Being present

An aim of this blog is to share some of the lessons learned from founding a start up as a female and new mum (my newest baby is 5 months old). One of the things I have recently used more of is podcasts – they are so practical as you can listen to them whilst making or feeding puree to your child. As I am smiling and interacting with my baby whilst listening I can’t help but feel supremely efficient! I love that feeling.

I recently listened to a podcast by Ben Cooley with the inspirational William Adoasi from Vitae London

William has a blog about his life and he has also recently had a baby. He blogs about being a start up founder and a new dad. Honestly I was a little skeptical as after all I don’t think he is getting up 2-5 times a night to feed his baby as I am (but hey he might be! and it is not a competition for who has it the hardest).

When reading William’s blog I found a bit of advice that was extremely useful… Be present. I get very little time with my husband and although I get much more time with my babies I am often completely distracted. William blogs about how he has an agreement with his wife that when they are together (they also get very little time due to the long hours he is also pulling) he needs to be 100% present. That is such brilliant advice. It means the time you do have is quality time. I am aware that I spend so much time faking listening because my brain is churning over thoughts regarding the start up. This is a tip that (if I can stick to it) will make a big difference in my personal life.

Thanks William Adoasi!

 

The frantic search for income…

I have often heard the saying ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, but if I am honest I have rarely found it to be so. The problem I think is that when you are in that state of panic your thinking closes down. It is not an emotional state that foster creativity. So, often you do not think of anything that you have not already thought of. So as I again find myself in a panicked search for income – this more desperate from the last. I also felt little optimism about the way out.

This time though I did two things differently that might have (unintentionally) created the ultimate game changing break-though (time will tell).

  1. I asked someone else to brainstorm income generating ideas for me. I asked someone who was commercially savvy to brainstorm a range of ideas. They generated a list of 11 things. Receiving this list in my inbox had a surprising positive impact on me. Firstly it made me realise that there were lots of options out there. Even though half were not doable for a variety of reasons there were 5-6 that I had not thought of. This was quite transformational to my mindset. I felt suddenly optimistic and hopeful, was able to sleep. It lit a spark of creativity in my brain and gave me a number of paths to pursue.
  2. I was brutally honest with myself and my co-founder. My co-founder and I are both optimists, we need positive emotions to keep us going. So when I sat down (after a lecture from Jordon Peterson about truth) I looked again at the cold hard facts of the start up – what was working what wasn’t. I was realising again that we had no product market fit so all the marketing meetings I was having was like banging my head on a brick wall. I faced up to the potential that we were kidding ourselves – that tweaks here and there in messaging were not going to make the difference. So I looked at who was buying us and why and formed a different view of where our product market fit might be. I then called my co-founder and told him in brutal honest fashion that I thought we were kidding ourselves and what I thought the product was that we actually had. To my surprise he was also harbouring the same fears but was trying to stay positive. We brainstormed a new direction and since then some pieces have been slotting into place quickly. I realised I had a load of customers for this revised product in my network and have been reaching out to them this week. If we are right we will gain traction very quickly indeed.

So lessons learned:

  • Be brutally honest with yourself and others. Only speak the truth (is what Jordon Peterson advises https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos/videos)
  • Take up all the possible opportunities given to you- you never know where they will lead but probably not in the direction you think.
  • Brainstorm with someone else smart. The more you panic the less likely you will be to find the solution on your own.

I will keep you posted.

A night like this…

I knew this was going to be hard. But nights like last night draw the challenge into sharp focus. Last night on a long late night conference call after I put my babies to bed, I found out that one of my main client that pays the bills and therefore funds the start up was potentially going under. All my forward work for the next 6 months vanished. Still I managed to fall asleep because I was dead tired but when my second baby awoke at 3:30 for a feed I couldn’t get back to sleep. I haven’t been back to sleep since. I’m now on a long commute into London for my first morning meeting. Not one that could get me any work or any funding in the foreseeable future but one needs to play the long and short game with a startup.

It’s not just the struggle to sleep in this game . It’s the psychological struggle that comes with running a start up when all the money has run out and you’ve no idea how you’ll pay the mortgage next month. It’s also the struggle of selling something that you created. it’s an algorithm of your brain and for me it’s the challenge of trying to sell ‘that’ when it feels like merciless boasting and when all I can see is what I’d like to improve.

I’m not a perfectionist. If you saw my kitchen you’d know that for sure. I’m a geek. An entrepreneurial geek. But I also happen to be a woman which may or may not throw up additional challenges. I’ve not made up my mind on that yet.