agree with you there. I think it’s probably time we started wrapping up. But, do you want to let the listeners know where the drumming gag was?
Toby
: Well, I do have to take some issue with Cate when she said that drumming is easy to be good at, considering that’s what I dedicated a good amount of my life to being good at. I didn’t realize it was easy. But, you know, what I’m more disappointed in is in the fact that you didn’t say anything, so, you know, I’m thankful, but also slightly disappointed in you, all at the same time. “Drumming is easy to be good at.”
James
: Well, having watched you play for the past 15 years, I couldn’t agree with her more.
Toby
: That’s, well, that’s because I make it easy. Okay, brilliant, here we go. Links are…you can find Cate’s business at
. You can find us, everyone,
, on Twitter, with
, that’s the number 1. Podcast, again, directly available via iTunes and
, just search for The Planner’s Planner, and you’ll be able to find accompanying notes and links from this podcast, and, of course, more about us on all the W’s,
. James, I will see you next time.
James
: I will see you next time, too, Toby.
Toby
: Cheers, mate. Bye-bye.
James
: Bye.
Voiceover
: You’re listening to The Planner’s Planner Podcast, with Toby Goodman and James Eager. Visit
Show Notes:
00:22 - Intro with Toby & James.02:14 - Find out what Team Building is in the traditional sense, and why it originally came about.02:45 - The reason why companies choose team building now.03:09 - Cate shares the 2 main benefits of good team building.03:46 - Discover how Cate found her way into the team building business.04:14 - Find out the learning that Cate did before she started earning!05:00 - The major outgoing that led to a downfall of one business but the discovery of team building.05:15 - What Cate learnt from her original business model.06:14 - Why Cate chose ‘Team Bonding’.06:43 - What happened when Cate made her initial sales.07:00 - The new spin Cate has on Teambuilding because of her existing professional background.07:28 - Find out why James thinks Cate was ahead of her time.07:45 - Cate talks about the all-important cost of sale.08:40 - Why commercial failure doesn’t mean things aren’t a success.09:10 - Find out what GFC is and why Cate doesn’t want to remember it!10:12 - Find out what products Cate offers and why she has chosen a business-to-business model.10:55 - Where Cate used her credibility as a creator of fun to position herself in the market.12:28 - Cate talks about understanding productizing.13:30 - Where fun comes into Cate’s business and why customization is a possibility.14:30 - Cate tells James how she customized an exsisting product to a specific theme.15:22 - Why customization leads to the growth of Cate’s company.15:43 - Cate shares her most popular team building courses.16:30 - Discover an unlikely place you will find London Taxi Cabs!17:15 - Find out why drumming is great for ‘teaming’.17:46 - Discover the importance of setting up an event where people succeed.18:30 - Cate explains the terms, ‘energizer’ and ‘icebreaker’ is.19:30 - Discover the challenges of circus skills.20:20 - Find out the metaphors behind art based team building.21:10 - Find out the maximum number of delegates Cate is comfortable to work with.22:05 - How Cate deals with volume without compromise.23:20 - Why a smile is important.23:40 - The needs of delegates and challenges.24:3 - Discover how many events Team Bonding do and when they happen.25:45 - Find out who Team Bonding is structured.26:10 - Discover Cate’s role in her business.26:48 - How Cate utilizes Virtual Assistants.27:35 - Cate talks about the role of freelancers in her business.28:40 - James finds out more about Virtual Assistants.29:50 - Discover why ‘tone matching’ helped decrease Cate’s workload.31:00 - Find out the secrets of O Desk!31:40 - Cate explains how you can travel around the world and keep your job!33:00 - James talks about the wonder of modern technology in the events world.34:00 - Cate talks about when to start.35:20 - Find out why an economic downturn could hit Cate’s business first.36:50 - Cate talks about her new business adventure.38:10 - Cate discusses how to position in the market place and why systemizing ‘bespoke’ is important.39:40 - Discover the big reason why clients choose Cate.42:30 - Discover where you can find out more about Team Bonding.43:00 - Closing words with Toby and James including more info on what a VA is.