Sales

Allergy Shots

I’ve embarked on a campaign to cure my seasonal allergies. Trying to understand the details of this immunotherapy reminds me how clarity effects confidence.

With allergy shots that require weekly visits for the first several months, then monthly visits for 2-5 years, you’d think there would be a sharp collection of resources to highlight treatment options, insurance codes linked to cost of care, and benefits/risk comparisons.

Proactively investing in your health is hard enough. Feeling like you’re taking a gamble without clarity on how a long-term effort may (or may not) come together, makes it way harder. I understand that healthcare is complex because everyone’s body and health habits are different, but there’s seemingly enough commonality to allow for a solid base of standardization, paired with different options and disclaimers to keep the variables in focus. Wish me luck, but this decision-making process has been cloaked in fog.

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“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. Work, family, health, friends, and spirit. And you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends, and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same.” –Bryan Dyson

As we look through the lens of entrepreneurship, delivering fearless clarity may put you on the hook and will turn some prospects away, but it adds efficiency to the sales process and leads to more satisfaction from better customers.

This does not mean we simplify everything. Simplification is polarizing, so delivering confidence through clarity is more about sequencing. Try delivering less information to ensure clarity, then support a well communicated slowness with connected resources to meet a prospect’s specific needs. This sequenced effort gives people what they need, when they need it. When everyone feels informed, confidence increases and the opportunity for more lasting collaboration is refined.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Melting Momentum

Once something melts, it’s never quite the same.

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Inspiration is perishable.

From the moment we decide to start building an idea into reality, the force required is geared toward finding and then maintaining momentum.

Meaningful momentum is awakened in endless ways. Early momentum might mean showing up at an event for the first time, researching the competitive landscape, testing an early hypothesis, leaning into customer discovery, recruiting potential co-founders, building product, and eventually activating a launch sequence. Once a project is launched, the need for momentum never fades. If anything, it only becomes more important. There are many more examples, but growing the business, achieving milestones, and celebrating progress are all forms of valuable momentum. Even in later stages of a company, momentum drives activities like succession planning, navigating a successful exit, and considering how your human, financial, cultural, intellectual, and network capital can be recycled back into the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

No matter where you’re at in your own journey, if momentum is maintained long enough, the result can be a flywheel effect that feeds on itself. Anything you want to grow will always require endless work, but with less friction, momentum delivers more time, understandings, and space for different activities emerge.

On the flip side, if momentum is melting, it’s difficult to recapture. These are moments to consider when and what to quit. If there’s enough energy to keep writing the story, it’s neat how there’s always the option to keep building. A few sparks that can help regain momentum come to mind. For instance, (re)connecting with the startup community, learning something new, saying “yes” to unlock adventure, saying “no” to create space, travel, revisiting customer discovery, building a new feature, considering a pivot, onboarding new customers, and adding to the team.

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Need help regaining momentum?

The longer stagnancy lingers, the harder it will be to realign momentum. Tactics to maintain a creative state of kamiwaza, even when momentum is melting, starts with communication. Keeping honest communication consistent adds clarity and is the easiest way to appreciate the realities of slowness. Reducing the weird by exposing the why, also keeps different stakeholders on the same page, even during more lethargic times. By reducing the tension that quietly brews in silence, teams may be able to run at lower speeds. If left unattended, this can devolve into a lack of urgency that brings new challenges, but at a lower speed, perhaps less movement is needed to regain/retain the sense of shared momentum.

When we play long-term games with long-term people, momentum is crucial, but set your own pace by exploring the type of momentum you need at different stages within the work. This awareness helps you quit chasing momentum and sets us free to forge better art, at a sustainable speed. This helps us multiply mass and velocity, which equates to momentum when, where, and how it’s needed to keep building.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Breakout Valuation

Breakout valuations are achieved when a business is valued based on how it makes people feel and its future potential, not just what it’s done in the past.

