Chris Raven is CEO at business growth agency Heur, which specialises in direct-to-consumer ecommerce.
He founded the agency, which has office bases across London and York, alongside Chris Nawrocki in 2019.
Heur expanded its client roster at the end of 2022 with period pain specialists Myoovi, TOG Knives and Modern Persian Kitchen and acquired digital marketing agency Out To Sea.
Raven shared how a recent week in his life went…
Monday
I generally kick off the week with a stroll outside at around 7am, catching up on podcasts. I favour longer duration pieces from Tim Ferriss or ‘Your Basket Is Empty’, although I often mix it up with comedy and lighthearted stuff from Vic Reeves/Jools Holland, Richard Herring or Adam Buxton. Can you tell my formative years were in the ‘90s? I’ll drive back home and either take the kids to school or at least see them off, and then it’s into the coffee beans and down to work.
Today we have a great opportunity to develop an offering for a new food client who is launching a new and unique offering into a fairly crowded market. As well as fashion and consumer goods, we’ve carved out a niche in the food sector, from consulting for a global frozen food behemoth to working with upmarket coffee roasters WatchHouse and funded startups like Modern Persian Kitchen and Olly’s Olives.
Earlier in our agency life we helped Mamamade grow from a very lean ‘founders plus one’ proposition to a fully formed in-house team, providing them with our on-demand do-it-all-for team to nurture their growth and build expertise internally over the course of a year or so. The new prospect hits our sweet spot, they need an ecommerce platform to facilitate a direct to consumer channel and they need the people, expertise and technology infrastructure to launch and grow the brand using the digital landscape. I love building proposals like this as we have an offering that really speaks to the way business owners think in the current economic climate. They often understand their product and industry in incredible depth and clarity, but don’t know where to start with respect to a direct to consumer channel online.
I’ll head to the gym around lunchtime, it’s only 10 mins from my house so it fits neatly into the day. Alongside the usual Slack chatter with clients and the team that accompanies the start of a new week, the proposal will take the bulk of my day to prepare in readiness for review from the rest of the management team and key specialists. Sign off around 5.30 for tea with the family and then it’s time for the kids bath, books and bedtime routine!
Tuesday
Tuesday brings a more concerted set of check-ins with the team and clients. We have a broad range of products that range from developing paid media propositions through to our cornerstone offerings where we run the entire marketing mix for clients and their eCommerce trading (Holistic Growth Strategy + Managed Ecommerce). Clients have a strategy lead that works closely with key stakeholders in-house to embed and collaborate seamlessly.
This works very very well, however it needs myself and my co-founder Chris Nawrocki along with our management team to liaise closely and regularly with strategy leads to ensure they never feel isolated and have any additional support they need from the rest of the team. We are a fully virtual team by conscious decision, although we regularly utilise co-working venues around the country for collaboration or as a meeting space. I take time out in the late afternoon to head out for a mountain bike ride. Therapy, fitness and fun all wrapped into one activity. Heaven (unless it’s heaving it down with rain).
Wednesday
Heading to a meeting in Leeds to interview a prospective addition to the management team. Having grown the agency more than 40% year-on-year every year since its inception, we are now at the point where layering in focal points for certain functions is required to help us maintain scaling alongside quality of service. We spent a lot of time at the beginning of our journey, and during the pandemic building good operational processes (essential for a fully virtual team), so adding in team members is generally very smooth. The interview goes well and we may soon have a new Client Services Director.
Very exciting for me personally, one of Heur’s values from the start has been ‘Client Success First’. While we have lived by that individually and as a team for the last 4 years, it feels like appointing a senior role to evolve and drive this across the business is a great step forward in our journey. Gym on the way home from Leeds, and a quick plant-based protein shake (I was recently diagnosed as Celiac, so I’m missing the luxury of a good sandwich), then it’s into reviewing the proposals created on Monday with the management team. We go over 3 proposals that were built by the team on Monday, make a few well thought out tweaks based on feedback, and then reconvene to sign them off. Proposal sent to the prospect with a suggested date for connecting back. Fingers crossed they like it!
