Fun Forecasting Fundable Founders
Topics: Funding, Introductions, Culture, Leadership, Startups, Liquidity
Alrighty!!! We’re back in action, off to another event. It’s been a while since I attended anything… and even today’s event I can’t stay the whole time. It’s actually a TWO day event, but I’ve got about 16 interviews scheduled for tomorrow. So, I’ll just attend HALF OF THE FIRST DAY hahaha. Omg. But, this venue is one of my top 15 in the city. I like the owner and I like the vibe (mostly, except for the guy I met here who I wrote a blog about like five to eight blogs ago and he tricked me into a freaky date). Besides that, it’s good vibes and I honestly haven’t been downtown much lately since the weird non-date. I haven’t even been back to this venue. But it’s time.
Why Attend: This is an event for founders looking for funding. That’s ALMOST me. In my past job, we EASILY would have taken as much money as anyone woudl have given us (though, I would NOT take money from JUST ANYONE. I don’t want weird predatory money). But… for KT… I have no clue what I’d even do with someone else’s money. Lately, I’m adding on more interns (up to 5 so far, but I’m willing to take up to 50, you know?) Then, as I start getting more help and advice, I’ll start to understand more how I can scale this company and make it epic for everyone. Let’s see what this event inspires. That’s what I’m here for: INSPIRATION! :)
Photo Collage and Commentary:
NOTES FROM TEH EVENT:
This is good, I want to get this mindset of “what would i do with funding” and I never have before for this business, Kelly Tutors. I always used to think that my business didn’t need funding or even to scale… like, it’d just - idk - be something different. But, I bet if I put some thought into it, I’ll come up with great ideas.
Actually, about 10 years ago, I had that thought while over at my friends house - while I was living in Shanghai. She and I were talking about “what would we do with 1,000,000 dollars” and I realized I’d have a reality tv show called, “Project Project” where I’d try to glamorize education, making a tv show liek project runway where teachers get their students to make projects in different topics and at the end, judges would interview kids and the teachers and look and see how projects turn out.
We glamorize fashion and stressful living situations and home renovations… why not also glamorize the things that need more support - like EDUCATION! Duh. It’s a genius idea that would be an international hit if done right. So, that’s been my idea forever and with funding I’d do that - but, it’s also so different from what I do now, in many ways, that I can’t quite ask for that in a pitch. So I’d like to brainstorm some A->B ideas along with my A->Z ideas.
Also, plenty of people are millionaires and/or billionaires and who is to say I couldn’t do just as good of a job as them with that responsibilty and opportuntiy.
Oh geeze, this guy starts off his speech thanking “Dr. Kirk” for being here - heyyy. Kelly Kirk in the buidling! But then he says it’s all about WHO you know, not WHAT you know.
- This is such a problem with our society.
He says it’s no fun to try to start a company when you’re busy chasing money. So, let’s get an opportunity to access to capital, revenue, and (I didn’t hear what he said)
Today will be an information-gathering day. I’m sure you have lots of questions. We’ll work with you one-on-one tomorrow or in groups
I think tomorrow I’ll attend this and whenever my interviews cancel, I’ll talk to them. MAYBE.
Today they have core team partners, liek an incubator/accelerator/funding all in one.
This community is great and that’s why first step. The second is bringing the ecosystem together.
They have access to capital that individuals don’t need to pay back. They can insure the capital so if the business can’t pay it, the insurance will pay it - which lenders like.
Oof, money galore! Hahah. But probably only those who qualify? I don’t know. I had this happen, like, 4 events ago where this guy bascialyl guarenteed me his team would spend 150 hours helpign to improve my business but hten he ended up ghosting me. So. Idk. i dont believe it when I hear it anymore. This kinda stuff.
Also, I’m always like RED FLAG RED FLAG RED FLAG in this economy when peopel feel like they have access galore to capital. Only cause its like, okay the banks are giving out too much, or these guys are just mega rich and/or both.
Then he goes through and introduces all of the speakers. One guy for operation and compliance to think of ahead of time, another crew from a clothing company that works with nonprofit and missions.
