Welcome back to the "Perfect Pitch Show" where Brandon Burns, Head of Community - Runway Virtual, interviews small business founders / entrepreneurs about the secret sauce to their successful start-up journey?

Disability advocate and founder of Accessibility Business Consulting Ainslee Hooper is a member of the Runway community and started our accelerator program in November 2019. Ainslee is a qualified Anthropologist having graduate from Deakin University back in 2015 and is using her expertise to consult and guide businesses to ensure they are giving their consumers an excellent experience. She has firsthand experience with living with a disability having been born with Spina Bifida and hopes to use her knowledge to help other companies grow and expand holistically.

Ainslee and the team here at Runway Virtual hope that her story will inspire and motivate our regional and remote readers to act and not let anything hold you back. Personal experiences are a wonderful way of identifying potential problems in your communities and using this understanding to remedy the issue.

A Holistic Approach to Accessibility

Ainslee is part of the 20% of the world's population that is living with a disability and it is her goal for more businesses to expand their accessibility. Ainslee's company Accessibility Business Consulting understands that when most people think 'accessibility' they think on the physical or practical side, such as ramps, wide doors and accessible bathrooms. She believes, however, that accessibility doesn't and shouldn't stop here. Ainslee likes to look at everything through a holistic lense as she believes all the moving parts of a company influence accessibility. Her company aims to examine your business using this holistic approach to put together a package of advice that will help you increase profit and provide the best experience to your consumers possible.

Being an anthropologist gives Ainslee further insight on humankind and helps her understand and appreciate our differences, similarities and needs in order to provide an excellent service. Doing so she is able to help other businesses and companies recognize what their customers need and/or want for a completely accessible experience. They will tailor a package that is directly suited to you and your business as everyone is different and so are your business needs. Ainslee's approach is all about the experience of your customers and consumers and how you can improve your services accordingly.

The Process:

Accessibility Business Consulting uses a variety of techniques in order to identify and examine the strengths and weaknesses of a business. Ainslee and her team don't look exclusively at what the business does for the consumer but the experience surrounding it. In order to effectively assist, they spend time researching and collecting feedback from the business's consumers directly. This is done via a few avenues including focus groups, surveys and one-on-one interviews with your customers to learn their needs and desires from you. The aim through these processes is to identify what your strengths are and the gaps preventing your business from being completely accessible to your consumer.

Once the research has been conducted, Ainslee and her team will work to identify the needed areas of improvement from all of the gathered feedback. They will then put together a report for the business in question that will contain both insights and recommendations on areas of improvement. From there they will discuss strategies with the business and suggest changes that can be implemented in order to provide a better experience for the consumers.

Finally, in order to ensure the success of the business and that the recommendations made have...