Kevin Dixie
Experienced sales manager, blogger and web community builder, grew a team from £1m turnover to £4m within 6 months. Raised funding from UK Fund. Able to find a revenue stream out of seemingly nowhere. Likes the sea, tweets too much.
| Headline: | Entrepreneur |
| Work status: | Employed Full-Time |
| Website: | http://www.fuelmyblog.com |
| Industries: | Internet, Lifestyle, Media, Sports, Travel |
| Skills: | Business, English, Entrepreneurship, French, Languages, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Negotiation, Sales, Viral marketing |
| Interested in: | Advising startups, Brainstorming, Consulting opportunities, Employment opportunities, Finding business partners, Getting press, Growing my group, Joining a startup, Meeting new people, Offering Expertise, Participating in a competition, Partnering with other groups, Professional opportunities, Promoting my startups, Providing services to startups, Raising money, Recruiting, Recruiting for my startup, Sharing my projects, Starting a company |
| Tags: | blog, blogging, fuelmyblog, Internet, social network, web 2.0 |
FEATURED STARTUP
Fuelmyblog
Fuelmyblog
Fuelmyblog is a blog network with over 20,000 blogs. The business model is linking products and services to bloggers who perform unbiased true reviews.
- Startup type: Company
- Status: Active
- Stage: Growth
WORK EXPERIENCE
| Employer: | Fuelmyblog.com |
| Position: | Work experience |
| Time period: | January 2007 - Present |
| Description: | I created a global blogging community called fuelmyblog.com in January 2007, mainly due my frustrations trying to search for informative blogs, since then the site has re-launched three times. It is a social networking website allowing blog writers from across the globe the opportunity to communicate with each other and enabling users an easy way to read a variety of blogs. The site creates revenue by acting as a link between bloggers and people launching new products.
Since starting the company, I have managed to put together a Management team bootstrapping towards an exit in 2009. I have a website development team working on the site that are responsible for other sites such as Nintendo, THq and Vivendi. My media team are responsible for marketing campaigns for companies such as Transco, ASDA and Carlsberg Tetley. My company secretary has taken many companies from start-up to AIM. We managed to secure seed funding from a Venture Capital company based in the UK in November 2007. With this funding I am able to start marketing the site and employ individuals. I have been interviewed in various traditional and new media such as The Guardian, BBC Radio, Yorkshire Post and featured in many mainstream technology blogs including the second largest on the web with over 180k daily subscribers, and appeared in Lastminute.com. Have established contact with many of the most recognisable people in both the social and technical Web 2.0 arena both CEO’s and Press alike. Closed a recent deal with the World’s Largest transport company for an upcoming event. |
| Employer: | Sportingo.com |
| Position: | Consultant |
| Time period: | June 2007 - December 2007 |
| Description: | Employed as a consultant to forge relationships with various sports forums and re-organise the marketing team and create a strategy to increase both traffic and partnerships.
Sportingo is a website that allows sports fans the opportunity to write articles and have them professionally edited. Since I started working on Sportingo, I have closed over 30 partnerships and re-structured the entire marketing process for the site. |
| Employer: | Management Consulting |
| Position: | Work experience |
| Time period: | January 2006 - January 2007 |
| Description: | Employed in a new business capacity. Targeting Blue Chip IT Managers and Directors and presenting, selling and managing the cost saving solution the consultancy offers. Presented at Board level and marketed at CEO or IT Director level.
Major Achievements: • Meetings at director level with two of the top ten largest banks in the world. • Opened the most prestigious financial account in the City of London. • Opened meetings with the top two Superstores in the UK . • Showed savings to a financial institution of £30 million. Annual spend was £1 billion. My company’s gross profit would have been £6 million. • Opened talks with one of largest bookmakers in the Europe. • Presented case to the largest security company in Europe • Opened the largest carpet retailer account in Europe. • Presented to the board of the largest property development company in the UK. • Presented case to the world’s largest airport authority, proposal pending. |
| Employer: | Irish Technology Company |
| Position: | Work experience |
| Time period: | June 2005 - November 2005 |
| Description: | I worked for an Irish based solution provider. They have developed a solution to eradicate all paperwork involved with the delivery sales or service industry. My role ended in December 2005 due to lack of venture capitalist funding due in to ramp up the business. xxx were unable to move forward and I advised them to change their business plan and target Sage resellers which I felt would be a quicker and more cost effective route to market for them during the interim period.
