Roisin’s Recipe for Making a Career Move with Confidence
Roisin Branch, is currently the CMO of Blade, an urban air mobility company disrupting the way you travel between where you are and where you want to be.
Lauren and I had her on the pod during Season 4 and the conversation was so powerful I wanted to share some of the insights in an article, so I could come back to them over and over (and so could you!). So, in today’s article, that’s what you can expect, a recipe for success when considering a career transition, from our conversation with one of the smartest, coolest, funniest, most down-to-earth, and badass executives we’ve been lucky to have on the show.
Who is Roisin Branch? Roisin joined Blade as the CMO after a successful career building Soul Cycle, Equinox, and Alc Brands under both the AB Inbev (Stella) and Diageo (Crown Royal, Johnnie Walker) umbrellas. The throughline in her career? Building brands that mean a lot to people in their lives and the lives they aspire to. As a marketer her mission has been to align herself with these brands and then using them as her platform to change people’s behavior at scale. Whether it’s disrupting how Beer and Whiskey brand marketing to pull in a more female audience, or convincing the world it was “normal” to spend $35 per ride to take a Soul Cycle class, Roisin’s influence is undisputable.
How did Roisin end up at Blade? We asked Roisin about her decision to leave the wellness industry for Urban Air Mobility, and in her response, she gave us the recipe for success when making a career move… I would go as far as to submit that anyone should consider the following ingredients when considering a big career move.
Ingredient 1
Market timing / momentum: The right company at the wrong time can fail, I think we often forget how much market-readiness contributes to product-market-fit. In the case of Blade, a few key ingredients came together with beautiful timing:
o First, recent innovations in Helicopters have led to quieter, less polluting machines, which are more cost-effective, and less egregious to the those making policies around how we travel in the sky.
o Next, mix in the fact that there was a growing demand for faster options between origin and destination for business and lifestyle travelers who value time > money.
o Finally, consider how this presented a “blue-sky” opportunity for a first mover looking to democratize air mobility.
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Ingredient 2
Unfair advantage: Unfair Advantages come in many forms, from disruptive innovations (e.g. new inventions) to new regulation (e.g. a major law changes), to a founding team with deep industry experience and relationships, regardless of the variety of unfair advantage, what you want is a company that has one, or many! Essentially, you need to ask yourself, what makes this company/product/team so compelling that I can confidently bet on it being able to go further, faster, than anyone else operating in the same space? In the case of Blade three things were true that afforded the business an incredible, unfair advantage:
o Founder-Market Fit: First, the Founder of helicopter company was using excess capacity to fly himself and his friends from Manhattan to the Hamptons, skipping traffic and arriving in style, realized “hmm, there might be something here.” We love a Founder-Market-Fit moment.
o Proven Success and Industry Expertise in a Highly Regulated Industry with Significant Barriers to Entry: Second, because the aforementioned Founder owned the already successful helicopter company, they already had all the licenses, regulations, pilots, etc. they needed to operate in a highly regulated industry, with significant barriers to entry, making
o An Excess Capacity Problem That Needed Solving: The company, had a problem they needed to solve, as such, the biggest strategic opportunity as a company was simple: leverage excess capacity for increased profits…
Ingredient 3
Disruptive business model: Once you’ve got market timing and an unfair advantage on your hands, you don’t necessarily need a disruptive business model, but in the case of Blade this was a key part of the recipe and unlocking the total addressable market – before Blade existed, you could charter an entire Helicopter for your friends and family, but what didn’t exist was a by-the-seat model, enabling single passengers to go from Point A to Point B in no time, sharing their flight with fellow travelers, in exchange for getting where they all wanted to be, faster and with more ease. While there was indeed a market for private helicopter charters, the total addressable market there was far smaller than the total addressable market for by-the-seat passengers willing to spend the same, or just slightly more for a 10x experience.
Ingredient 4
A great damn product (10x customer experience at the same cost as existing options): Which leads me to my next point… At the end of the day, businesses sell products, and if you don’t have a great freaking product, you will lose long term… Blade has a great freaking product. Let me paint a picture for you: Imagine a 1.5hr drive from JFK to Manhattan, regardless of being in an Uber Black or a stinky UberX, sitting in traffic sucks, and you’re spending $150-200. Now, imagine you walk off your plane, onto a helicopter, fly over the Hudson for 5 mins, and land across the street from your final destination… for the same price as your Uber. They’ve managed to unlock the un-unlockable… a 10x product for the same price as existing alternatives. This is golden!
Ingredient 5
Trustworthy Team: With the opportunity at Blade being as shiny as it is, there’s a . You spend a lot of time with the people you work with. Make sure to develop relationships with your future team in the recruiting process, ask yourself if you are interested in spending a lot of time with these people? Can you trust them? Are they in it for the long-haul with you? Building anything from the ground up is hard, so you need to surround yourself with great people who you can trust in the high-highs and the low-lows.
Ingredient 6
WIFM (What’s in it for me?): It seems selfish to ask this when an opportunity like Blade is in front of you, but it’s always one worth considering, as the recipe for a successful life and career ultimately leads back to you and how you feel about the work you do. What makes you excited for this role? What of your superpowers are you going to get to apply that will fulfill you? In the case of Roisin, with all these factors compounding on one another, she couldn’t unsee the opportunity in front of her to bring her sharp branding-building expertise to a commoditized industry that had long-neglected hospitality. Blade isn’t all that different from SoulCycle after all, before SoulCycle, there was cycling classes at your gym in a sad, stinky room with the same instructor that taught Zumba and HIIT; after SoulCycle, there was a $35 workout that connected you to a community of like-minded people and instructors who were like local celebrities. Before Blade, there was sad, stinky, traffic-laden Uber rides from JFK to Manhattan for $190, after Blade, there was a luxurious, 5-minute helicopter ride from JFK to Manhattan for $190, with a glass of rose handed to you on the helipad. So for Roisin it was the opportunity for a new challenge, take the playbooks she built in the world of Consumer Goods and Wellness and apply them to Urban Air Mobility. What would be rinse and repeat? What would be different? What would she have to learn along the way? That was the draw, that’s what was in it for her.
The takeaway? There are so many ingredients and factors that contribute to a successful career, what I love about Roisin’s journey is she clearly knows how to pick winners. I hope this article was a clear and concise breakdown of how you might be able to pick (or create) some winners in your career too.
Did you enjoy Roisin’s recipe for success? Then you’ll probably love the recipe I created, inspired by her go-to spot and dish in Manhattan, Electric Lemon at the Equinox hotel. Try Roisin’s Shrimp Salad, here. Maybe you can cook it while you listen to our episode of Allowlist w/ Roisin Branch, here.
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