About Alasdair:
Alasdair Inglis is the Managing Director of Grow, which delivers sales and marketing consultancy and training for fast growth SMEs, universities and business programmes. For over 12 years, he’s worked with over 200 fast growth businesses to transform their results.
He is the current Marketing Expert in Residence at the British Library, where he also teaches a monthly Online Marketing Masterclass.
He’s taught sales and marketing workshops on the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme at UCL, as well as teaching marketing and sales internationally at the UK Lebanon Tech Hub in Beirut.
Alasdair’s passion for working with small businesses stems from his childhood in the west coast of Scotland, where his family ran restaurants, a working farm and self-catering.
Grow’s marketing consultancy gets remarkable results.
Alasdair helped increase my turnover from £100,000 to £500,000 a year. He’s a bit Willy Wonka.
I managed to get a bit of traction in my business but didn’t know how to take things to the next level. I had no experience of running a business before, and I knew I needed help with my overall strategy.
I felt quite overwhelmed trying to find the right resources and support. It was hard to know where I should invest my precious and limited funds, but I also knew that I needed to invest in order to grow. There are so many ‘experts’ out there.
I attended workshops one of Alasdair’s workshops at the British Library Business & IP Centre and saw how strict they are on who they partner with. I thought that if the British Library let Alasdair in front of people with these pretty important marketing workshops, he must be held in high regard.
Alasdair encouraged me to focus on my core offering and how to leverage that before I did other things that I was interested in. He put ‘blinkers’ on me to concentrate on one thing at a time. He is a real geek, knows his stuff, delves into details and what he doesn’t know, he finds out.
He also opened the door on the importance of measurement and data which I had zero clue about. This has forced me to become more focused on my numbers.
Alasdair introduced me to his Google AdWords expert from the Grow Network who has really helped the business grow. He also introduced me to Alison Lewy from Fashion Angel where I successfully applied for a start-up loan.
For me, starting a business was like landing on a whole new planet and not really knowing anything about it. Alasdair took my hand and showed me around, telling me about the areas to avoid and how to navigate the terrain.
He has a panoramic and holistic view and he’s a bit ‘Willy Wonka’! He makes the process quite enjoyable and genuinely gets small businesses – he’s a bit like talking to a really excited child!
He reassured me that when the timing was right, I could hire someone. This meant that I didn’t get excited too early or hire too early. I’m glad I listened to him – he is choc full of wisdom.
Yearly turnover has gone from £100,000 to £500,000 since we started working together. I kept running out of stock!
Revenue up by 81% and profits up by 133%
In the 1st full year working together revenue has grown 81%, profit by 133% and costs are down by 20%.
Within 20 minutes of our 1st session, Alasdair identified the root cause of the problem.
Over the next 2 sessions with him, we built a robust and actionable plan for growth, that we then implemented. Those actions had and continue to have an immediate effect.
Perhaps equally importantly, Alasdair has provided an understanding and framework which means that all future changes can be bench-marked against our goals.
He's an interesting guy and works at your pace. He also will push and prod you, which may be uncomfortable to experience in the moment and comes from a good place, as he wants to and does help you get good results.
Use him!
Alasdair's advice was inspiring, creative and absolutely vital
We first met Alasdair as a guest lecturer at the School for Social Entrepreneurs. Before we worked with Alasdair, we were doing good work and winning lots of awards but we really didn’t have a clue how to develop our financial sustainability within the online community.
At the British Library Business And IP Centre, we gathered our social media manager, web-team and CEO who worked closely with Alasdair to build our online funding and engagement strategies. His advice was inspiring, creative and absolutely vital. Now, one year on and we're only half way through his to-do list….and boy, is it working!
As a result of us working with Alasdair, we have completely restructured our funding and monetisation strategy, developed new pop ups, redesigned our communications and branding and most importantly, found a new energy going forward. We still have lots to do but I can be sure that no other expert has had more impact on our growth and sustainability.
Thanks to Alasdair, Sky Badger has just been named a finalist in the Tech4Good Awards. We now reach over 1,000 families every day and since 2012 have helped over 1 million families struggling to find help for their disabled children.
Thank you, Alasdair. You’re Sky Badger’s marketing genius!
Sky Badger are an award winning charity
Sky Badger have won numerous awards and accreditations to date including The School for Social Entrepreneurs Scale Up Award 2015, gold winners of The Milton Keynes Digital Awards 2015 and The Guardian Charity Awards 2014.
