Sam Zawadzki is making property advertising easier through AdvancetoGO an online letting agent, the first of its kind in Scotland!
Hi Sam, Thanks for doing this. How are you doing today?
I am tired today! But fuelled by coffee and ‘this water’ the oranges and lemon flavour. It’s Sunday morning and I am at a business event in Glasgow, trying to multi-task by working while listening to Jim Duffy the founder of E-Spark. Scotland’s first business accelerator.
Can you give us some background information about yourself?
Last year I discovered that I like olives, wow things change. I enjoy working, and running a business because it is exciting! There is nothing better than seeing hard work moving you closer to your vision and goals.
What is your business?
AdvancetoGO.com is Scotland's first online letting agent, we specialise in helping property professionals find tenants. We are making property advertising easy. Users create an advert on our website and we send it to the UK’s 5 biggest property advertising websites. Ensuring it is visible to as many potential tenants as possible!
What advices would you give to entrepreneurs looking to start and grow a company?
Be really clear. What are you trying to do? Why are you trying to do it? If you are not clear on your business, how can your customers be clear on your business. You need to have a plan. Don’t worry about a business plan. Simply take your smart phone and film yourself explaining what your business is. Then watch yourself and be honest. Are you clear with what you are trying to do?
If you want to make a video business plan, email me and I will send you a list of questions that you can get someone to ask you. In 20 minutes you can have a video business plan ready, and you can watch it back work on it and improve it!
What are the most crucial things that you have done to grow your business?
We started a blog, getting companies within the property industry for instance solicitors, trades, insurance companies, to write one article per month for us. This helped our SEO, gave us a position as an authority figure within industry. Most importantly we developed the relationships with our bloggers cross promoting our services and selling directly to their customers.
What was one of the strangest problems you faced?
Advancetogo.com was once registered as a pornographic website, until we found this out we had no idea why it was being blocked from so many computer networks.
What are you looking forward to in the future?
We are working really hard to make property advertising and management better, soon we are going to be releasing a new service that will really shake the market up. I am excited by the potential of our new service, I think it will change the property rental for ever, and for the better!
Watch this space
On Saturday 9th March we will be hosting, alongside Brightside, ‘Get Up Start Up‘ where you will be able to apply and be approved for a Startup loan of between £2,500 & £10,000 to help you get your business started!
