Our Startup Story

A lot of the blogging I do is in direct response to questions that people ask me.  I love answering questions.  This post is no different; and the question comes from one of my Flextras customers:

I’ve been wanting to explore selling some things that I have in my head, but have no idea where to start. Can you steer me in the right direction and let me know the pitfalls to avoid?

Wow, that’s a broad request; but I’m always up for a challenge.  Every business is different; and I don’t have any secrets.  But, here are some of my thoughts along with how I think they apply to Flextras.

I’d start by writing a business plan.  It doesn’t matter if you need or want funding.  A business plan will help you organize your thoughts and give you a road map for what to do.  What are you going to build?  Who are your customers?  What need does your product fill for those customers?  Who are your competitors?  How are you different from competitors?

With Flextras, I believe we are different from other commercial component vendors because of our licensing model.  We provide a fully functional free developer edition that never times out.  We also charge you based on the number of domains you want to deploy to, not the number of developer’s on your staff, and not on a percentage of your yearly revenues.  In some cases this can be huge savings.  Combine that with the fact that our unlimited deployment option is less than a single developer license for some of our competitors, I think we have an intriguing offer in the Flex Component space.  But, also realize that cost is only one factor in a comparison of two companies.

How is Flextras different than open source projects?  I believe this comes down to support.  When you need help, we are there either by e-mail. or phone or IM or twitter or facebook.  We go out f our way to be as accessible as possible to help you become a success with our components.

So, ask yourself how your product or service going to be different or better than your competitors?

If you don’t have competitors, think twice about your business because there may be a reason no one else exists in the space.  If you do have competitors, that’s a good start.  What can you learn about them?  What can you learn from them?  Don’t plan to compete on price.  Compete by offering something that your competitors don’t.  As one example, we can examine ice cream shopes within 10 minutes from my house.  ColdStone Creamery competes by mixing candy into your ice cream for you.  Pralines is a local chain that makes their own ice cream and whipped cream on-site.  Friendly’s is a sit down restaurant that puts up with kids with a smile no matter how loud the baby is screaming; and they often provide free Sundaes with your meal.  Blackstone has lots of outdoor seating.

Did I ask how you’ll be different from your competitors?  It is an important point to drill home.

When you plan for time lines and budgets, multiply everything by three.  Stuff will always crop up that delays things.

I also recommend that you read as many business books as you can.  If reading isn’t your thing, look for other forms of education, such as videos or a business coach.  I try to read at least one business book a month myself.

You might want to start with the E-Myth.  The gist of the book is that there are three successful “positions” that any start up needs.  The technician is the guy who does the work.  The Entrepreneur is the one with the vision.  The Manager is the guy who runs day to day operations.  To be a successful one-man shop–and grow beyond that–you need to balance skills in all three.  The book claims that most businesses are started by technicians who are fed up in their day job and/or think they can do it better; not Entrepreneurs or Managers.

DotComIt, the Flextras parent company, started as a technician business, and I picked up the other skills along the way.  Depending on your perspective, I am either sufficient or sufficiently lacking in all three.  Programming is my strong suit, of course.  When I was focused on consulting, being a better manager meant more to profit margins than good coding.  Sometimes it is tough for technicians to hear that.  I’ve seen a lot of technician started businesses close in less than 12 months.

It is unlikely that quality of your product/software will be the reason for failure, so be sure to devote time to items such as marketing.  When you’re a small business, marketing means talking to customers.  How do you get yourself in front of customers?  With Flextras, The Flex Show is one way.  The Flextras Friday Lunch live Q&A sessions is another.  Presenting at conferences like 360|Flex and Flex User Groups is another.

I also recommend that you read Jump Start Your Business Brain.  It focuses on positioning your product / service.  To sell products you need an overt benefit,  a dramatic difference and a real reason to believe.  That means, your product must benefit your customers; it must be different than competitors, and the customers must believe you can deliver on your promise.  The book explains it much more elegantly than I could.

