At the Bootstrap Growth Subgroup meeting Monday, NeelanChoksi delivered an inspiring discussion for business leaders about characteristics and decision-making strategies when their company is in growth. Having founded a company with two partners, taken it through growth and then joining the company that acquired it, coupled with his C-level employment in another start-up and moving them through their first round of funding, Neelan has a special perspective and experience, coming from different sides.
He outlined three characteristics that are present when a business is in the Growth stage. The leader:
starts saying "no" to business
is more concerned about marketing and less about sales
begins leveraging people and resources
To begin with, the Bootstrap leader finds themselves starting to say "no" to certain business that comes along. This essentially is when we find that we are being more choosy about what business we're taking. Our visual shift also moves from focusing on the sales to the marketing we're doing. What's more, we start thinking about what we can outsource and delegate. With all these characteristics, our focus is changing from what it was during the Valley of Death (VoD).
In making good decisions, particularly regarding the opportunities to pursue, the leader of a business in the Growth stage is well-served with these three strategies:
make decisions quickly and listen to your gut
employ stages and gates to protect the business
limit the amount of time researching and deliberating
In these strategies, we keep the business swiftly moving and keep the momentum of growth, take advantage of opportunities that can generate greater success and take small risks toward that success without sinking too many resources into the unproven.
A mind shift necessarily occurs for the leader when the company is in growth. As our focus shifts to building the company, there is a "letting go" of some old strategies and practices that must occur. However, as we go forward, we need to keep some of what we were doing because these are the features that indeed brought us to our success. The process is akin to adding a new ingredient to the mix rather than discarding old ones.
The kernels of wisdom shared at this meeting were vast, but all generally held the themes that there is a right action for the right time. Additionally, what we learn from the experiences we gain taking our business through Ideation, Valley of Death, and Growth can teach and prepare us to make bigger, better, and more efficient decisions leading to greater success for ourselves and our business.
Nancy Schillis the founder of Executive Intelligent Coaching, a company that works alongside business leaders and their teams in the growth stage of business to achieve the vision, strengthen influence and employ an inspiring culture. She can be reached at nschill AT executiveintelligentcoaching DOT com
On July 21 I addressed the Ideation Subgroup of Bootstrap Austin, a fine group of beginning Entrepreneurs. They, and I, follow Bijoy Goswami's Bootstrapping ideas about the flow from worker bee to business Entrepreneur, in this case you start with and idea, create a Demo, and then proceed with raising some money to get on with business.
As usual I found my self 1) running overtime about 45 minutes with the help of lots of questions from the listeners, and 2) yelling a lot, no one has ever tagged me as Mr. Congeniality. Many are appalled at my choices of adverbs and adjectives when talking about such things as VCs, bit-time CEOs, and corporate careers; but I get laughs and a few lights blink on (you can see it in their eyes) so it is not in done vain.
My son pointed out to me that my primary message is always the same; Francis Bacon was wrong, knowledge is not power, it is a mental holding pattern. Knowledge plus action is power, and in the end we do pretty much everything today for power. The difference between being an entremanure and an entrepreneur is action.
So again the theme is get off your ass and do something, customers will give the final idea so you can start with almost anything close. Only your personal insecurity retards the progress (it's called the "BOX", the one you are always trying to think out of). Just take it to the customer as soon as possible, they will straighten you out.
As short story before I close this testimony. I went to a presentation review for entrepreneurs a couple of months ago. I was a mentor along with a couple of other guys and we listened to a presentation by a couple of folks with an idea that they had poured $70k and a year into for software. They were looking for half a million and wanted us to comment on the presentation. They launched off on the idea, the pitch was all laid up on PowerPoint (which is only slightly better than morphine for numbing your mind). Five minutes into it I stopped it and asked - The Question..."What did the customers say?" The CEO told me that they had not presented this to any customers yet, only friends, family, and experts (someone who used to be call "Pert").
Well, I alienated everyone in the room with my usual question (delivered in my drill Sergeant's voice) . . . "What the F*** are you doing? Without customer feedback this is all a work of fiction! You made this all up, there is no reality in this presentation, only you dreams."
How can I comment on fiction in a real world? The other two mentors went on to talk about the cute slide show and how to make it cuter, they were corporate guys used to living in a cartoon. I got up and left. I don’t live in a fictional world (I may be delusional at times but not that day). They were too polite to deal with the truth, what a waste of everyone's time.
The truthache you have to have is the customer's reaction – will he give you a check for your idea when you can get it to work and what does "work" mean???
Nothing else counts!
Barry W Thornton is technologist, who organizes, manages and explains knowledge. Copyright Barry W Thornton 2008 all rights reserved