Companies that are attached to missions earn trust and are desirable to consumers. If I’m giving you money, let me also take on the mission with you and help others.
lol… i mean, a lot of the times nonprofits are ways to just launder money too. that’s waht i’ve been learning a lot about lately wit my blog. so, idk. i just am so skeptical of “wholesome seeming” money latley.
We can help you fund a nonprofit, do good, and get the benefit of that.
I sneezed and everyone stopped to say bless you to me, even the speaker hahaha. But also, I’m siting in the front row cause its near the charger and I needed to charge me laptop.
Next are two people who can help improve your culture and make your employees want to stay.
That may be an interesting person to talk to since I’m over here trying to hire like 50+ interns hahahaah. All workng for free/experience.
Then last but not least is a guy doctor Kirk. I think he’s blind??
Omg he’s adorable btw. Just very gentle seeming - and no it’s not cause we share the same name. Hahah jk it is. And his demeanor.
They say that they’re just here to help, no stress. Everyone has what they need to make their startup go well so they’re here to support.
Okay!! Up is doctor Kirk. Yeah he is blind. And they’re helping him walk.
And they realize they forgot to introduce someone, she does livestreams (and she’s wearing a neon pink blazer and a neon green/yellow shirt under it… and sequin barbie shoes) and can help you build your presence.
He has a PhD in leadership and change. Wow! Didn’t know of that PhD - what a doctor. He said he’s local and to meet his accessibility needs he uses a sighted guide and a cane. He has notes on a tablet with a refreshable brail display.
He is talking about Helen Keller’s organization for the blind, he used to work there and literally play with Hellen Keller’s typerriter.
He serves as executive director as a local nonprofit.
He’s all about innovation and everyone here is about innovation. Innovating requires thinking about things in new ways, being intentional, and bringing unique perspectives into the mix.
He’ll tell us more about himself and some concepts to keep in mind over the next two days.
How do you make your products and services available to as many potential customers as possible?
- how do you attract and retain the most talented team possible?
Good questions.
He was born sighted and his retinas detached in Kindergarten. WOW.
On the school bus to go home, he got off the bus, he was disoriented. He got lost in his neighbor’s backyard. Then his neighbor took him to his mom, then the hospital.
Then he wasn’t allowed back at his school so they moved to Oregon for their school for the blind.
There he was given three gifts. He learned he was given three things that are strong predictors of success as a blind adult. He learned brail. Traveled confidently with a cane.
The girl livestreaming WAS sitting next to me but just moved to be sitting behind me.
He said his parents had never met a blind person.
The third gift was a strong internal feeling of control to solve problems and make things happen. He feels he can take care of things by himself.
He said his school did this to him, they’d take the kids camping and building snow forts, feeling around tide pools for starfish and things like hat.
He was a lucky little blind kid to go to the school.
He wants to talk about impairment vs disability.
OMG he said it’s not even black like visually, he said hold out your hand, I see what your hand sees. No visual at all. NO VISUAL AT ALL!??!?!?!? Wowwww. Can you imagine?
Disabling situations come when an impairment doesn’t allow us to have a good fit.
BTW his eyes move side to side while he reads brail but when he just randomly talks his eyes dont’ move as much. Though they also go super high up as if he’s standing looking straight forward with his face but up to the ceiling with his eyes.
Now he said that when you’re short and you need something tall, that’s an unsustainable environment and you need to solve the problem.
If your’e running a board meeting - he’s done many. He has his agenda and committee reports and financials in brail.
His visual impairment lets him run the meeting efficiently and effectively. But something in print doesn’t let him run the board meeting.
If you think about a coffee shop at the top off 4 steep flights of stairs, wheel chair users can’t. Also elderly, peopel passing by on bikes and scooters, and parents with strollers
Yeah! Thats waht I was thinking, parents with strollers hahah.
We want to create as many environments as possible for potential customers.
bro. these blogs aren’t even good for blind peopel who have them read aloud cause htey’re full of typos. but i do have solutions i’m working on for this with my interns.
The digital environment. If you haven’t constructed your digital assets properly, you’re going to have similar barriers to that coffee shop.
He was on vacation in Maui, he wanted to make a reservation and use his credit card, but he wasn’t able to book this without his wife’s help cause their website was not set up properly.
Think about the marketplace because the older demographic is used to getting what they want, when they want it. So they’ll use assistive tech to get it.