With Flextras we believe our benefit is that our components save you time when compared to building it yourself.  That leads to quicker development times, which leads to happier clients.  Our dramatic difference is that you can download a developer edition at no cost and try it out with no restrictions.  You can prove to yourself or your boss or your client that our component will work in your application.  Some of the reasons why customers would believe we can deliver is that we’ve been in business for 10 years, we’re an Adobe Solutions Partner, we produce The Flex Show to help educate Flex Developers, and we hold a live session each week to answer your questions.  We are part of the community and are out there helping other Flex Developers the best we can.  We also prioritize responding to e-mails and fixing bugs as quickly as possible can also help people instill faith that we’ll deliver what we promise.

The The Cluetrain Manifesto is another good book to pick up, it talks about how markets are conversations and to be a successful business you should be taking place in the conversation.  Other than at the Flextras Friday Lunch Q&A sessions, and the occasional twitter conversation, I don’t know if people are talking about Flextras yet; so there isn’t much of a public conversation to join in.  I try to put top priority to be as accessible as possible.

So, in summary, I’d tell you to read a lot and don’t ignore marketing or customer service.  Does that help?

Some dude I’ve never heard of, has 8 words that are the secret of success. They’re below with my thoughts on them. I found them over on Small Biz Bee.

1. Passion – Duh. If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, why are you doing it. I’ve found (although i never would have guessed it) that I’m passionate about bringing people together, helping people meet, creating an atmosphere were great things are born.

2. Work – Yeah it’s work. Doing what you love feels less like work, but it’s still work, it’s still hard. Possibly harder than a “job” since failure is on you, you don’t just punch a clock go home, and not care.

3. Focus – This is hard. Tom and I have struggled with this. We’ve been lured to Europe earlier than we probably should have (though we learned good lessons there). We’ve tried to expand into things without looking, etc. Focus is important it’s something I’m trying to get a better grasp on.

4. Persist – I can’t agree more. It’s hard, at least weekly I wonder if I should fold up. Do our last two events and try to find a job. It’s hard, we’re not making much right now, though I feel that’s on the verge of changing, i know it is, but i’m in the now financially, which is tough. I know though, if I persist and work hard and as Gary Vee would say, “Crush It” I’ll succeed.

5. Ideas - This is the fun part. I’m usually not short on ideas. Ditching paper surveys, USB Drives instead of CDs, an AIR app for surveys, etc. It’s fun to think of ways to 1. be a better company, and 2. innovate the completely whacked out, old school conference business. Some ideas are awesome, some, not so much. Tom and I are at our absolute best when we’re throwing ideas at each other, sharing the “Ah snap! That’s awesome!” moments.

6. Good – This is important. Tom is a bible thumper :) I’m not, but I do believe in Karma, and we both agreed, even before we had money to give that we’d make sure we gave 20% of each event’s profit to charity. Whether it’s a check, or service, or something else. We agreed, and as Tom moves on I intend to continue the tradition, that 10% goes to the community out event serves, and 10% will be to a charity making the world a better place. I firmly believe that any business not doing good for the world around it, isn’t doing enough. We haven’t always been in a position to write a check, and it makes us sad, but when we are, it’s the best feeling on Earth.

7. Push – This is tough. My wife pushes me. She pushes me because she wants to see me succeed, and she pushes me because she wants the company to make money so we can pay the bills. Both are incredibly important. I also push myself, for both of those reasons, but also I push myself (And I push Tom for a few more months) because I think we’re doing a good thing, and I want to continue to do that good thing.

8. Serve – Easy. Tom and I have never lost sight of who we serve. We serve two masters; sponsors, and attendees. Sponsors pay us to get in front of our attendees, to meet them, to introduce them to their product or service. Sometimes they sponsor just to help the community. But we owe it to them to make the event the best it can be, have the most attendees we can, etc. The attendees on the other hand, pay us to see and hear the speakers, to meet the rest of the community, and to learn. We owe it to them to make sure the event delivers all that and more. It’s not always easy, but we’ve never lost sight of why we do events. We do them to serve the community with something we believe it lacked. We’ll continue to serve them, until they tell us otherwise :)

I’m not sure these were necessarily secrets, but they’re truths for sure. At least in my opinion. What do you think? Are there more? Are there other ’secrets’ you think valuable?

