LAUNCHING EMPOWER- WHY DO WE EXIST?
Written by Jessica Murray
I’m thrilled that I’ve been able to launch Empower into the world this month! In this first chapter of the business, I want to convey what the company does and why we exist.
Our “why” sits at the intersection of:
My kernel of an idea.
My innate desire to see emerging businesses succeed and play a role in driving those outcomes.
A market environment that’s challenging for emerging businesses - rising costs, tight labor, more restricted and costly funding, and high competition, but also one that can open opportunities.
First-hand validation from business owners that there’s a broad-based need for operational support.
The coming together of the abovementioned formed Empower’s underlying purpose — to empower our partners to create both the business and life they envisioned when they started on their entrepreneurial journey. We live into this purpose by helping our partners optimize their operations, achieve their goals, win back time and create a framework for long-term success that not only outpaces their own expectations but moreover reignites the spark that inspired them to get started in the first place.
The rest of this post dives further into our origin story, why we exist and why now. I want to bring you along Empower’s journey and to do so effectively, you must understand where we came from so you can contextualize where we’re headed.
The Genesis of Empower
The inspiration for Empower came from my desire to see more emerging businesses succeed coupled with my aspirations to build a business. I’ve spent the past decade driven by learning as much as I could about how businesses were built from the ground up and strategies to scale. I’ve been fortunate to have worked with a range of founders and executives, in companies of all sizes (seed stage to publicly traded) and served in cross-functional leadership roles that gave me great opportunities to solve complex business challenges, build products and drive strategy execution. Despite these successes, I felt a persistent pull toward building my own business from scratch and also one that enabled me to broaden the number of companies I could potentially impact at any given time.
My first step to uncovering what is now Empower began with conducting discovery interviews to understand macro headwinds for small businesses and startups, as well as gain first-hand insight from business owners in different industries about their aspirations and challenges. What surfaced is that business owners across industries have an increasing need to focus on:
Driving efficiency: Streamlining every part of the business to allow owners to focus on strategic growth and to free up employee time from repetitive tasks that could be automated.
Controlling costs: Implementing strategies to do more with the same or less, without sacrificing quality.
Enhanced experiences: Improving how customers and employees interact with the business is crucial to fostering loyalty and trust. Enhancing the customer and employee experience to gain loyalty and trust.
Differentiation: Identifying innovative ways to stand out and thrive in a competitive market.
As I observed these challenges, it became clear that the results I’ve driven at various businesses equip me to tackle them effectively and deliver meaningful solutions.
Two quick examples to make this more tangible:
Example #1:
One business owner who runs a non-profit talked me through challenges with talent acquisition and retention. Good news — I’ve built a talent team from scratch and helped hire 30+ people, and I’ve also developed a diverse range of professionals as their people manager.
Example #2:
A pre-seed startup founder talked to me about his challenges mapping, managing and automating the end-to-end journey for his customers. He wanted to become more streamlined and preserve more of his time to focus business development, strategy and fundraising efforts. Also, good news! I’ve built a customer success team from scratch, examined customer journeys, developed, documented and implemented best practices and drove first response times to customers down ~80% in 60 days, while their satisfaction with our service increased.
Why Empower? Why now?
Dedicated to partner success: I’ve always been passionate about helping emerging businesses succeed. I’m motivated by success stories of local businesses that don’t just deliver great experiences and products but also foster a real sense of community. These are the ones that have made the biggest impressions on me and Empower is my way of giving back to the ecosystem.
Filling a tangible need: The evolving macro landscape and dynamic competitive environment underscore the importance for small businesses and startups to optimize their operations and be nimble enough to adapt.
The right expertise: My background and track records position me uniquely to provide practical, impactful solutions to my target client base.
Empower truly has come out of a great blend of passion, and expertise and where there’s a clear need in a vast market. We don’t want to be just another service provider; we rather see ourselves as a committed partner in your entrepreneurial journey. We value delivering meaningful returns on the investment you make in us and strive to put you in a position to grow a resilient, thriving business.
That’s the shortened origin story for Empower!