Only 35% of peopel with significant disabilities are in teh workforce
We develop really unique strengths that are valuable, especially entrepreneurial innovative companies.
Think about innovation in your products, services, and building your teams. Thank you so much.
Next talk is by the guy who checked me in. He looks super familiar and seems to just have a great vibe. Calm confidence and modesty.
He’s talking about high-voelcity capital for execution-focused founders: Build It. Scale It. Own It.
He says he’s a builder at heart and gets exciting to be in this room with so many builders. He knows what it feels like when you have that feeling tha you have tha world changing product idea or killer idea and working with yourself and your team. But also to have a bank account screaming for oxygen while you do it.
The capital landscape is changing. It’s harder. You can be in rooms with investors that say they love the team, love the product, come back when you have a million dollars in revenue.
Yeah right, the nI have a million dollars in revenue, I don’t kneed your investment.
How many of you have had that happen (about 6 peopel raise their hands)
You need attraction to get capital, but you need capital to get attraction
Most startups fail because of misalignment between capital, leadership, and execution.
Most startups fail because they move too slow. Don’t be in a “waiting room” where the market moves on and you lose focus.
Capital should lie a catalyst, not a bottleneck. How much of your bank account is spent waiting on money to come in?
lol. makes me think of… roller coaster tycoon hahahahah. thats teh best i can relate. i mean, and other stuff. but really makes me think of roller coaster tycoon. The computer game.
There is a better way to bridge the gap and make your capital a catalyst for your road map instead of a blocker.
Debt should be one of the most sophisticated tools in your toolbox. It’s fast.
While you’re building a data room and reaching out to investors, waiting for a lead investor to come back to you… the market won’t be waiting for you.
Your competitors aren’t waiting for you. Time flies quicker than you would think.
On the flip side, if you do financing, you could leverage out financing to finish your MVP, to start earning customers and to generate revenue. Leverage financing solutions to get traction and get investors to chase you (instead of you chasing them)
Hahah thats the dream right? I feel like all I do is chase. EVERYONE hahaha. But it won’t last forever.
Tehy focus on four main pillars that are bringing most immediate impact to founders and entrepreneurs:
Product, tech, and IP
Working Capital
LBO Acquisitions (leverage buyout acquisitions)
Inventory & Equipment
I sneezed again but this time no one said bless you. That’s so weird, I never sneeze. This place must be dusty. Yeah, I see it’s a bit dusty near me on the windowsill and the tables. Hahaha. They need a more detail oriented cleaning person.
OMG my friend just told me she dreamed of being lost in a mall last night (I got distracted and was browsing social media) after I told her I dreamed of her last night - but then, I was like - whatttt PART OF MY DREAM WAS THAT SHE LIVED IN AN APARTMENT BUILDING ATTACHED TO A MALL AND I GOT LOST TRYING TO FIND HER APARTMENT AND WAS WALKING AROUND A MALL - ahahahaha DREAMS ARE SOMETHING.
When it comes time for you to take on financing, we’re happy to guarantee it. We’re in the same boat with you.
Living Due Diligence: we are “in teh boat” with you. We move at the speed of your business, but faster. So you’ll have to catch up to us.
They GUARANTEE money to you???
red alertttttt
Now his speech is over. Geese. I feel like we’re in the bubble before the boom if his team can GUARANTEE FUNDING. Offie woofie. Let’s take a minute to listen to my song about bubbles.
Okay the next guy is here on a zoom but literally I can not see him cause the laptop in front of my face that the livestreamer is using like PERFECTLY covers his face. But I can see he’s wearing an Adidas sweatshirt and he has a complete white background.
Nothing to distract us from his speech with that 100% boring background. I’m surprised. But he holds his cards tight, at least for this speech.
But they can’t get his audio to work. But they got it working. He said he can hardly see us but I waved at him. He asked if I am Matt. Lollll. The screen is small.
He apologizes for not being here in person. He said he had things come up and couldn’t’ make it to Seattle. He’s been here a few times.
He’s a founder of a company that is a holding company. Technology and other things. He wants to talk about “other things” today.
speaking of holding companies and the game stops now (lyrics from my song + gamestop is becomng a holding comapny)
He specifically helps companies buy business, and he promises this will be relevant.
