Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Ilaria Biumi, Inbound Marketer of Agile School SRL, located in Milano, Italy.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Agile School was founded in 2018 with the aim of helping to create organisational ecosystems where ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results by expressing their projects and realising their potential.
Our mission is to accelerate the transformation toward Business Agility. This is why we seek out and create the shortest and most effective ways to help people, teams, and organisations on the Agile transformation journey while continuing to improve the pathways and ways of intervening in organisations.
Our clients are organisations have realised that in order to face the challenges of today's world, they can no longer rely on old models of management and goal planning, but have seen Business Agility as the solution to many types of problems they face every day reinventing management and the way to work.
Tell us about yourself
Gallup research in 2019 highlights that a very low percentage of workers are actually engaged in their jobs. The recent phenomenon of the Great Resignation has seen a huge number of resignations by dissatisfied workers who have migrated to organisations that are able to take care of their workers and give them an ecosystem in which they can feel fulfilled.
Business Agility brings many benefits, some of which are really related to how people feel. We do not believe that people work for the mere purpose of earning money. Rather, each of us cares about making a contribution to the work environment and the wider community in which we live. When an organisation becomes Agile, it puts people, whether customers or workers, at the centre of its business. Through our work, we can bring about real change in people's lives.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Build a company in which people can realise themselves, and that can walk by themselves without the presence of the founder.
What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?
Jeff Bezos ironically claims that the WWW (world wide web) stands for World Wide Wait. To start a business, you need a website, the creation of an audience interested in your products and services, and a system of technologies that allows you to track data and results, such as your website, CRM, social media, and much more. All this is quite easy to implement, but you have to wait time before you see results. Be patient and keep experimenting with new solutions when some action that has been taken does not bring the desired results. Perseverance is one of the most necessary skills to start a business nowadays.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Listen to customers
The focus of Agile organisations is on creating value for the end customer. The customer is the starting point and the endpoint. For us, it is the same. It is about starting from the customer's real needs and his experience in using the product to create products and services quickly that the customer can experience and, through his feedback, the organisation can constantly improve. In Agile, there is no finished product/service, only increments of improvement. - Experiment quickly
An agile business supports continuous and sustainable innovation and progress. Iterations and changes are constant, and the pace of progress continues steadily. The generation of ideas is spread to all people in the organisation, which creates an environment where continuous experimentation plays a key role in constant innovation and change. New ideas arise spontaneously from interactions with users and can no longer be the prerogative of research and development departments. This means that our advice is that experimenters learn at the moment through interactions rather than following pre-existing routine procedures. This mode of action not only reduces risk but also allows for continuous innovation. - Radical transparency
A cardinal principle of Agile organisations. In a hyper-connected world with an incredible surplus of information, information must be visible to all, including performance, team performance, financial results, and even salaries. It follows that it is in this way that people can make the best decisions independently and quickly. Maintaining radical transparency also means giving confidence to employees who will feel more engaged in their work.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://agile-school.com/it/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100043632077176
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/agilityorganization/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
Turn your craft into recurring revenue with Subkit. Start your subscription offering in minutes and supercharge it with growth levers. Get early access here.