Feel the Boot

Task Management ✍️ make time for strategic thinking

Use these two time management and prioritization frameworks

to ensure you accomplish your high priority strategic objectives

Founders and CEOs can often get in the trap of working on mundane tasks while failing to take time to do the critical strategic thinking that will make the company soar. I found two frameworks that helped me in my startup, and I will walk you through them in this episode.

Read the transcript here: https://ftb.bz/65B

Watch the Video: https://ftb.bz/65V

Subscribe to our newsletter and get a link to schedule one-on-one office hours with me. https://ftb.bz/join

Meet other founder at the Founders Alliance. https://ftb.bz/Alliance

The “what does the business require of you” concept comes from the seminal book “The Effective Executive” by Peter Drucker. https://amzn.to/3fyEdg6

2021 was a big year for us at Feel the Boot. We experienced lots of growth, and I want to thank all of you for making such a fantastic experience.

The best part of this year has been getting to interact with so many of you founders. I had many more one-on-one coaching sessions than in previous years. I've loved talking to so many of you. If you took advantage of them, I hope you have found them helpful.

I've learned a tremendous amount from getting to take a quick peek behind the curtain of so many different kinds of companies. Many of these conversations directly inspired the episodes you saw this year, and I'm sure they will continue to do so.

It's been interesting to see how COVID has impacted my angel investing and advising experience. When I used to do in-person meetings and in-person events, the drive times were significant. Now that I'm doing everything virtually, the massive expansion in the number of people I can help and the diversity of places they can come from completely altered the way I approach this whole business.

The scale I can achieve with an all virtual process is incredible. There's no way I'll be going back to the old way of doing things.

2021 has been a fantastic year for the YouTube channel. We've more than tripled in size.

We started the year with less than 200 subscribers and will end just a hair short of 600, and people watched our videos over 16 thousand times.

That number blows my mind because there's no possible way I would be able to reach anywhere near that many founders on a one-on-one basis.

It's been interesting to look at the year's most popular videos. I was surprised to see that the most popular ones tended to be quite technical. I will try to do more of those in the coming year.

The top three were:

Understanding stock options from the employee perspective https://ftb.bz/9V

How to create financials for early-stage pre-seed startups that will wow investors https://ftb.bz/28V

Nine things angel investors look for in startup fundraising pitches https://ftb.bz/31V

While I already have a long list of potential episodes, I'm always looking for new topics to cover. I want to create what you want to hear, so please reach out and let me know what episodes you'd like to see. You can do that by reaching out to me on social media. I'm most active on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Or you can use the contact form at Feel the Boot.

This year also saw the introduction of Swift Kicks, a series of videos less than 1 minute in length.

They turned out to be very popular because I can post the whole video to social media rather than just a little bit of an introduction to it and then a link over to YouTube.

Some Swift Kicks are highlights from longer episodes, while others are short standalone answers to specific questions.

In 2022, I'm hoping to do more of everything. More videos, more shorts, and more one-on-one coaching with all of you.

We'll also be exploring some new kinds of content. Hopefully, I'll be putting out more materials that you can use as workbooks for your startup. I've got lots of ideas, but we'll see what I can manage to execute on along with everything else I've got going.

Thanks for coming along with me on this journey over the last year. It's been a great pleasure.

If you want to stay in touch, the best ways are following Feel the Boot on social media: https://ftb.bz/twitter  https://ftb.bz/LinkedIn https://ftb.bz/Facebook

If you want to stay in touch with other founders interested in this kind of Feel the Boot content, come to the Feel the Boot Founders Alliance https://ftb.bz/Alliance.

Until next time, next year, Ciao!

Many founders skip the marketing fundamentals and strategic thinking and jump directly to executing on some set of ad-hoc initiatives.

Then they wonder why their marketing is not working.

While I have done a lot of marketing over the years, it is not my core expertise. So, I interviewed Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, who is an expert.

We talked about the fundamentals of marketing strategy and some great tips on implementing them in practice.

Table of Contents:

Missing the Fundamentals

Defining your target customer

Crafting the story

Creating a 90 day plan

What to measure

The power of channels

Links

Tim provided some free resources for you: https://www.rialtomarketing.com/feel-the-boot-the-science-of-startups/

Join other Founders for help, advice, and support at the Founders Alliance: https://ftb.bz/Alliance

About our guest Tim Fitzpatrick

Tim is an entrepreneur/business owner with expertise in marketing and business growth. He has 20+ years of entrepreneurial experience with a passion for developing and growing businesses. That passion served him well in operating and managing a wholesale distribution company he co-owned for nine years. The company grew an average of 60% a year before being acquired in 2005.

Since then, he’s had failures and successes that have been valuable learning experiences. He started Rialto Marketing in 2013 and has been helping service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. Most people overcomplicate marketing. It doesn't have to be that way.

