Uptown Creation was founded in 2016 by Chris Cozzolino and Conor Paulsen after meeting at The University of Iowa. Both had a background selling products on Amazon, eBay, and their own private label websites. Around this time, Instagram announced its plan to create a marketplace for physical products mixed with social media. In an effort to drive attention and traffic to our own products, Uptown gained expertise growing and scaling Instagram accounts – to the point that brands were reaching out for Instagram growth and consulting.
For the next few years, Uptown operated as an Instagram growth and consulting firm, working with some of the largest brands and creators. Our primary differentiators were the quality of service we were able to provide, as well as unmatched attention to our customers through ongoing communication and consulting.
From this experience, we determined the fundamental process of authentic direct outreach to be applicable over many channels. Our core principle of service creation became (1) acquiring underpriced attention and (2) then servicing our clients using these methods. Through trial and error, we learned that building meaningful relationships through social media does not work well through automation and copy-pasted scripts (go figure), and human-to-human direct outreach became the key to our success as a company.
We spent the next few months leveraging what we had learned from Instagram to build a completely human-powered service that fulfilled what our clients were asking for all along – new leads and business relationships. We differentiated ourselves by avoiding shortcuts and providing unmatched attention to each client’s success. This relationship management, coupled with an authentic approach, allowed our business to scale and opened doors to work with larger organizations.
Working with both individuals and businesses during this time, we identified that our greatest strength was B2B Business Development. Naturally, we set our sights on LinkedIn. Much of 2019 was spent researching, testing, and implementing the most effective utilization of LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tools. We developed a completely human-powered LinkedIn Lead Generation service and continued to innovate.
Automation became a curse word, and instead we invested in high-quality communicators to speak on each client’s behalf. As a result, Uptown has built a reputation for invoking excellent conversations and consistently delivering high-quality leads through direct outreach.
Uptown Creation is now a 20-person (proudly remote) organization working with hundreds of businesses worldwide to rethink Business Development, consulting, and modern worklife.
