What a week!
I’m Barbara, a new face here at Hackney Impact. I started as all the exciting events, projects and courses were starting to happen. It’s so exciting to be part of this consortium of people and to be speaking to our amazing participants.
Allia Impact, one of the partners of Hackney Impact just launched two of their programmes, Start Your Business (SYB) and Grow Your Business (GYB). We are still buzzing from the hype of the past few, and the incredible people that are part of the programmes leaves us with the biggest smile.
Let’s talk about these programmes a bit more!
Start Your Business is a programme designed to help people who are just at the beginning of building their own business. It offers support to understand what is necessary to build a successful business. The subjects covered in the two months vary from the Fundamentals of Finance to the Business Model Canvas, defining your market and much more! It is designed so that a group of budding entrepreneurs can interact with each other, and not only interact with the experts that come in and talk, but also talk and discuss ideas between each other.
Grow Your Business, on the other hand, is designed to support people that already own a business and want to take it to the next level, whether that’s opening a physical store or starting to export globally. The subjects that are addressed on this programme are slightly different than those on SYB, focusing more on marketing, HR, sales and financing and exploring how these pillars drive your growth strategy and operations. We are all incredibly proud how quickly everyone started discussing, collaborating and bouncing ideas off each other after our first session. The cooperation in the room is exactly what is needed to grow the local community and the economy.
At Hackney Impact we are all different people and different organisations, but there is one thing that we all agree with, investing in the local community by enabling its entrepreneurs. We are deeply passionate about keeping people’s ideas where they belong, in their community. Creating a place where people can do what they love and stay in the place they love is essential. Supporting the community helps it thrive and consequently it helps to create a sustainable and rich economy in which people can create their own jobs.
Looking behind the camera, let’s look at the person whose pulled it together, Paul. Paul has been working non-stop on the launch and the programme for over two months and he was nervous. He wanted everything to go perfectly. The days before the launch he was apprehensive about trying to get it right, and he did, coordinating people, venue and refreshments. Paul can talk more about it as he is right here.
Paul, what was the most challenging thing about putting together a programme like this?
It was really hard to do the initial recruiting for these programmes (SYB/ GYB) because you have to convince people that what we offer is seriously meaningful and beneficial for them. But people have to put their trust and time into an organisation, Hackney Impact, that they often don’t know. What was really smooth, however, was running the programmes themselves because they have already been tested, continuously updated and bettered.
Yeah I bet that was a lot of work. So, after all of that prior work, how did the launch go?
The launch was a relief. I was incredibly happy about the people that make up the groups. They are all so cool and have a lot of interesting ideas. The feel of the groups we brought together is one of cooperation and a lot of positivity. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next few months as our entrepreneurs build off each other, the programme, and Hackney Impact.
Wow, you must’ve been proud of that. Let’s talk about what do you think went best?
Both the launches had the same three objectives:
Getting people to understand what GYB and SYB involve and how they are personally involved in the programme.
Examine the relevance of the course to your venture - so the specific help we can give you to better your business.
Develop relationships between each other. This third one is the one I’m most proud of. It is fundamental for us to develop a culture in which people are helping each other. This is exactly at the heart of what we do and why we do it.
I am so excited for what comes next!
I think the launch went very well, there is always something to work on but it was very successful. People kept smiling and laughing, they had so many questions and they were all so excited about the future of their business. The room was full of enthusiasm and being part of the journey of these people gives us a boost and a thrill like no other. They smile and you cannot help but smile yourself.
At Hackney Impact we believe in how acting together changes lives, and we show that through the collaboration of our different partners, Allia Impact, Green Action London, Social Founder, HCD, East End trade Guild and through the way in which we make the amazing community of Hackney interact.
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