Job titles in startups are usually loosely defined and casually managed. In many cases, founders hand out very senior-sounding titles to their co-founders and early hires.

While everyone likes having a fancy-sounding job title, they can come back to bite the company later as it grows.

The one big title you need to have in the company is a CEO. Investors, partners, vendors, and employees all need to know who speaks authoritatively for the company. They are both the face of the company and the person with ultimate operational control.

Beyond that, in an early-stage company, titles are somewhat arbitrary. Sometimes they are silly or descriptive, but often founders give all the early employees very senior titles like CTO, CMO, or Vice President of whatever.

Early on, these inflated titles do little harm and can make everyone feel important. The problem comes later.

Check out the written version of this episode here https://ftb.bz/62B

Get the video version here https://ftb.bz/62V

Get all the other episodes on our website https://ftb.bz/

Get all the videos on our YouTube channel https://ftb.bz/YouTube

To get access to free one-on-one coaching with me, join our mailing list here: https://ftb.bz/Join

In this episode, I talk about dilution, the process by which your ownership in the company shrinks as you bring in investment. The decisions you make, and the terms you negotiate, can drastically alter your payout at exit.

Read the article version of this content here: https://ftb.bz/61B

Listen to the Podcast: https://ftb.bz/Podcast

Join Feel the Boot: https://ftb.bz/Join

Join the Founders Alliance: https://ftb.bz/Alliance

Get episode on control and ownership: https://ftb.bz/11B

Podcast

I have learned a lot of things about business and the entrepreneurial experience over the last twenty-five years. During that time, I was a founder, CEO, Chief Scientist, angel investor, and startup advisor. I recently gave a live talk at the Founder Institute, where I talked about my most significant insights about the startup world, business, and life.

The attendees loved it, so I immediately started working on a version for Feel the Boot.

Get the blog here: https://ftb.bz/60B

Watch the video: https://ftb.bz/60V

Join Feel the Boot and get the link for one-on-one coaching: https://ftb.bz/join

Join the Founders Alliance group: https://ftb.bz/alliance

So, here are the insights in no particular order:

Validate early and often

You can't overcommunicate

Everything a founder says is amplified

Networking is not schmoozing

Get over your aversion to selling

Talk about benefits, not features

Understand the person across the table

Style and aesthetics matter

You don't scale, and delegation sucks

Startups are a marathon

I noticed a pattern among founders I meet, and it is something I did too. We have an idea and immediately start working on it before validating it with our potential customers. In many cases, we have practically finished the product before we start showing it to people.

But, if we guessed wrong we have wasted a colossal amount of work.

I think I know why this happens. For technical founders, coding and development are our comfort zone. We're happiest when we're behind the keyboard in a dark room, banging out code and creating new software.

Creating that solution is why we founded the company in the first place. Also, for introverts, getting out and talking to people makes us uncomfortable. Also, we often feel that we already know what the customers want and need.

We know our customers and feel that we can stand in as a good model for them when designing our solutions.

Unfortunately, you're not a good model for your customers unless you're building a tool for people who are exactly like you. I made that mistake.

I was building the first stand-alone application version of Anonymizer. As a privacy passionate person, building for other similarly passionate people, I thought I could just make what I wanted for myself. The product was incredible. It provided very fine-grained control over all aspects of what information websites could collect and on which sites or pages they could collect it.

Our customers hated it, and even I rarely used most of the features. I was not even a good model for what I wanted myself!

After finally talking with our customers, the next version of the product had exactly one control: on/off. It was a huge hit.

My error had significant consequences. We spent many months focused on that first product, costing us money we could not afford to lose. It also significantly delayed our entry into the market with a solution people wanted to use. Once we realized the direction we needed to go, we had to scrap almost everything we had built.

It is almost impossible to get your app perfectly right the first time, and there is no substitute for the learning you gain when your product is in a customer's hands. But, the more you can learn, pivot, and iterate before you build anything, the faster and more efficient you will be.

I noticed a pattern among founders I meet, and it is something I did too. We have an idea and immediately start working on it before validating it with our potential customers. In many cases, we have practically finished the product before we start showing it to people.

I think I know why this happens. For technical founders, coding and development are our comfort zone. We're happiest when we're behind the keyboard in a dark room, banging out code and creating new software.

Creating that solution is why we founded the company in the first place. Also, for introverts, getting out and talking to people makes us uncomfortable. Also, we often feel that we already know what the customers want and need.

We know our customers and feel that we can stand in as a good model for them when designing our solutions.

Unfortunately, you're not a good model for your customers unless you're building a tool for people who are exactly like you. I made that mistake.

