We were lucky to catch up with Doyle Albee recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Doyle, thanks for joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?
We were very intentional with our growth, beginning with careful planning. We met as a leadership team and developed a clear vision for how we wanted to move the company forward.
The first step was a rebranding of our company from MAPRagency to Comprise. The “PR” was standing too strong, and we were missing business in other areas because prospects either didn’t know we didn’t do other things or didn’t want to hire a PR firm that does websites (or other work) on the side.
After the rebrand, we significantly increased our new business efforts and strengthened our team in all key areas. This allowed us to compete for and win more projects than ever before.
Doyle, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I spent the first part of my career on the client side, working for Fortune 500 companies. The experience was outstanding and I was able to learn a great deal not only about communications but also about what I liked — and didn’t like — about professional services firms. This background provided me with the skills to offer services to potential clients and the ability to build a company with which people like to work.
With the new brand, we sharpened our focus to focus on the industries in which we have strong experience and expertise. Our tagline is now, “We Do the Hard Stuff.” Our focus is on technology and telecommunications, B2B, highly regulated industries, healthcare and health-tech, cannabis and related markets. This allows us to focus on these skills starting with new hires and carrying through to the kinds of businesses we serve.
Any advice for managing a team?
Perhaps Steve Jobs said it best: hire smart people and then get the hell out of their way.
We evaluate fit as much as skillset for positions at Comprise, and this helps us to both maintain team members (we have a low turnover rate for a company such as ours) as well as consistently provide world-class work and service to our clients.
A few of our programs:
– We recently started a Young Professionals Group to encourage feedback and input from younger members of our team.
– We do quarterly “Mandatory Fun” events to foster teamwork across the entire organization.
– One of our most used Slack channels is the “heythanks” channel. We encourage people to thank one another in public for extra-mile efforts and great work.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I’m a big fan of Simon Sinek’s “Leaders Eat Last.” The overall themes of empathy and long-term approaches really resonated with me, and I strive to guide my business by these principles every day.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.comprise.agency
- Instagram: doylealbee
- Facebook: doylealbee
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doylealbee/
- Twitter: doylealbee