The nine components of a breakout valuation are confidence, vision, curiosity, people, communications, cash management, financial forecasting, capital strategy, and business design. Whether or not you sell your company, business owners who optimize in these areas, position themselves to capture a breakout valuation.

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This caffeinated contribution is a special adaptation from Breakout Valuation, which is the #1 New Release in Venture Capital and was written by my good friend, Patrick E. Donohue. Patrick is an entrepreneur, mentor, advisor, investor, valuation expert, and community builder who offers unique insights into the dynamics of money and business.

While you’re running a company, breakout valuations make everything easier. It attracts talented employees and quality customers. This expands your market position, makes financial capital less expensive, and invites vendors to extend better terms based on your surging trajectory.

Knowing what your ownership of the business is worth helps you make important financial decisions and becomes increasingly important as a business matures. If a business grows to the point where it becomes valuable to acquire, academic and finance professionals attempt to make valuation objective, but the complexity of each transaction makes valuation subjective in the end. Along with all the objective data, valuation is highly influenced by the environment, relationship, and personal views of the participants in a transaction. Knowing how investors and lenders use objective valuation tactics is crucial, but understanding the potential value of the business, articulating it to potential partners, and having them buy into the vision will arm you with an advantage to get what you want—a breakout valuation.

Breakout valuations are not aspirational. They emerge from what you are doing right now. It’s all about being clear with your mission and vision. It’s knowing your numbers and how everything comes together through a shared mindset, communication, and workflow. The pursuit toward a breakout valuation compounds, requiring attention today, and every day moving forward. This aggregates understanding and builds confidence. When the day comes to part with some or all of your business, the confidence from a breakout valuation will maximize the payout or deliver assurance in walking away from the deal.

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What are we doing today to support our goals for tomorrow?

By Ben McDougal, ago

Celebrate

Celebrate small wins, mini moments, and game-changing achievements. This reminds everyone how fun it is to be successful. Celebrating also recharges the intoxication that comes with building things that matter. This makes people more eager to tackle new challenges, so do it often. With a connected collection of diversified milestones to keep everyone united, accountable, and motivated, here are a few easy things to celebrate.

– New Hires
– Work Anniversaries
– Product Releases
– Fresh Features
– Customer Testimonials
– Record-Breaking Activities
– Community Gatherings
– Media Spotlights
– Industry Awards
– Event Highlights
– Holidays
– Failures

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Working to establish a few cool milestones and creative ways to celebrate them? Here’s an NFT to unlock some time together!

Most companies love to celebrate together, but too much of a good thing can lead to unnecessary drama. In contrast, when there aren’t enough good times, the team forgets how to have fun as a team. To stay equitable, listen and learn how different people respond to business breakthroughs. As you consider what and ways to celebrate, invite everyone into the activity planning process. Milestones may not change, but the way you celebrate them sure can. Connecting achievements with inclusive celebrations will motivate everyone, while also infusing a freshness into the mix.

As we celebrate in style, the entire team is supported by a performance-based culture where everyone feels included and has fun building as one.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Milestones

Big or small, internal or external, milestones help people identify with progress. They draw lines in the sand. This clarifies goals while supporting short-term accountability and long-term motivation.

Entrepreneurship is a community sport, but creative problem-solvers working to build a business are still competitive. Milestones tap into this competitive spirit by gamifying a performance-based culture. Recognizing milestone achievements can also boost morale and further unite a team. If you’re collaborating with mentors and/or an advisory team, milestones help keep everyone on the same page as well.

As milestones are established, be sensitive to the diversity of your team. Find creative ways to equitably encourage new and more experienced team members. One easy way to do this, is to establish a few tiered categories for different types of milestones. As you diversify milestones, we’re not creating so many that they become pointless. Instead, you’re curating a variety of dynamic signals that can activate different emotions along a connected and sustained timeline.

As milestones are completed, the culture is nourished with celebration, which we’ll sip on next week!

By Ben McDougal, ago