I was building the first stand-alone application version of Anonymizer. As a privacy passionate person, building for other similarly passionate people, I thought I could just make what I wanted for myself. The product was incredible. It provided very fine-grained control over all aspects of what information websites could collect and on which sites or pages they could collect it.

Our customers hated it, and even I rarely used most of the features. I was not even a good model for what I wanted myself!

After finally talking with our customers, the next version of the product had exactly one control: on/off. It was a huge hit.

My error had significant consequences. We spent many months focused on that first product, costing us money we could not afford to lose. It also significantly delayed our entry into the market with a solution people wanted to use. Once we realized the direction we needed to go, we had to scrap almost everything we had built.

It is almost impossible to get your app perfectly right the first time, and there is no substitute for the learning you gain when your product is in a customer's hands. But, the more you can learn, pivot, and iterate before you build anything, the faster and more efficient you will be.

Read this as a blog: https://ftb.bz/59B

Watch the Video: https://ftb.bz/59V

Join the Feel the Boot Founders Alliance https://ftb.bz/alliance

Subscribe to Boot Prints and access to free office hours: https://ftb.bz/join

Contents:

Why do we code first and talk later?

What do you need to ask customers?

1-What is the size of the pain point?

2-What priority is this problem?

3-What features do they need?

4-What are the alternatives?

5-What are their implementation concerns?

6-How do they think about price and value for this?

7-What messaging resonates with them?

Getting to statistical significance

Don't let customers lead you around by the wallet

Who should you be talking to?

Considerations for marketplace businesses

Get it mostly right before starting to build

Shut up and take my money!

When I started as a founder, I struggled with sales meetings.

My scientific instincts worked against me. I often wanted to prove that I was right and argue my way to a sale. Fortunately, between fantastic coaching and excruciating failures, I eventually turned sales meetings into a personal strength.

I want to share some of my key learnings with you so you can avoid the whole "pain and suffering" part of the process.

Read the blog version of this episode: https://ftb.bz/58B

Watch the video: https://ftb.bz/58V

Feel the Boot Founders Alliance: https://ftb.bz/alliance

Join Feel the Boot: https://ftb.bz/join

Profitability Master Ruth King is the award-winning author of 5 books including “the Courage to be Profitable” and “Profit or Wealth?”  In this interview, we talked about the lifecycle of startups and particularly the challenges of a phase encountered by most companies that she calls “No Man’s Land.”

Some of the specific topics we covered were:

·      When to listen to friends encouraging you to start a company

·      Talking to potential customers

·      Characterizing your users

·      Setting the right price

·      Managing through No Man’s Land

·      Transitioning from working in to working on your business

·      Building an emergency fund to survive the inevitable crises

Links

Feel the Boot “Boot Prints” signup: https://ftb.bz/join

Founder’s Alliance: https://ftb.bz/alliance

Blog with transcript: https://ftb.bz/57B

Video of interview: https://ftb.bz/57V

Recommended books:

The Miracle Manager https://amzn.to/3ATK0Gy

The Courage to be Profitable https://amzn.to/3ecnxdX

Profit or Wealth? https://amzn.to/3kb0N1K

About our guest, Ruth King

Profitability Master Ruth King has a passion for helping businesses get and stay profitable utilizing the latest systems/processes/technology.  

After twelve years on the road, doing 200 flights per year, she knew there had to be a better way to reach business people who wanted to build their businesses and train their employees. She began training on the Internet in 1998 and began the first television like broadcasting in 2002. Her channels include www.hvacchannel.tv,  www.profitabilityrevolution.com and others.

Ruth holds an MBA in Finance from Georgia State University and Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively. 

Her latest book, Profit or Wealth? reached #1 in October, 2020.  This book is preceded by The Ugly Truth about Cash and the #1 best-selling book, The Courage to be Profitable.  These two books were named two of 37 books start ups should read, along with the books of Napoleon Hill, Stephen Covey, Dale Carnegie and other esteemed authors.  She is also the author of two other award winning books, The Ugly Truth about Small Business and The Ugly Truth about Managing People. 

Should you bootstrap your startup to greatness or take outside investment to accelerate your growth? Making the right decision can determine if your company will succeed and change your payout at exit by orders of magnitude.

Read the blog at https://ftb.bz/56B

Watch the Video https://ftb.bz/55V

Join Feel the Boot for our newsletter and free personal coaching https://ftb.bz/join

Meet other founders in the Feel the Boot Founders Alliance group https://ftb.bz/alliance

When is venture capital clearly the correct choice?

When is bootstrapping clearly the correct choice?

Implications for dilution

What if you have a modest exit?

Managerial independence

Resources

Resiliency

Relationships

VC vs. Angel investors

Bootstrapping vs. VC is not a binary choice

Other options for funding