Before he became an ecosystem partner, he started as only tech. Focused on SAS, but as most people know, business takes time, effort, and change.
Started some subsidiaries under CNH holdings and tech and through the incubator they’ve given us access to capital, clients, and many different things.
Btw, I’m realizing that I’ve hardly learned anything so far at this event. Though the talk about keeping more disabilities in mind was good. I have so many typos in my website (kinda on purpose) but I see how that’s a huge disadvantage for many people who use things to read websites aloud.
Also, I want to add more tools to my website to make it so bots understand my website. AI agents and stuff. Why? no idea. I should think about thsi. I mean, then again I have probably 200 blogs at this point, so, people could start reading them…
They only work with clients who are ready, prepared, and on a referral basis. He turned odnw a private equity firm last week. They don’t just take any client. But if they come through the incubator, generally they’ll work with them because of the success they’ve seen with the clients that go through the incubator.
The incubator and ecosystem starts to help you build the disimplanted and operations to look at what you’re doing. Tech, manufacturing, drop shipping, to physical products. All through the incubator system.
The incubator helps you get clear strategies and move through your environment
Get you connected to access to capital
If you’re drop-shipping we may look if we can capture the manufacturing capability.
You can shift over your clients and introduce them to new products to manufacture, as an example. Also, we’re behind cashflow. Nobody will buy a non-cashflowing business. We use it as an accellerator liek fuel to teh fire.
If you can gain 200 clients overnight with an acquisition, you can achieve your mission with your primary goal today a lot faster.
We’re looking at 20M in total acquisitions for all of our clients combined
Is this a lot? I’m always comparing everything to gamestop… who has 9B in cash and cash equivalents, so that sounds like pennies hahahaha.
4 million dollars in potential cashflow for clients
See... I’ve been influenced by GameStop. Although my own company has like… hardly thousands in revenue each month… I’m not impressed with millions hahahaha. I’m like, uh, let’s talk billions over here.
He says he only has a 15 minute window, doesn’t have a lot to talk about, he’s more conversational, doesn’t have much more to say.
Now they ask if people have questions. One guy has a question. He says, “just a question.
He said you came in as a client before, working with teh ecosystem, can we learn more about that journey.
He said he likes this question. It as really natural. Over the timeframe workign with individuals, partnerships, and the process naturally evolved.
They knew he had a background, we know someone who wants to do this, would you be interested? It was almost like a giant networking event.
LOL that answer was short hahahah.
He says it wasn’t difficult and it was simple.
Next question: a learning tech company, how do you identify acquisition fits for certain verticals?
How do you match and identify opportunities
Oh this makes me realize I need to update my calendar for my tutoring class I just put online
He said they sit down and he asks a lot of questions, especially with verticals he’s not familiar with
What are “verticals”?
Whats your business, whats your ICP?
Whats ICP?
Then they sit down and use technology and AI systems to help out.
Then they create a preliminary target summary and send it out to clients with potentials. To see if they’re going the right direction
They put together a strategic acquisitor plan, a timeline, and then target JUST the things that will work for you.
He said he won’t have an EdTech company buy a plumbing company unless they’re teaching plumbers how to plumb… is “plumb” the word?
Next question is wondering how he makes money, what’s their revenue model?
They operate on a retainer and success fee.
He has a network of 300-400 brokers he works with, M& A advisors, etc. Public and private sourcing, over 300 emails of potential deals coming through.
Geeze. I wonder what my podcast partner would think of this guy!!! Ticking time bomb of financial risk. and diversity. and interwoven whose who club.
Once the acquisition is done, it’s a convo for your attorneys.
He says working in an incubator changes the trajectory of what things originally will be and what they become.
He used to work with the government, then got into mergers and acquisions.
Wildddd
Wow two of the attendees of this live event are “note taking bots” wild. There’s so much tech that you don’t even know exists.
Next person is going to be here on zoom. That guy leaves the zoom then the next guy comes on.
Tehy say he’s up next and they laugh that it was a ‘heck of an intro’.
He can’t say hello without Seatlte football. Lots of people cheer. Makes me think of my super bowl event I went to. Especially the blind guy cheers, which is surprising - they must have a good system for sports and blind. ESPN or whatever must have invested in that.
