She Used Her Life Savings to Go to San Francisco and Figure It Out — Now She Runs Accelerator Programs for Founders Across Scotland: Alison Gray of Skillfluence

In this episode of Scale HER Up, I'm joined by Alison Gray — founder of Skillfluence, a company that helps entrepreneurs, business leaders, and academic researchers get their ideas out into the world and make a difference with them.

Alison started Skillfluence after a project she led at work was so successful it got absorbed into a large organisation. She found herself getting worse at her job, not better. She took a sabbatical to San Francisco with her partner — six months, life savings, studied at Berkeley and Stanford, went to Toastmasters — and came back knowing she had to build something.

She left her job on a Friday and started at Entrepreneurial Spark on the Monday.

Skillfluence now has 12 core team members, 30-plus associates, a portfolio of mentors and speakers, and programmes running across the UK and further afield. Right now, there's a cohort of 30 female business leaders in the Highlands and Islands with a WhatsApp group that's, as Alison puts it, absolutely buzzing.

We cover:

What Skillfluence does — for founders, entrepreneurs, and researchers trying to commercialise cutting-edge workThe sabbatical that changed everything: six months in San Francisco, Berkeley, Stanford, and ToastmastersBuilding a team: why she started with associates, and what the first real hire taught her about what a business needsRecruitment: a process Alison has designed specifically to reveal who someone actually is before offering them the job (the surprise training delivery task at in-person interviews is particularly good)AI: where it helps, where it takes away, and why some things genuinely need to be your own wordsCOVID: all the programmes fell off a cliff, and how being one month ahead of their clients felt like flying by the seat of their pants — but made all the differenceThe challenge of productizing something that's deeply tailored"It's not the knowledge that's the challenge. It's actually doing something."Why continuous improvement is more useful than regret

Quote of the episode: "It's not actually the knowledge and knowing how to do something that's the challenge for people. It's actually doing something." — Alison Gray

Playlist song: Titanium — David Guetta ft. Sia