Watch the video it’s a good use of 3 minutes. My take away. Success is charging people $4000 to attend an event, that they they have to be invited to… ok it’s not, but damn talk about reinforcing “A fool and his money…”

I’ve been reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  It is an “old school” book, and is a much heavier read than a lot of the more recent business related books.  The content is golden, though.  One chapter is on thinking win/win.  A win/win mind set is when you go into an agreement, or negotiations, with the prospect of coming up with something beneficial to both parties.  Over the years I’ve heard a lot of folks talk about “win/win”, but I get the impression it is more lip service while folks look out for their own best interests.  In business relationships, I believe it is better to walk away than to enter into a relationship that is not mutually beneficial.

A very small part of this chapter talks about how consequences are the natural result of a win/win agreement.  This is an important point that I feel was glazed over in the book.  There are four type of consequences that can be the result of an agreement:

• Financial: Do a successful job and you can get more money!
• Psychic: This is the ego boost, or the act of recognizing someone for their accomplishments.  Programmers answer questions on Stack OverFlow or the Adobe Forums because they want to help people and feel good about it.  The book mentions that this type of reward is often a bigger motivator than money.
• Opportunity: If you’re a success, you’ll get more opportunities.  Opportunities are going to be related to the job.  As a consultant / vendor, many clients are going to say this to you as a way to negotiate your price down.  “Do a good job here and we’ll hire you for the next, bigger project.”  That is usually bunk because the next project is going to have similar budget issues.  However business folk do talk to each other, and being a success one one project will get you referred.  In fact, the entire 10 years of DotComIt Consulting was funded primarily by referrals.  Other opportunities could be training or comp time off, or… well, be creative.
• Responsibility: If you do a good job, you’ll get more authority, or a wider scope of duties.

The idea is that in a win/win agreement, you are defining the actions that need to be done, the consequences of success ,and the consequences of failure.  You are not dictating the procedures or path, only the end result.  I’m still absorbing this idea, but I can think of many ideas where I failed in this.  Here is one:

When building the Flextras e-commerce site, I outsourced it.  I had a detailed mock up of how I envisioned the site would work; the pages that were needed; and some “business logic” style comments on each one.  I virtually sat down with the developer and went over the specs and we worked out a time frame for development.  We agreed to an hourly rate, signed a contract, and off he went.  He missed the first two deadlines.  I wasn’t keeping tabs on him because I was off building product.  Finally, I was ready to launch, but had no site.  I spoke to him two days before Christmas and asked if he could make final delivery by the end of the year.  We worked out a new list of deliverables, with less functionality to be ready and off he went again.  He missed the deadline a week later.  I was upset.

The problem is that there were no consequences for missing the deadline.  And no consequences for making the deadline either.  It was an hourly agreement, where I paid a contractor for the time he put in.  The missed deadlines, and late delivery were a direct result of me not defining the consequences.  How could consequences have helped the project?

I could have offered a bonus for on time delivery, or I could have received a discount for missing the delivery date.  I may have been able to offer psychic rewards, such as a hand written thank you note upon successful completion or a shout out to all my twitter friends, a public thank you on my blog.  I’m not sure what extra responsibility I could have offered to a non-employee; but you can be sure I’ll think twice before recommending that developer for future opportunities [or jobs].

I try to think of successes I’ve had where defining consequences has brought about successful implementation, but unfortunately I cannot think of one.  It is something I plan to explicitly incorporate into the agreement I make with future employees, contractors, or business partners.

Jeff tweeted about this, and I had to write a post about it.

I had no idea this group/organization existed, but Philly Startup Leaders has a video  series (6 deep at the moment)

I just started watching the videos, which I plan to rip and put on my iPod (sorry youtube, but these are gonna be gold mines I’ll want offline), but what’s nice it’s not your typical tech startup schmoes talking about how great they are, how hard it is, how cash flow something to worry about tomorrow, etc.

