Business: Aspiration Europe
Based: Cambridge
Website: www.aspiration-europe.com
Building a business network is a challenge for home-based businesses where team and clients are spread geographically. A firm believer that people do business with people, Aspiration Europe founder Anne Ovens decided that a proactive approach involving hosting our own events was needed to get the right people in the room and provide the right atmosphere to cement relationships with professional contacts.
After steady growth over the past ten years, we also realised that further expansion of our Cambridge-based business finance consultancy would be best underpinned by a strong local business network and by building face-to-face relationships with our social media contacts – not just in terms of finding new clients but to source suppliers that we need as we expand.
Having navigated cheese and port, innovative cranberry juices and chocolate-tastings events over the past year, our recent tenth anniversary event highlighted how much we value our connections to the local business community.
Our business connections continue to be a healthy mixture of local and digital. Some of our most useful contacts we have yet to meet but we chat regularly on Twitter and referrals still arrive via LinkedIn. Our local business network has facilitated collaboration opportunities, increased the company profile, inspired the team and we’ve supported local businesses and charities in the process.
In an increasingly digital marketplace, investing in hosting our own business events has allowed us to build our network in a way that boosts our profile and enhances our usefulness to clients.
Anne Ovens is the director of Aspiration Europe.
