Walking the talk

Through her award-winning, family-centric marketing services agency, Rachel Klaver is putting into practice everything she’s ever learnt about life and business.

Eclectic” is the word Rachel Klaver uses to describe her background prior to launching her Hibiscus Coast-based marketing and consultancy business Identify. 

“I’ve worn many different hats over the years – it’s nice to finally find a place I can wear them all at once,” she says.

The qualified teacher and mother of three worked hard as a writer, blogger and speaker – generally around the subjects of professional development, early childhood education and parenting – before a hotel room epiphany resulted in a second career as an author. 

In 2006 she “got lucky” – walking out of a publisher’s office with three contracts (She’ll Be Right and Mountain Men are books on rural New Zealand; Eighty-eight Dates is all about Internet dating).

Her marriage breakup began a decade as a solo mum and necessitated a move from rural Rangiora to Auckland, where she could be with family, and a cappuccino-habit didn’t involve “driving 30 kilometres into town three times a day!”

In Auckland, things were soon looking up. At one stage Rachel’s agent told her she was probably New Zealand’s highest earning female freelance writer. “My highest career point was seeing seven different magazines at the supermarket all featuring my articles,” recalls Rachel. “Three under non-de-plumes because editors were worried about saturation.” 

Then the GFC struck. Publishing was one of the worst affected sectors. 

With no work and rent to pay, Rachel found herself “choosing between feeding her children and paying the power bill”.

But hitting those lows and making tough choices would later help her empathise with, and understand, the situations small business owners sometimes find themselves in.

At rock bottom, and with WINZ deeming her “too capable” for support, Rachel managed to pick herself up, identify a market gap, and create a business providing professional development services for early childhood teachers. She aimed at the ‘low hanging fruit’ – another strategy that would later prove handy with Identify. 

Rachel also learnt a key principle for business sustainability: never under-value your services and let the market determine price. “An advisor told me to simply put my prices up until somebody resisted!

“Price sends a message. It also lets you be selective around what you want to do.”

Although she had “an army of supporters”, being away from home three nights a week made the venture unsustainable. So Rachel took up a role with a marketing training company to exercise her facilitation skills, get over her aversion to selling, and access the corporate world.

A contractual disagreement eventually put paid to that arrangement, but it didn’t matter – Rachel already knew it was time to start her own marketing business. 

It would be one that didn’t just come up with marketing strategies for clients, but also the means to implement them.

Fast start

Identify Marketing and Consulting launched on April 1st 2015. Mahurangi Oysters was its first client. Around six weeks later Rachel realised she was going to need help on the ‘implementation’ aspect of her services. She also had a call from ATEED, wanting to refer businesses needing help with marketing strategies. 

It was time to take on her first staff member, Jane, “on contract because I was so scared of employing anyone” – followed soon after by Anna (admin) and Carol (writing). 

Today Rachel engages the services of 15 people as either part-timers or contractors, and every team member works under the rule that they get paid for every single hour they work, even for just a meeting.

“If I want them to be trained – I pay for the time they’re being trained,” adds Rachel. “Remember, I had been that person [working extra hours for no pay]. It was another line I wanted to draw in the sand.”

Turns out Identify has many lines in the sand based on Rachel’s previous experience – for example, preferring to forgo more profitable work from clients in order to focus on delivering better value for them – as well as full accountability. Allowing a large client to dominate your income can also put your business at risk, she says.

“If your gross profit is, say, 30 percent, never let one client represent the same, or more, percentage of your gross profit. Because if you lose them, you’ve lost all your profit. It’s about spreading your risk. Sometimes you have to say no.

“I teach my team that our most important client is, in fact, Identify. Because if Identify is looked after, then our clients are looked after.”

She recommends Stephen R. Covey’s The 4 Disciplines of Execution, a book about executing strategic goals. It convinced her to switch Identify’s goals – from doubling turnover in 2017, “which is easy to measure”, to growing 100 businesses throughout New Zealand. 

It’s about focusing on the most applicable measurement. “Rather than focus on the big picture, focus on nailing just one objective,” Rachel says. “Then move onto something else.”

Identify today

Compared to where she’s been, Rachel acknowledges that she’s in a good space today. With a new, supportive husband and an improved financial base, Identify is definitely not a business born out of desperation – which Rachel believes is the Achilles heel of many start-ups. “Unfortunately, while a business may have the best idea, best staff and best processes in the world, it’s the stresses around cashflow which will eventually kill it.”

Her advice is to always have some “rainy day” money put aside, and/or a bigger overdraft facility, to get through any cashflow speed bumps and ensure that staff always get paid.

Rachel firmly believes that investing in admin staff early on was a key to the success of Identify. “We’re an admin-heavy business, and I knew admin was my biggest weakness. It means we quickly had the right structures and processes in place, which freed me up to focus on sales.” 

It also meant she could stick to another of her personal business mantras of not working outside normal business hours. “You’ve got to have a life outside your business.”

Planning is another building block to success – from September through to November Rachel says she’s already planning for the following year with her team. 

Constantly looking for better ways to serve their clients is a priority too.

And then there’s the importance of not having an ego-driven business. “My whole business philosophy is to spread the risk, spread the expertise and spread the offering. 

“It’s a risk whenever the business owner becomes the centre of attention,” explains Rachel. “It’s the whole team that delivers the skills, and it’s the team I want to see grow. That’s why I invest in them; I want my team to fly.”

While the business may appear to be all smooth sailing, Rachel says there’ve been challenges, and admits to the occasional panic attack, which, oddly enough, seem to coincide with a major growth spurt. “It’s normally just before the 20th of the month. We’ve had growth and I’ve paid out way more than normal. My mind says, OMG what if no-one pays us on the 20th?”

It’s a psychological reaction, Rachel believes, because, as mentioned earlier she always has those rainy day funds as a backup.

Family friendly

Rachel recently found a ‘bricks and mortar’ home for Identify in the seaside-suburb of Orewa, but she’s maintaining her family-friendly approach around flexible work hours and issues such as sick leave – taking into account that staff have commitments around young families. 

“I’d never make any of them work on a day that they wanted to spend time with their kids.”

As the business grows, she’s sticking to what’s she’s learnt over the years, and is happy to share those lessons with other start-up business owners. “Like, sometimes you just have to put your ‘game face’ on and do the ‘to-do’ list, regardless of whatever else is going on. 

“And remember, if your business is running well, it can survive for a while without you there.” 

Rachel knows this because she took time out last year for a honeymoon.

She’s also learnt that working with a client’s business is a real responsibility, one that’s never to be taken for granted.

A major highlight for Rachel and her team was winning both the Fledgling category and the Supreme Award at the 2016 David Awards – the online-hosted awards that recognise the ‘unsung heroes’ in home and small businesses throughout
New Zealand. 

But Rachel admits to getting a real kick when a member of her team receives positive feedback from a client, or a client achieves significant sales results from a marketing strategy.

Her biggest highlight, however, comes every Tuesday – which is payday for her team.

“Because every time I pay my team I know I’m paying people who’ve sold out for my business.

“They’re proud to work here. They’re passionate. To me they will always be my highest achievement in the business, because I really can’t do anything without them.

“And a happy team equals happy clients.”

Meanwhile included in her five-year plan is to offer her founding team members part-shares in the company – getting revenues to a point where that’s possible is Rachel’s priority. 

Along with becoming known as “the marketing company that builds businesses”.