He asks people to cheer for the Seahawks
He asks people to cheer for the steeler and one claps
Now he says that founders make the world go round. He only has a few minutes and is honored to be part of the core team and ecosystem partnership. Events like this especially matter cause they bring the right people into the same room.
lol. sports. just a moment and then move on.
We’re all here and that’s what an ecosystem is supposed to be. We can all learn from each other and make fewer mistakes.
This is a lot of introductions to this event so far. Hahah. We only have one hour left of speeches and so far its just lots of people saying, “thanks for being here”
The live-streamed fashionista closes her laptop and heads to the back of the room.
He says this is incredibly valuable. This is going to propel you to the next step. You’ll meet the right advisors and make the right partnerships.
Hahah I like that perspective. YES! That is what this event will give me
Now he wants to do a commercial for his company. If you don’t know them, they help organizations move ideas into early traction stages. Getting to an enterprise level value creation. Help with design thinking to provision for really big strategic goal
I like how this guy is not reading a speech. It’s easy to do when you’re talking on zoom, cheat with a speech, but he’s just freestyling it all. Professional.
Work teogehtr to build the assets early on to be investible and durable.
He gets to be creative to find ways to overcome finding that first dollar. The first meaningful dollar.
Okay he apologizes for running through this quickly (I’m working on a few things at the same time to be honest, this isn’t quite capturing my attention right now and I just saw the company I partner with is offering a free month of classes… so, now I wanna make a promo image to get people to take my classes for free (I get paid and they don’t spend a buck!)
Alright, up next is the next speaker. He says for the sake of time he’ll condense a bit. He says good morning and introduces his company. Wishes us a fun day, evening, and goodnight. Then he walks off the stage. Bu then comes back up. And says he wanted to quote the Truman show.
Hahaha it was kinda strange and surprising… and truthfully, awkward. Esepcially now that Jim Carey is totally a clone/replaced lately and so relevant these days in pop culture. Just strange random reference. But okay.
He said he used to be in the military and fly in the greatest plan of all time, the P-3 Orion, follow the grey ldust in the sky, thats us.
Now he works in the private sector to build and grow businesses to explain operations to someone. It’s the glue to keep it all together as we move forward.
“Controlled chaos” is the best thing to say as a founder. A lot of the challenges are really execution and structure based. You can’t execute if you don’t have a foundational structure to build from. Progression becomes regression if you’re not structured in a way to grow with your business.
His motto: “Hope” is not a plan. Hoping things will work out is not a plan.
He calls out the doctors who wanted to help his injured doctor, and they asked him if he had any questions and he said, “yeah, I heard all of you say ‘hope’ but hope is not a plan, what will you do to insure my son is okay?” Then suddenly their entire world changed, and suddenly they started figuring out processes
Everything is iterative in a framework to get you there and it can scale with you.
Now he pauses and apologizes cause he’s looking at his speech and says he’s gone completely off script.
He thinks operations are critical for the success of small businesses:
People say that past performance is the best predictor for future success.. nope! Your process when there was no process is a measurement of how you perform int eh future? Wrong. What got you here today won’t get you where you need to go.
Lolll this guy is harsh
Structure, process, efficiency tie together.
At the end of the day, it comes down to execution. What is actually happening on the inside of your business? Not what’s on paper or a chart? Everyone knows where the skeletons are and the bodies buried n the back yard. Forgive the analogy.
Um
Do you have a process? No one ever wants to deliver or build one thing. Unless it’s a really awesome thing that will make you a ton of money.
Money, money, money gahhh.
But when you scale, that’s when efficiency and other things come into play. Don’t be reactive, operate intentionally.
Okay, here is the next speaker. They said founders who wanted to pitch today, if you wanna meet and prep, let me now. They’ll do that simultaneously cause they’re running late.
so thats goodo, if i was supposed to pitch or signed up to, teh’yll be glad one person dropped out. I’ll just stay seated and skip that.
This guy says he has pretty slides and wants to make sure everyone can see them. He takes his time to set it up.
Yikes. lat time i heard someone say this -like… 5 blogs ago, where they talked about big corporations getting people to be compliant with rituals… yeah his speech was horrible and his slides were worse. So, let’s see hwo this guy does.