These videos talk about real entrepreneurship (IMO), not just the sexy tech startup stuff.

Great find Jeff!

I read this interesting interview with the twitter Co-Founders during Startup School.

The very first sentence is what struck me. “Biz Stone: We should start with Odeo, our older podcasting service. We realized we weren’t passionate about it. We were building it but we weren’t using it.”

Tom and I have had discussions about this concept a lot, especially when looking at areas we thought bringing a community focused conference to would make sense. Sometimes we’ve ruled a community/industry out because while there were no events like ours (In our opinions) there were several events already, or even one big one, that weren’t worth fighting with for mind share. But more often than not it came down to, “Are we interested in that technology or community”

“Stone: I remember earlier on when we were in Odeo, Ev went home and brainstormed for a weekend and thought about how we could make a successful business out of Odeo. And I thought it was genius. We were going to be the kings of podcasting. And then I slept on it. I told him I thought his plan was genius — but I asked him: do we want to be the kings of podcasting?”

A perfect example was Microsoft Silverlight. It’s a growing community, much like Flex was when we started 360|Flex. We gave some really serious thought to a 360|Silverlight. The two main reasons we didn’t. Adobe would freak out, and it wasn’t worth the drama, but more importantly did we have an interest in Silverlight? Neither of us had plans to become Silverlight developers, nor did we even plan to tinker. Silverlight was out. I do hope someone steps up and does a Silverlight event like a 360|Conference. MS Devs need that.

This quote is funny, doesn’t really have anything to do with Conferences, but makes so much sense. “Early on people said Twitter is fun. It’s not useful. And Ev retorted, ‘So is ice cream. Should we ban ice cream?’ We realized we were engaged with it. It was right up our alley.”

“Williams: One of our biggest lessons time after time is to focus. Almost every time I meet with a startup and I give them feedback — it’s do fewer things.”

I imagine one of the most common things i’ll write about on this blog is this. I hope that as a one man shop, focus isn’t as big a problem. Tom and I tended to feed off each other when it came to tinkering. Tom’s by far more easily distracted, but I’m easily sold on new ideas :) So we’re perfect for each other in the wrong way. We love to try new things, and in a tech startup there’s less issue (but I agree, control it buddy!) but trying out a new event, that’s risky. There’s a ton of investment (money and time, and brain cycles) in creating a new event, and if it doesn’t pan out, that’s that, you’re potentially really screwed, or just out some money and time, and possibly other events suffered a lack of attention.

The entire interview is a good read, i was really impressed. Startup School as an event looks really interesting as well.

Tom and I had an interesting discussion the other night.

In looking at past sales Tom noted that offering a Team price, resulted in about $10,000 more in profit at the end of the day (the last day of the event, for the sake of discussion), vs. our current model of offering 100 tickets at a reduced price, typically $100-$200 off the regular price.

It was interesting because while $10,000 is certainly nothing to scoff at, at this point in the business, early sales are more important. While I hate the concept of early bird ticketing to inflate early numbers, I do like offering those who want to save some money, the opportunity, AND I like having some early money to pay the bills

So is $10,000 down the road, worth no sales, and no income in the short term? Currently, my answer is no. In the longterm, I think the answer is different, obviously I want to do right by my customers, and make money, so I’m not sure it’s ‘either or’, but I do think things with change down the road.

You?

So Tom and I are moving on from 360|Conferences, well I’m moving forward with it, Tom is moving away from it.

The move has started, we’re transitioning things over to me, that he has been in charge of, up until now.

It’s not fun. My latest “It’s all yours moment” came when I opened quickbooks for the first time. If it’s possible to have a massive coronary, while awake and aware, that’s what I experienced.

It’s not Tom’s fault, when we got started, i made it known I didn’t want to run the books. I’ve never liked “the books”. My wife runs the household books, and I barely manage at running my own bank acct and Discover card. Not for a lack of skill but more for a lack of interest.

