When we first started our businesses, most likely as start-up, what we may have lacked in experience and experience, we certainly made up for in enthusiasm.
Co-Founder of The Agency Collective and The Wow Company, Peter Czapp talked to us about reigniting that spark.
What is the start-up spark?
“If you are like me, you handed in your notice in at your job, and then you started with nothing,” says Peter.
You’ll remember those days and you’ll hopefully remember them fondly. Because what you did, what I did, probably what we all did, was book meetings with pretty much anyone that we knew ever in a desperate search to try and find anything looking remotely like work.
And obviously, as you evolve, you get more focused and clearer on what you’re good at. You don’t just book meetings with everyone. But now we’ve forgotten about what we did in those early days and the skills that we had in magicking up work from our network. But now we’ve got an extended network.”
How can we utilise the spark?
Whilst we may have lost a little of what drove us when our start-up began, we do have a wealth of new skills and opportunities at our fingertips.
“We’ve got way more credibility because we’ve been doing this for a little while. We know what we’re really good at, so we are focused and we can go back and have those meetings proactively. You’re able to have far more intelligent conversations with way more intent and get way better results.
When I started 19 years ago, LinkedIn wasn’t around. Now I can see who people are connected to and I know where they used to work. I know they’re connected to the marketing manager at this company. I can ask them directly and say: ‘We work a lot in that niche, I don’t suppose you’d be able to introduce us? Because I think what we do could really impact them positively.'”
How to reignite the start-up spark?
Quite simply by reverting back to what we started out doing all those years ago: Connecting with our network.
“What I encourage you to do is just reignite that spirit of a startup. Start booking meetings with your network, but be really specific about what it is that you are looking for and who might be appropriate.
Go to existing clients and ask for referrals. And not just with clients, but you can do it with your ex-clients as well. And explore that with them.
You can do it with your partners. You can do it with the Agency Collective members. A lot of you have built really good relationships. Let’s reignite those and have conversations. What are you up to? How could we collaborate? What could we do together? You can do it also with old prospects.
Go back through your little black book. Go through all of the opportunities right underneath your noses and see if you can book some meetings because meetings result in energy.
It just creates energy. Sometimes, it’s not the meetings that you are having the results and stuff, it’s something that comes out the blue, but it feels like it’s all connected. And that is definitely the case. I’ve seen that time and time again where we put energy into this, then we get good things out the other side.”
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Peter Czapp, Co-Founder, The Agency Collective & The Wow Company
Business benchmarking expert. Co-Founder at The Wow Company, Beautiful Business, The Agency Collective, The Consultancy Growth Network. On the board at Ecologi. Having a lot of fun.
