Next up at Marketing Academy Day 1, it was time for some life lessons from a familiar face, Will King, the King Of Shaves who has been ‘shaving lives’ for many years.
I first met Will (and if you have the patience you will scroll back to the first days we launched our app almost a year ago) when we went viral on Twitter.
We launched a successful campaign, marketing’s job was finally successful, and yet, he received a casual 10 welcome emails. “#fail” was his response via twitter. Mine was; “Sorry Will, we just really, really, really wanted to welcome you to Grabble. Think you got the message”.
He approved, and we met up, and have stayed in contact consistently – the amazing thing about Will is he is fascinated by innovation, not just in his own industry, but just in general. He is truly motivated to find out what is going on in all areas of industry and really got what we were trying to achieve at Grabble. Like any good entrepreneur he uses the word ‘disruption’ a lot, but he honestly believes in it, and his presentation was all about being confident enough to seek out your mission, and to truly be passionate.
They say “love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life” and Will claims he has as much fun now as the days he was pumping oil by hand into little bottles to get his first sale into Harrods via Mohammed Al Fayed. It’s all part of the journey and that’s what matters most – enjoying the ups and the downs.
He inspired a room full of 30 bright, sharp and passionate people, and never afraid to build on strong vernacular, he is an avid believer in owning your own language. Favourite phrases of the afternoon were;
#Persuasion – which is persuasion, persistence and passion rolled into one.
#FindustrialRevolution – relating to the seismic shift that fintech disruptors are having on the global economy and my personal favourite;
#Delegreation – delegating to people who are better than you.
The last one resonates hugely with me, I am quite the control freak and yet I do love delegating to others the moment I believe in them, and I never look back. It’s such a rewarding process for all concerned and takes a huge amount of pressure away from me, so I really get where Will is coming from with this.
He closed out his session by explaining that you should never be too comfortable and always keep a watch on new competitors – there was a new challenger on Kickstarter that came out 2 days ago that he thinks could kill King of Shaves, Gilette and Wilkinson Sword due to its cutting edge technology – a laser razor. Pretty cool. He ordered one, he wanted one. A true sign of someone who respects his competition, has an energetic passion for curiosity and can never truly walk away from his past (having now left the company to focus on other things, it’s still clear to see where his passion remains).
The feedback was excellent, people loved Will’s energy, everyone does, he’s very captivating but what was most important was to focus on his main lesson – that you don’t need a work life balance, you have one life, so work at what you love, work can be life, life can be work, and every day will make you happy and keep you fulfilled.
Keep shaving lives Will.