I won’t lie the books were in a sad state. Without getting into specifics, I’ll be spending more time than I imagined getting them to a cleaned up place where I can get our new acct involved in them.

My advice, run your books yourself, you’ll be better off and it’s something every business person should learn. This is now in the “Lesson Learned” column for me.

On the upside, I think I’m taking a liking to quickbooks, as i work thru it. Who knew!

So it’s been announced that Tom is leaving 360|Conferences after our 360|Flex Conference March 2010.

It’s definitely a sad week.

unfortunately it highlights a glaring omission in our business, a lack of written agreements and/or even mutually agreed upon definitions of things.

Sure we have the actual incorporation papers, our ownership split, but that’s it. I won’t lie and say it never occurred to me, it did, several times, and each time I either back burnered it or prioritized another expense over it (lawyers ain’t cheap). And like all things put off, it’s biting us in the butt.

I don’t foresee any Calcanis/Arrington style online bitch matches, but I’m not gonna kid myself, the next few months will be messy as Tom and I figure out what it means to work 1 partner out of the company; assets (what few there are), debts, responsibilities, etc all have to be figured out.

On my end of things I have to figure out where I’m going from here. I mean the company is going to continue to bring Flex and iPhone developers the best community conferences around, but will I do it alone? It’s no secret money is tough for Tom and I because we have 2 people to pay, and doing an event 2x a year doubles expenses, but doesn’t double income. It might make sense for 360|Conferences to be a one man show, at least for a while.

It should make for some interesting blog posts :)

This is another blog post that has been sitting as an open tab in Firefox a long time. It’s a fairly important topic, at least for me. Having had motivation troubles as a consultant looking for new projects and now as a business owner trying to keep a good noise level going for my events.

Motivation is hard. I mean, it’s really hard sometimes to sit at your desk and think up your next blog post, or tweet, or phone call or whatever. It’s especially hard when you’re in a funk or not where you wan to be (in our case) sponsorship wise or attendee wise.

I’ll paste all of the points here and talk about them, but definitely hit up the original post, give them some traffic love for sure!

Let Fear Take Hold
Fear is one of the strongest motivators we have. The “fight or flight” response is dependent on feeling fear as its source. So, let fear work for you. If you’re genuinely concerned about what’s going to happen now that you’ve lost your job, and you don’t know where the money is coming from to pay the rent, you’re going to do whatever needs to be done. Issues that seemed to be obstacles before are going to fade to the background.

I learned this one from Friends actually. I don’t remember who said what to whom, but the jist was “quit your job, you’re not gonna get a better one or do what you want to do if you’re nice and safe in your current job” I totally agree. Sure you should save up, be prepared for the poorness and hardship, but nothing motivates you to succeed like having a mortgage payment due. A friend of mine pointed out that “people will live up to their obligations” so those companies that don’t offer high salaries because the can’t afford to hire the best, are creating a self-fullfilling prophecy. If you’ve got bills to pay you’ll do your damndest to pay them.

Keep the Finish Line In Sight

A lot of folks have a tendency to look at the next step, rather than the big picture. While this technique has its merits, it’s important to look up at the finish line occasionally. If you don’t, and you’re constantly focused on the day-to-day minutiae, you’ll eventually wonder why it is that you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s important to remember the payoff, because that’s what got you excited in the first place.

This one is a bit of a misleader as far as I’m concerned. Often i feel we’re not focused enough on small things, returning emails, calls, following up when we should etc. It’s great to not get bogged down, but don’t focus so much on the “business at large” that you don’t do what you need to do to keep it running.

Make It a Game
This one works wonders with little kids! If your goal is to clean up toys before bedtime, you parents know that it’s often beneficial to race your kids to see who can pick up the most toys in the shortest amount of time. The same thing works with yourself. If you’re training for a marathon, you can continually try to improve on your overall time, or your split times, or whatever. Find ways to measure yourself, and constantly try to set personal bests.