Okay they focus on culture, optimization, and customer experience/loyalty
They specialize because of his background, he used to be a VP of fortune 500’s and others. Spent maybe 40 years building, scaling, and turning around large customer service organizations
This is the guy I wanted to talk to earlier - now he’s giving his pseech.
He wants to share wins and lessons with you and share what he knows to help you know how to be more successful as you go into your development.
Why this particular talk?
“BEFORE” most companies don’t struggle cause their idea is bad, but because of leadership’s decision making. Culture wasn’t intentionally designed for growth. He said, exactly that what got you here won’t take you there.
If leadership isn’t designed for complexity, teams naturally grow in different directions and interpreting priorities slightly differently. That’s how you start having the challenge to fix problems that were actually preventable.
Let’s talk today and share
Hahahah omg his slideshow is playing a GIF of a bunch of dominoes falling in a spiral hahahahahah do you think it will loop or end? I think it needs to end. Nt loop. Oh good. It didn’t loop. That’s tasteful.
I just remember like 8 blogs ago that one person had the slidesohw where their GIFs kept looping and it was the most obnoxious powerpoint of my life
Though that was the event where I got inspired to start hiring interns - which is turning out to be LITERALLY GENIUS
He says you have to do things intentionally and carefully. And it’s better to do it on the front end so you get the planned results. Like dominos.
Now he wants to ask everyone about as they think through the concept of putting together rate right steps to wards the right objectives, what are you putting into place today to build towards the final outcome to intentionally design it.
IP
Decision graphic gate to determiner what you don’t know up front and make deacons based on outcomes. If this works, then do this. If it doesn’t work, do that.
Logic to stay in alignment
Feedback loops (talking with clients to see what they want)
Customer pipeline
Product marketing
One thing he didn’t hear… “leadership”
Bustedddddd
He says you’re going to grow a team, a group of people going to grow together. It’s important you get aligned up front.
Btw I’m having WAY more success with my interns than I did on my old business. My old business we had so many group convos an stuff. But I realize I like working one-on-one with each intern and employee instead, each with a small project .
65% of startups fail because eon leadership and management issues. We don’t’ want to be one of those. The same thing happens in mergers and acquisitions.
And also cause of overpaid ill-intended consultants! Omg these perfect excuses to fail and then cellar box companies. Especially IPO’d.
What works with 5 people doesn’t work with 50.
He used to run customer service centers and two people needed the same day off. The manager of staffing looked at everything and because they were heavily burdened, only one person could have the day off that day. But they were stuck with this scenario. So the staffing manger wanted to approve the person that came in first, the manager of that person’s department heard about this and the person who got denied was upset and said “seniority” should determine this. And here we go again, now it’s on him. People were not happy about this. What are we going to do for this? No one is happy. How do we make this work. I thought to ask, “why”.
One person who requested first just wanted to take her grandfather to his annual doctor
The other person was a wife who wanted to be there with her husband when the doctor was explaining his terminal cancer diagnosis and they plan. So he approved that one. None of them were wrong, those were all three different strategies which all led to a different culture outcome. Mine is based off of a foundational belief: fairness is a higher standard than consistency.
Both will create a bunch of problems. No one was wrong, no one was right. We all just looked at it differently. But we hadn’t set that original conversation upfront to figure out our foundational beliefs.
This guy keeps stopping to drink water and says he gets dry mouth when giving speeches hahaha
Founders take a lot of risk:
Risk of investor confidence
Capital gets wasted on rework
Growth and momentum slows
Customer churn increases
He has a leadership course about success. The first point: clarity. Getting very clear on your beliefs and values.
He has learned a lot over the year 9lol its a video of two people pushing a puzzle togehter, two pieces
Yeah his ppt lived up to his hype. It’s not overly done (the last speech I went to where the guy hyped up his PPT was SO lame).
Your people, if they feel they don’t’ make a big difference or they don’t care if you’re successful or not, it doesn’t matter what you put in front of them… they’ll feel it’s all transactional.
You’ll see lots of evidence linking culture and engagement to performance. When tis missing the impact is super real.
Found out that 31% of active employees are actively sabotaging AI initiatives at one researched initiative.. Most of the time, these issues are happening and you don’t even know it. 16% in the same study, 16% of employees were actively ignoring security breaches that AI is causing. That’s a problem for all of us. That’s a culture problem.
