Working in a glitch
Have you ever experienced one of those rare and perfect moments where the life matrix glitches and you experience timing so perfect that you think you're in a movie?
This happened to me on 4.13AM 23.10.13. I was about to close my laptop when a message popped up in front of my blurry eyes. Noel, my friend and former colleague, had just emailed to say he was looking to join an agency; the very type of agency I’d JUST finished devising in my business plan.
What were the chances?
Noel was my first client for around 10 months before he joined me in the battle to build a business. We weren’t the absolute ‘best of friends’ when we started out, but we had a mutual respect for each other professionally having briefly worked together before. When we first joined forces there was one particular thing that made me realise I could build a business with this guy in the future; he was the one of the few people I knew who’s work ethic was as strong as mine (if not even stronger).
He also came with fantastic relationship skills and a strong network, so after 10 months of working with him as my client, the decision to ask him to come on board was a no-brainer. Our collaboration also taught me a valuable lesson in business; that the countless articles warning against mixing friendship and business are somewhat flawed, and those claiming that old contacts do nothing but ‘break boundaries’ and push for ‘mates rates’ are wrong.
The first year of building a business felt a lot like I was working within my own glitch - something that took a lot of getting used to.
Connections, connections, connections
Another key realisation was when I started telling people I was planning to create my own company. This was the moment where I really realised I was about to go it alone, and that the only thing to get me off the ground was to find customers through my connections. In starting a business, you need to tell the right people about your plans, and if you’re confident enough; start asking for introductions.
An old colleague of mine introduced me to a contact of his who had been running agencies since the 00s; I hadn’t even asked him for the favour! I was often surprised at how many people were willing to just ‘help out’ in the early days, introducing me to mentors and people who were generous with their invaluable advice. This specific contact took me to pitches and gave me experience that money couldn’t buy. He also later introduced me to my biggest client of the time, who he could have easily pitched to himself, but for some reason didn’t. This is something I’ll always look back on and remember.
It’s safe to say that most of our initial clients were a combination of Noel’s old friends and former colleagues, and my own contacts that I’d built up over the years. It remained that way for several years. And while these contacts did start as our ‘bread and butter’, a ripple effect was soon created from referred business which helped us to solidify our position in the market.
More recently, I’ve learnt that this way of growing a business is often the easiest to get going, yet the hardest to scale. People only know so many people. It’s taken two years to get the business into a place where we need to start to look for a scalable and repeatable sales process, which is something we are focusing on heavily right now.
All in all, if you‘re thinking about starting a business in the future, begin by nurturing the relationships in your work and personal life. It can be easy to think that business needs to be separated from your social life, but as long as you have a shared work-ethic and mutual respect, working with friends and ex-colleagues won’t just start the engines of your business, but also get it to the moon.
- Log in to post comments