I was employed as a contractor to help start the UK arm and create a customer base. Long term goals were to grow and manage the UK side of the business by recruiting and managing all levels of the business. My role was diverse and included cold calling, demonstrating the solution to an MD/Board Level, attending and organising exhibitions, trouble shooting hardware issues, creating sales literature, closing sales and managing a remote sales team based in Ireland. Major Achievements: • Introduced a CRM system. • Exhibited at four Sage exhibitions and determined a marketplace for the solution • Created and designed sales literature • Opened key and strategic new business • Ensured solution was faultless and worked efficiently during demonstrations • Motivated an extremely de-motivated sales team |
| Employer: | Vitesse Plc |
| Position: | Sales Manager |
| Time period: | January 2000 - May 2005 |
| Description: | Vitesse Plc are an IT reseller supplying to both SME and Blue chip’s predominantly based within the City or West End of London, products include consumables, hardware, software and remanufactured consumables.
I was responsible for a team of ten sales people and managed the budgets and resources of this team. I introduced strict targets based on call rate, profit and vertical markets. I interviewed and trained all new sales people. Major Achievements: • Increased the company’s sales team monthly GP from £40,000 to in excess of £100,000 within six months. • Directed a sales team of 10 people based predominantly in the office but all spending time in the field. • Developed strong business relationships with the major key accounts which produced 15% of the revenue for the company. These accounts included Arup Consulting, Transport for London, Denton Wilde Sapte and WS Atkins. • Instigated and project managed the introduction of the company’s Ecommerce site which received coverage in trade publications, and high levels of interest from both existing and new clients. In first year, the turnover exceeded £500,000. This was introduced early in the year 2000. • Restructured the sales team and appointed key account managers for the major clients to ensure that clients received a consistent level of service and one clear point of contact for all their needs. In the following year, sales to major accounts increased by 12.5% on previous years. • Streamlined the company’s supply chain and negotiated a sole supplier agreement, worth in excess of £6 million with a leading Global IT distributor. • Successfully managed the merger of two sales teams, due to acquisition, into one with minimal disruption to both the clients and the sales teams; managed the loss of staff during this period. • Won a number of major accounts through the EU tender process, solely involved in the meeting, presentation, writing, bidding and follow-up. |
| Employer: | Complete Media Ltd (Now Vitesse Plc see above) |
| Position: | Sales Executive |
| Time period: | January 1998 - December 2000 |
| Description: | Complete Media was an IT reseller supplying to both SME and Blue chip’s predominantly based within the City or West End of London, products included consumables, hardware, software and remanufactured consumables. It was purchased in 2001 by Vitesse Plc.
• Route to market was cold calling (70 plus per day) • Identification of potential clients • Presentation of services to the prospect • Main contact IT Manager • Won Complete Media’s largest account in month 9, this was achieved by cold call, introduction meeting, quotation and further presentations • Was highest achieving sales person in company |
INFORMATION
| Hobbies: | Triathlon – training for 2009
Fishing Blogging The Internet and associated new media |
Kevin's Startups (2)
View all-
Fuelmyapp
Fuelmyapp is a service that enables iPhone Application Developers the opportunity to ethically market apps. iPhone users can get premium apps for free simply by testing and reviewing them honestly.
-
Fuelmyblog
Fuelmyblog is a blog network with over 20,000 blogs. The business model is linking products and services to bloggers who perform unbiased true reviews.
Kevin's Contacts (8)
View all-
Aaron Bradley
23 yr. old successful entrepreneur, music composer/producer, marketer, 'wannabe' forex trader
-
stewart townsend
Run the Startup Essentials programme for EMEA for Sun Microsystems, helping support Startups with discounted hardware, hosting, engineering support and lots of PR/marketing support with a spice of advisory role positions.
-
-
Andy Alexander
Working to achieve online self branding in several markets.