Today I am launching my new company, Drekyr.
Drekyr (pronounced dreh-keer) is named after the Norse dreki. A dreki was a longship that carried a carved dragon's head at its prow as a guardian for the journey, protecting its crew from the unknown and inspiring them to future success.
It has been some time in the making, and finally, I can share it.
At the start of this year I had the luxury of time to myself: a winter sail across the Bay of Biscay, then climbing Kilimanjaro, and a few personal projects in between.
I had a lot of time to think, and I kept coming back to something more fundamental than just the next job. What really drives me at work, and where do I add the most value?
It's a harder question than it sounds. I'm a big believer in focus, so I wanted an answer sharp enough to decide which work I say yes to, and which I don't. Looking back over my career, and especially the last five or six years, the work that made the biggest difference had one thing in common.
Timing.
I've done some of my best work at the inflection points that determine the future of a brand. A sale, new ownership, a merger, a new brand to create or an existing one to reposition or reinvigorate.
Most of those moments have been in private equity-backed businesses, where there is a real problem to solve, a pace to the delivery, and an appetite for change. The aim is to create value and, more often than the headlines would have you believe, to do some good.
From working with the team at Pizza Express to reposition the brand for modern casual dining, to creating the Snowfox Group brand for Mayfair Equity Partners ahead of a $621m sale. From bringing two housebuilders together under one disruptive new brand, untypical, for Terra Firma, to leading the brand launch of SMS, an energy infrastructure business with a real vision to create smart solutions for a sustainable world https://lnkd.in/p/eWAnTbs6
I've also found that a brand creates most impact in these businesses when someone inside uses it as a key principle for running the company, not as a coat of paint or a marketing lever. Done that way, it cements culture, makes marketing work harder, and builds value that is realised on exit.
Working on a sale, acquisition, merger or turnaround? The brand decisions you make now will show up in the value created later.
Contact me here at www.drekyr.com