This I’ve never tried but it might be worth looking at. One of the biggest problems (to me) that Tom and I have is our distance, we rarely know what the other is doing, which either leads to duplication of effort or “are you pulling your weight” both are bad. But with a measurable goal and a time frame it might alleviate some stress. Of course there’s not much repercussion for failure, but we could figure something out.

Remove All Other Options
Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico in 1519 in order to secure lands for the Spanish crown. One of his first orders to his men was to burn the ships that they had arrived on. This was to remove any thoughts of retreat from their minds. When things were going poorly, the men didn’t have the option of thinking, “well, we can always go home”. This is a scary step, but sometimes it’s the only one that will work. For a person who wants to work for themselves, even if they have developed a substantial business on the side of their full-time employment, quitting that secure day job is a “burn the ships” moment. There isn’t anything to fall back on, and they have to succeed.

This kinda fits in with the fear thing. It’s tough, but I truly believe you’ve gotta be fully invested. I haven’t written a line of code in over a year, well that’s a lie, I’ve written a few here and there, but I’m certainly not the active coder I was. I’m fully invested; heart, soul and money into making 360|Conferences something I can draw money from. It’s a struggle, to say the least, and failure looms large, but I’ve done the part time entrepreneur thing, and know the perils

Tell Someone Else
If you have a goal you want to reach, don’t keep it to yourself. Be sure to share it with people you respect. Once you’ve publicly acknowledged it, it becomes harder to give it up. You’ve made a verbal contract in a sense with people whose opinion you care about. If you were to give up on your dream, you would lose face with them. Most folks don’t want this to happen, but because they’re scared of failure, they keep their dream to themselves. However, if you want to succeed, you’ll tell as many people as you can.

I’ve never really thought about this one. I’m not really a “This by X person” I’m much to now now now, so my goals (in my head) are usually set to just outside the time frame it took to think the idea up. I guess the one place I’ve done this is the business. When I did consulting I never really thought about it and didn’t have a goal that consulting would be my “Thing” or that I’d have other folks to source, etc. But I’ve said to many that I want 360|Conferences, to be my “job”. I want to draw salary, get up every morning and spend the next waking 10-12+ hours making it a success.

Tell Yourself Daily
Make an affirmation to yourself about your goal. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept of daily affirmations, it goes a little something like this. You write down a sentence or two that specifically details what it is you’re going to achieve. You need to make it specific, and you need to keep it short. Then, just before going to bed, first thing when you wake up, and at various set points during the day, you read your affirmation aloud to yourself.

This sounds a bit hokey to some, but it serves to keep your mind focused on what it is you’re working toward. It keeps your mind on the task at hand, even when there are many other things that are demanding your attention.

My wife once told me about the “Chicken Soup for your Soul” author taping a Million dollar bill to his ceiling, so that the first thing he saw in the morning and the last thing he saw at night was that goal. That’s awesome. I’ve know that story for a few years, and never tried anything like it. Thinking it’s time.

Recruit a Group
In the course of telling people around you about your goal, you may run into a few of them that are excited about what you’re doing. They may be so excited that they want to do something like it. If you talk to enough people, you’ll find some that have goals just like you. You can take the initiative to lead these folks into a group that supports each other in reaching each of your destinations.

By having an accountability group, you put yourself in a situation where you’re not only afraid of losing face with the other members, but you also have people available to provide ideas and brainstorm ways to keep going when you get stuck. It’s amazing the things that members of an accountability group can accomplish together.

That I’m more or less doing when and where I can. I’m being as active as possible in other groups around Denver, from Refresh, to the Adobe User Groups, and the new Cocoaheads group, and even less techy events. I think it’s important that since my focus is events, that I be involved as either an attendee or an organizer on as much as I can. I don’t however have an ‘accountability group’ as it were. I’m not sure how to get one…

Break It Up
While I said that you need to keep your eye on the prize back up in step #2, there’s nothing wrong with breaking up your big, huge, audacious goal into smaller goals along the way. If your goal is so big that it scares you, or you worry about not being able to achieve it no matter how hard you try or how many people you tell about it, this may be a good tip for you. Just break it up into chunks. The sub-goals you set for yourself should still be something you can be proud of on their own, but they should also advance you toward the main objective. By taking things in smaller doses, you won’t get easily frustrated.

