A few months ago I had lunch with a bunch of highschool aged entrepreneurs to give them feedback on their idea. They were planning on building an energy generating play park for kids. Now, I don’t mean to come off as a direct poo-pooer of dreams… … but after 15 minutes of listening to their pitch I decided to ask
What would it feel like hiring 150 sales people for your company in 6 months? That’s the question I asked Scot, the founder of Classy, a few months ago. Their story is EPIC! I’ll fast track his answer… essentially, he started out for many years being the primary salesperson, then hired around him, but remained inseparable from that process. After
“This is totally a company you would create!” That’s what people would say every time I showed them the prototype for Clarity. My passion for connecting people to have a conversation was something I had been doing for years… … first starting with Founder Dinners, and morphing over the years to my entrepreneurial events like Maple Summit, Idea to Exit,
If I grabbed 100 people, and asked them how many needed to buy a pair of jeans – only 3 would raise their hands… … but 7% would be “In Market” (the 2nd stage of the Audience Triangle) and will be buying soon. What about the other 90%? How do you speak to them? That’s what I cover in this
When I first built Clarity.fm, it wasn’t a marketplace. It was a call list app. The concept was that I could add anyone to my list, with phone number and description, then it would robo call each person, reading to me the name of the person and reason for the call. In short… I was building a productivity tool, NOT
Have you ever heard of the Kano Model? I hadn’t either… until my buddy Merv told me about it. Here’s a diagram that gives you a visual: If you think that looks complicated, you’re not alone. It took a bit of marinating for my brain to fully “get” how much value this model has to offer. But let me tell
Are you down with SOP’s? Some call em’ Standard Operating Procedures, I call them Playbooks. If you’re tired of putting out fires in your business, then you’ll need them to keep your sanity. Recently I had the privilege of having dinner w/ the Godfather of system design for entrepreneurs, Michael Gerber (author of The E-Myth / 10M copies sold). I
If I asked you to name a credit card company that rhymes with latex…” Could you guess who I’m talking about? Yes? Got it? Good, so now you’ll understand the size of the company I was trying to sell to. The challenge with big companies is that they have all the time, resources and money in the world, so wasting
The other day my furnace stopped working. The issue is that my wife was trying to change the air filter. Why? Don’t ask (she just likes to do those kinds of things, and yes – I realize I’m the man of the house and I should be doing it, but I digress…) After Renee’s noble attempt at performing advanced furnace
How do you deal with shiny objects? I was asked this question this past week while giving a talk at one of my portfolio companies. It got me excited because I had a GREAT strategy to overcome it – more on that below. But first, a story…