Culture will happen without you or with you. It’s the natural course of events. This is why people don’t prioritize this on the front end or have a plan. They get too optimistic.
When people start to work together, you start to figure out that whatever worked or you before, it’ll work now.
That only happens if they came from a good place. But if they were in a toxic environment where networking or backstabbing was the only way to get ahead.
Think about how you want other people to work together. What ends up happening? The history and culture that starts at your organization is based off something you had no control over and now it’s part of your culture. And then your’e spending more time trying to fix problems instead of proactively approach it. People will start to leave your company so fast.
Leadership Alignment Continuum:
Founder driven
You can’t scale this. To scale, you got to add people.
Reactive growth
You add people and got to grow a bit more. We get into communication problems. Decision making problems. People drift away from the center in your mind. In their mind, 100% good stuff.
Intentional alignment
You need to put a system in place.
Scalable leadership
People are joining with alignment, you know who they’ll be, their beliefs, and how they can scale with you. Provide the same experience across your organization as you start to get it.
Cultural excellence
Now your culture and engagement will help you start to get it. People are the difference between GOOD performance versus top quartile performance. It can be a shield for you. For when other companies come in and try to take your people.
My employees dont’ even think of going somewhere else. They feel valued and part of something big.
It all starts with clarity at the top. Everyone at your organization understand what you’re trying to do, what you believe in, and how to use waht you said as a guide on how to perform with customers and each other. How they interact with each other. It changes the whole behavior of everyone there.
This drives their individual performance and results for the company.
The earlier you start to think about leadership and culture ahead of time, the more you can scale and utilize capital.
Strong companies don’t just scale strategy, but also alignment.
At the end fo his speech I told him how the last time someone said their PPT was great, it was WAY Too distracting, but his was actually really nice. Then we talked a bit about it, he said he tried to keep it simple. And I said his was classy.
There was a small break and we were surprised with food!! That’s cool. Mostly donuts and cheese and crackers, but better than nothing (which was what we were told).
Now the next speeches have started. It’s pitches by founders. The first guy talks about a health app.
BTW that last guy’s speech was so nice, FINALLY hahah. I like when people give good speeches. But, now this pitch isn’t too interesting to me. I want to work on my post. But if he says anything that grabs my attention I’ll write it here.
Lol and this girl up on stage with him has on little loafers that are UGG brand. Tehy make lots of shoe style, huh? And clothes
This next guy is giving a pitch but he’s so nervous. He’s talking about an AI bot that will read through your emails, but when you’re that nervous… it’s NO trustWhy woudl you let this nervous guy’s bot read your emails.
It also literally looks like he copied another company with the same name. He used their same font and basically same name. And he shows off his consulting company. I may ask him during question times, like… did you ever meet anyone from docusign and were they surprised you just basically copied their name and logo?
Yeah, I asked him and prefaced its they’re a bit tough questions but someone’s gotta ask it . People laughed after I asked the questions.
I told him I saw a company with the same name and he said he owns it. He said he’s never met anyone from docusign before so he doesn’t know. I said, well the other guys may need to cease and desist from you (the ones who have the same name as you). But he said he doesn’t know about that.
He said a lot of stuff in his answer I didn’t understand. Then he said it would be amazing to get acquired by docusign. (Lol, thats the company his name sounds just like and their logo looks just like it)
That made me laugh. He is ambitious. But… that's not how trademark infringement works. You don't copy someone's branding and then hope they BUY you instead of SUE you.
Yeah, I totally don’t understand his company but I’m glad I challenged myself to ask a challenging question. It made me nervous hahaha.
This event is cutting 40 minutes late into the 60 minute lunch break. I don’t know their plan haha.
Holy crap this group has a million questions for him. I don’t understand any of it. They’re talking about SAP and lots of software things.
Okay, now that they’re running an hour late I can’t stay for any of the second half. But, it was worth it. I learned a bit. Haha idk what exactly, but rewriting this and checking over it, I’ll pick it up.
Seems tomorrow it’ll be fun to attend, too, and multitask… or, maybe not. Cause I have legit 16+ interviews to conduct tomorrow and I’d rather be home for that.