This one is tricky, mainly because of the distance between Tom and I. Most days we only have about 4 hours of time when we can chat, and I never know what’s going on the other 20 hours, sometimes even those 4. So it’s hard to break things up since there’s a fundamental “If I don’t do this it won’t get done” thing. Which sucks ass. I’d rather it not be hanging over us, but it does, and there’s rarely a day goes by that something doesn’t get done that shoulda; some email never replied, some email never sent, etc. so it’s hard to break tasks up in general let alone between us.

So those are the 8 points to fight motivation troubles. I agree with most, and need to try the others, and make some work better, but i agree in general that keeping your motivation level high is hard. It’s not surprising that it’s even harder when things aren’t going well, but that’s when it’s the most important.

Do you have anything to add to this list? What tips or tricks do you have for maintaining motivation?

Who likes sales?  Salesmen, do I guess.  To the average person though, sales is tough and at times feels dirty.  For an entrepreneur, it’s even tougher because you’re so close to the product that it’s hard to take rejection (i.e. failed sales).   I know I’ve written about sales before and I’ll be honest, I’ll be writing more on the topic.  There’s a reason for that.  Sales is tough, but required.

I think the reason sales is tough is the value proposition and communicating that value proposition properly.  Now, I know some of you will say, “Well, that’s marketing’s job.”  I don’t agree.

In our instance, take sponsorships.  There are a few “key” sponsorships we try to land per show.  One such sponsorship was lacking for an upcoming show.  (Yes, I’m being vague on purpose to protect the innocent.  LOL)  We approached one company.  We gave the value proposition and they just didn’t get it.  The phone call quickly went downhill into the area of painful.  I wanted to hang up on my own sales call.  How sad is that?  The phone call was followed up by an email from said company which showed even more how they just didn’t get it.

This unfortunate incident caused some doubt in me.  ”Maybe the value proposition we’re making, just isn’t a good one? Maybe we need to rethink things?  Maybe I just suck at communicating?” etc.  Nothing is worse for a founder than doubt.  This is your company for goodness sakes.  If you don’t believe in the value proposition, who will?  John and I chatted and we still felt that there was good value to be had.  ”March on!” was our conclusion.

A couple of weeks later, the beauty of gmail snooping comes to fruition as I get an ad for someone that might fit the key sponsorship bill.  I know nothing about them, other than at face value by their ad, they seem like a fit.  A small voice inside me says: “Persue this.  Stop what you’re doing and investigate.” So I check out the site.  As I’m reading it, the excitement level in my brain starts pumping.  I can mentally see the synergies forming between us and this company.  I finally track down the contact page, which has a form vs an email address.  I fill out the personal info and talk about the potential sponsorship in the provided text area.  After clicking submit, I think to myself, “Dang, I shoulda copied that text.  It was good.”

I get a phone call later from an unrecognized number.  I answer and it’s said prospect.  After clearing the air about a poorly laid out sponsor packet, we get to talking business.  I take the time at the start to explain the biggest concept divergence from us and other shows in response to sponsors.  ”We want you to succeed in whatever it is you do vs take your money and run.”  He understands.

I talk about how we see business.  He understands.

I talk about how we want long term partners, not short sighted “deposits into our checking account.” He understands.

The contracts aren’t signed yet, but I’m pretty sure they will be soon.  If not, it was nice to know that there is value in our proposition.  We are right, not crazy.

The thing I don’t understand, and will explore later, is this: Does a good salesman convince Company A (the “i wanna hang up” call) that they’re seeing things wrong?  Or does a good salesman quickly move through leads to find the gems like Company B (the “we getcha” call)?

I don’t know, but any insights you have are appreciated.  Just remember: Follow your gut/heart, despite the letdowns/failed sales and listen to that quiet voice when it speaks to you.