Speed is one of, if not the most important aspects in business.
Let me talk about something that happened last week.
Me and my assistant are developing a new idea with Schools about how we can help open student’s eyes to career pathways and jobs that are actually out there.
11:00 AM
At 11am, we had a call with the Leicester careers hub to talk about how we can work with schools across 2 primary ideas:
Keynote talks to entire years groups about my journey from clueless student, to apprentice, to business owner
Round table discussions in small groups to outline all different options they have after GCSE’s and Post-16 too
Not everyone has a clear path, my path certainly hasn’t been what I thought or planned, and I think it’s important to share real stories from someone who was in their shoes not that long ago.
12:00 PM
We then had a lunchtime call with South Midlands Careers Hub to discuss a project we would like to do to scale this impact of outlining career pathways to students.
This was very early days into the idea, and in-theme of speed, we didn’t have a slide deck, we didn’t have any materials other than a conversation to get initial thoughts on the idea and discuss whether it’s viable.
For this project, we are exploring funding options so that we can do it properly and this initial exploration phase was for both us and the Careers Hub to see if there was anything that has potential.
They were very excited, but said we need to have a “legacy” impact…
That was tough and we were struggling for ideas when me and my assistant we discussing after.
2:00 PM
We travelled into Nottingham to meet with someone who does VR and they were showcasing all their tech.
Towards the end of the meeting, they almost said something ‘off the cuff’ about what their dream project to work on would be.
And then it clicked…
We could incorporate our original idea about career pathways as well as VR to merge the two and have that legacy impact we were told we need to think about…
Now, this was in the space of 5 hours to get the ball-rolling with school partnerships, funding & distribution partnerships, and a potential technology partner for it.
This was a Wednesday…
By the end of the week, we had:
Designed, reviewed and finalised the 2 one-pagers (our original idea and this new one)
Booked proposal meeting with the technology partner to explore the actual collaboration
Booked the follow up with the Careers hub to discuss progress with the idea based on their feedback
For a team of 2, along with everything else we have to manage in a business, I’m extremely happy with this pace and believe that we will be rewarded.
Now, this doesn’t guarantee the opportunity will lead to something, but it does increase our chances and allows us to iterate quickly.
When each of these meetings were booked that day, we didn’t necessarily have a plan to link them together, but one led to another and we could build the idea in real time with real feedback.
Hopefully you can take something away from this, and apply it your own business/life.
I’m not trying to be a guru, just sharing what happened and my outlook on things.
Not sure if this is a diary entry or a blog post, but we are sticking with the theme of making myself uncomfortable.
