![]() But it also connected him to a community of fellow entrepreneurs who were generous with ideas and friendship. Wagy has taken on entrepreneurial ventures before, but ScaleUP! opened his eyes to a diverse array of resources including accounting, management and branding experts. “I was managing based on the cash flow and not profits month-to-month,” he says.īy tracking profits closely, Wagy knows how to better target marketing and work to resolve challenges as they arise instead of waiting for year-end reports to tell him where the holes were at. They also caused Wagy to think about profits in a completely new light. Wagy realized if he didn’t track month-to-month profits, he wouldn’t be growing effectively. ScaleUP! advisers forced him to focus on accounting and metrics in order to create a long-term plan. He’s handed off some game-master activities to a full-time employee. “That’s a huge mind-shift that I think will help it going forward.” “Now I’m more focused on growing the business rather than operating and running the business,” he says. ScaleUP! also shifted the entrepreneur’s mindset about his day-to-day responsibilities. Just seeing all the other success stories lets me know that I’m not alone and that other people have gone through this, and I can get through it,” he says. He has no hesitation given the feedback from ScaleUP! cohorts and advisers. But the entrepreneur has already made plans for hiring the sales director this fall. It’s a big leap for Wagy’s business, which now has one full-time and 10 part-time employees. Then other ScaleUP! experts showed him strategies for hiring the ideal person to fill that role. In order to reach out to them, it might be better to have a touch from a real person and market to them with phone calls or dropping by,” Wagy says. “A lot of what we’re trying to do is reach out to corporate clients so that they will bring their teams in and do team-building activities. The business is located along College Boulevard-a prime corporate environment-in Johnson County. ScaleUP! experts almost immediately urged him to hire a sales director to better target business clients. Wagy can use email to track who opens messages and when to help shape his marketing strategy. That tip came from a ScaleUP! presenter who talked about expanding his reach by creating an email newsletter. “We’re looking at overhauling that and trying to use it as a marketing tool.” “We haven’t really used it effectively,” he says. For years he’s collected email addresses but wasn’t sure how to properly utilize the tool. ScaleUP! also spurred several new ideas for Tick Tock to reach new markets and use the resources Wagy already had at his fingertips. It will remind Wagy when a business has its annual meeting and might need a reminder that Tick Tock Escape Rooms is an option. It will help the staff know when a lead is hot, cold or where someone is in the sales funnel. He also purchased a software program to help Tick Tock employees track sales leads. “I feel better about Novella since they have a contact with ScaleUP!” “I just didn’t know who I could trust to go to that wouldn’t just take my money and not deliver,” he says. Wagy had wanted to hire a marketing company for a while but never made the jump. He cut back on his current advertising and hired Novella Brandhouse, a business that also took the ScaleUP! course, to infuse innovative and creative solutions to his marketing and branding plan. ![]() Wagy immediately took the advice of ScaleUP! experts to diversify his marketing strategy. It’s open to small businesses like Tick Tock Escape Games that operate in a market capable of supporting more than $1 million in annual sales and that want to rapidly grow the business. The program includes classes, peer mentoring, professional guidance and more. ScaleUp! is a free program offered by the University of Missouri-Kansas City Innovation Center with support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. That’s when he found ScaleUP! Kansas City. “I felt like I was really wasting a lot of money on the wrong advertising,” he says. Wagy spent considerable money on advertising, but he couldn’t find the right mix. The Kansas City market is thick with competitors. “Getting the word out has been a challenge,” he says. But Wagy came back to the same challenge each year. ![]() They raved about the interactive technology that made it more than a series of locks.Ĭustomers said the music and responsive technology made it stand out from competitors. Many customers did come to his escape room in Overland Park. When Roger Wagy started Tick Tock Escape Games in 2016, he had the romantic notion that if he built it the customers would come. ![]()
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