Ever felt like you need an extra brain? Someone with similar skills who can help you with a problem or someone with different experiences who can challenge you, help you see the wood for the trees.
That’s us.
Our model provides easy-to-access, specific skills when our clients (and consultants) need them. Our ‘Advisory Team’ model gives you specialists, ready to roll with a new challenge, and up-to-speed with your business, right when you need it, at a fixed monthly cost.
The Extra Brain suite of skills give you the ultimate leaders toolkit, including; coaching, innovation, strategy, marketing, design, finance, HR, and legal. We can even help you build your business on the B Corp framework, in bitesize chunks, and help you to get certified when you’re ready.
Our clients know where to turn, whenever they need more brains on a problem. We help them to share the load and progress.
What We Do
Network of consultants, low overheads, best available talent blah, blah, blah – you’ve heard it all before. In truth, we’re the same. We’re not here to tell you it’s revolutionary, just that it works.
Solo consultants are great, trust us, we’ve been them. We’ve delivered brilliant outcomes for clients on our own BUT sometimes, often in fact, problems benefit from broader perspectives, specialist skills and quite frankly, extra brains.
We’ve got a few different services, designed to suit your needs and all based on recurring observations or requests. If we’re really honest though, we know that products are often a start point and each business has its own context and nuance. We’re happy to create something new, if it works for you, and us.
Services
Services
The Extra Brain Advisory Team
Our model has been specially designed to help leaders with ongoing consulting needs to have a larger set of specialists running alongside them at a fixed price. This means they can access these skills, when they need them, with an up-to-date team, without worrying about costs ramping up, more detail below.
Individual Advisor:
Long-term, Non Executive or Board Advisor roles with one lead consultant.
Extra Brain Advisory Team:
Long-term Non-Executive or Board Advisor roles with one lead consultant + additional specialists with limited, ongoing monthly access, within the price. This service comes in two sizes:
- 4 Brain Team = 1 lead advisor and 3 additional specialists each month.
- 2 Brain Team = 1 lead advisor and 1 additional specialist each month
All Advisory clients can access the network for additional projects or skills. These projects will be costed independently by the consultant for the client, Extra Brain will add a 10% margin onto the costs. We do not charge the consultants additional commission.
Projects
One-off projects:
These are self-contained projects which can be dealt with by one or more of the consultants. It’s almost impossible to categorise every type – so far, they have ranged from: being a ‘Pitch Doctor’ for an important win, transforming an organisations entire value proposition and internal processes, helping to improve customer experience and defining sustainable roles and structures for critical business teams.
Leadership / Team Events:
Away Days:
We’re lucky enough to have a great location in beautiful Southwold, in Suffolk, to host leadership team events and a host of amazing facilitators to design and run them.
We can host up to 8 people in Southwold for 1 or 2 day leadership events, we can also take care of catering and advise on accommodation. Events can be partially, or fully, designed and facilitated by Extra Brain.
Virtual Away Days:
We have been working on carefully curated, virtual events that help distributed teams to get the benefit of an ‘away day’ without having to leave the comfort of home.
We’re currently working on some pre-packaged courses for Away Days and Virtual Away Days, we’re happy to share details – get in touch via the contact form.
Coming soon: Workship Workshops
Workshops run on our 70ft barge on the Grand Union. If you’re interested in finding out more, please get in touch via the contact form.
Who
We’re not the first network of consultants, and we won’t be the last, that’s for sure.
Extra Brain only grows its network when it needs new skills, so you won’t find a page of 100 biogs and photos of people who are not actively engaged. If you can see them, we need them on projects. In addition, the founders will only work with people who excite them, who they genuinely want to spend time with and who the others will learn from too. Selfishly, they also want to access the minds of great thinkers, have fun and learn along the way, just like you.
It’s also crucial to us that our consultants:
- Are successful in their own right (we’re not their salespeople)
- Have a proven track record
- Are happy being brought into a range of client problems and have lateral skills
- Are genuinely collaborative, egos left at the door
- Want the best outcome for the client (our model doesn’t work without this, it requires us to relinquish control to each other for the best outcome).
Jessica Gregson
She/Her
Non-Exec & Board Advisor
Robin Bonn
He/Him
Growth Specialist & Coach
London
Natasha Jones
She/Her
Employment Lawyer & Chief Habit Officer
Manchester
Natasha is also an international bestselling author, with a passion for encouraging and nuturing cultures where work place wellbeing is walked not just talked about.
Daniel Gregson
He/Him
Strategy Lead & Board Advisor
London/Suffolk
Don Smith
He/Him
Innovation, Strategy & Creative Direction
Heidi Florence
She/Her
Sustainability & Business Impact Consultant
Swanage
Jindy Mann
He/Him
Leadership Coach & Advisor
Berlin
Coming Soon
Annette Gallo
She/Her
US Market Insight & Creative Consulting & Branding.
Annette has experience working within Media, Luxury, Hospitality, Fashion, and Arts.
Ben Gotto Smith
He/Him
Marketing & Brand Advisor
Sydney
Heather Ogie
She/Her
Marketing & Brand Advisor
London
About
A few more things that it might be useful to tell you.
This isn’t a Co-operative, but it’s inspired by the movement. Consultants and clients will be asked to vote on key decisions about who Extra Brains works with, and how we support purposeful initiatives.
We’re not specifically designed for social enterprises and charities, nor purely for purpose-driven organisations, but we will avoid work that we think has a direct, negative impact on society. Consultants will vote to decide if we take on new clients.
This is worth saying, gently, we’re consultants. We’re not a freelance solution and we don’t take away projects to implement, outside of your business. We help you to set strategy and agree tactics, we can even help your team with implementation; helping them to assess the right partners and even advising them along the way, but we won’t execute stuff on your behalf.
We’re working to improve the diversity of our network to create an inclusive space where everyone can thrive and the talent of people from underrepresented groups is amplified. We encourage our clients to do the same.
Every year, 5% of our profits will go to a cause that we believe is actively supporting one of the 17 UN SDG’s, this could be global or local. Clients and consultants will vote from a selection provided by the founders each year.
What Clients Say
“We’ve found having an objective viewpoint, a robust challenge or just a fresh pair of eyes invaluable in keeping us true to what we do and being able to have the best chance of success. That’s what Jess brings to us and why we work with her.”
Eliot Sykes
Managing Partner, Krow X
“Jess is a seasoned thought leader that provides Tommy with a valuable sounding board and considered direction. Jess can turn her focus to many aspects of the business landscape and gives clear and concise input. She’s equally adept at ‘thinking’ and ‘leading’ as well as the hands-on in the ‘doing’.”
Chris Edwards
Founder, Tommy
“I can whole heartedly say that Jess has been more than just an extra brain. She has been fundamental in unlocking our potential as a business and as individuals and is very much part of our team. We’ve been so lucky to have Jess guiding us and we’ve learned so much in the process that the last three years would have looked very different had she not been involved.”
Peter Johnson
MD, Creature & Co
“When Dan speaks, I listen. I don’t say that about many people.”
Adam Barmby
CEO and Founder,
EAV Solutions.
“(Dan) brings amazing clarity. Takes you through his thinking in a way that means you enjoy the journey and reach the destination smiling – cracked it.”
Donna-Maria Cullen
Executive Director, Tottenham
Hotspur Football & Athletic Co Ltd
“Having an Extra Brain is invaluable to our business and the people who lead it, providing us all with the peace of mind that we have someone to turn to when the going gets tough or there’s a business mountain to climb.”
Josh Bolland
Founder, JB Cole
Our Clients:
