Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in training and development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Colin Bullen, Founder of Virtuositeam, located in Reading, Berks, UK.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

We help teams and the businesses that they form part of become exceptional. We do this by delivering assessments and online and virtual training designed to promote greater effectiveness in team dynamics. Our customers are teams within companies that are looking to be change-ready, to evolve and innovate faster than the competition, and to get ahead and stay ahead. We typically work with product development and project management teams, and sectors have varied from health, insurance, consulting, and well-being to the public sector, but the model works everywhere.

Tell us about yourself

I am perhaps the world's only behavior change actuary. I came to this place simply because I wanted to make a difference. I've been a healthcare actuary for over 25 years, and putting through premium increases so far in excess of inflation that you know can't be sustainable has troubled me. I started with well-being, hoping that this would be the resolution. But for well-being to be effective, you have to make people do something differently. And the well-being market is not well set up to achieve that. In 2013 I teamed up with Andrew Sykes and Hanlie van Wyk (my current business partner), and we created the BRATLAB research database. BRATLAB explains both the beneficial impact that behavior change can have on individuals and the companies they work for AND how to get people to undertake those behaviors.

In 2019, Hanlie and I acquired the BRATLAB database from Andrew, and we set up Virtuositeam to explore how we could use it to help teams become exceptional. I love working with Hanlie - she's been so much more than a business partner, and we are now the closest of friends even though she's in Chicago and I am in the UK. I love being challenged every day - there is so much to learn. As an actuary, I was almost taught to believe that I knew everything - there's an old joke about an actuary being the person who is either right or can prove he is. Through working with Hanlie (and Andrew previously), I've learned to be humble and question everything I hear and read. I understand so much more about why we do what we do as human beings, which has all kinds of beneficial outcomes - including helping me set up this company!

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Three years and still going strong! We have built an extraordinary set of assessments and training materials combining the best of the latest behavioral psychology on how to help humans become better with some of the most insightful team effectiveness research. We are research-driven and thrive on assuming that nothing can be trusted and everything should be tested.

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Converting great ideas to real hard cash. I have absolutely no doubt that ours is one of the most carefully researched products on the market, backed by years and years of reading and analysis. But people don't buy it because they know that it's good. They buy because they become emotionally attached - either to the product or the person. Finding the secret sauce to generate the interest this product deserves has been harder than the research itself!

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Stay focused. Pick your horse and course, and ride it. Don't change the horse. Don't change the course.
  2. Surround yourself with people you love working with - but make sure they can tell you 'no.' Nodding heads will feel good, but you'll end up in the trash can.
  3. Network relentlessly. Never burn a bridge and keep adding names to the little village of connections that are closest to you. I've been staggered where the business has come from over the years, and most of the people that are my closest networking partners I didn't know three years ago.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://virtuositeam.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/virtuositeam/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/virtuositeam/

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.

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