Science, charities, strategy and storytelling... my offer in four search terms

One of the trickiest parts of running a consultancy is articulating how your offer is different from everyone else’s.

I’ve really found that since launching my Amplify Science website… it gets drowned out on Google by countless companies who say they provide specialist strategic advice to health charities.

You can’t necessarily get across the essence of what you do just by presenting the projects you’re working on either. It’s in the nature of this line of work that at any one time I’ll be working on different kinds of project that don’t necessarily fit neatly within a carefully defined offer.

Right now, I’m advising one organisation on how to position its science within its fundraising proposition, and working with another to help develop a research strategy. They’re both fabulous projects, but on the surface of it they’re not that similar.

Except they both have common elements that relate to my offer.

First of all, I love science. I started off working in a lab, and have spent my entire 25-year career in health and science… as a communicator, policy analyst, journalist, fundraiser and strategist. I’ve worked at a senior level in a variety of roles, but they all relate to my enthusiasm for science and health.

I’m also especially passionate about charities that work in science and health. I don’t work with anyone else. That does admittedly limit the size of my market but it’s because I love the amazing ability charities have to take relatively small sums of money and use it to transform people’s lives.

But scientific knowledge and passion take you only so far. Ultimately this is a skills game, and I bring together two different skill sets that aren’t necessarily seen as closely related.

I’m a strategist. I led various different strategy projects during my 11 years as a Director at The Institute of Cancer Research, and I’ve continued to do so as a consultant. I’m good at absorbing complex detail, and articulating clearly the strategic choices that flow from it. I really believe I can make a difference that way, by helping create smart strategy that marshals a charity’s efforts in a way that maximises its impact.

I’m also a storyteller. I’ve been writing all my life. I wrote my own adventure game books as a 10-year-old, interviewed Gerry Anderson of Thunderbirds fame as a young journalist and spent a chunk of my thirties as Editor of the medical magazine Pulse. I love to write, and I believe enormously in the power of words to win hearts and drive change.

It’s that combination – passion for science, love for charities, smart strategy and compelling storytelling which adds up to what I do.

When I stuck that sentence into Google just now the very first thing that came up was one of my previous LinkedIn posts. So maybe I’ve been doing a better job of articulating my offer than I’d thought.