On the left is the “read” pile while on the right is the “do” pile. What I’ve learned over the last three weeks is that there are a lot of things going on that will try and take your time away from you. One of the skills I didn’t have…
Don’t pitch ideas, pitch results. And never say “I’ve got a great idea!” I’m working on two separate types of presentations – one for investors and one for strategic partners. For investors the key points are how much money can we make, how fast can we expect a return, what’s…
So far, the week is not going as expected. It’s taking a little longer to get access to cash to make this work and GE didn’t do me any favors yesterday by restricting one of my credit accounts to one series of outlet stores. What I’ve learned so far is…
Start saying “NO.” There’s a lot of things I want to be doing and that I want to get involved with. There are three or four events all coming up that need help and I want to jump in and make sure each of them succeeds. After all, I’ve got…
Not a whole lot of progress over the past two days, basically refining strategic partner and investor pitches as well as getting access to credit and operating cash. There has been a huge breakthrough but I’m not yet prepared to share it. But I can share this… Someone said to…
Ok, not entirely. I did get some work done but more importantly we went to the Grand Prix of St. Pete and met a lot of great people there. We were guests of Andretti Autosport and ExactTarget and both companies are tremendous professionals. We arrived around 9:30 for breakfast in…
I learned three key elements this week: Fear precedes making a decision, focus comes after you make a decision. Keep an eye on mistakes you’ve made in the past (HBR’s latest issue is the Failure Issue) and learn from them. Take inventory of them. What decisions did you make, why…
This is going to be quick because I’m starving. Sales Strategy and Marketing Strategy are both 90% complete. For Marketing – leverage a strategic partner’s existing market presence to enable us to get ramped up quickly. Stress the benefits to their existing customer base and how this will allow those…
Planning day. And looking for real estate. A good friend of mine, Brantley Smith, is the Director of Marketing and Interactive Media at The Continental Group. It may be some time before I actually need the space but I’ve got a really good idea of what’s out there and for…
After digging through Guy Kawasaki’s book The Art of the Start again I realized I had something ass backwards. I was getting lost in writing the business plan and losing focus. In Chapter 4 Guy writes that you should write the business plan after you write the pitch. This is…
Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (Strategyzer) by Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith
Beyond the Obvious: Killer Questions That Spark Game-Changing Innovation by Phil McKinney