Sean Davis

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 that people have a lot of good ideas. A lot of good intentions meant to help you – but if they’re not lined up with your vision then you’ve got to tell them either ‘wait’ or ‘no’. Frenetic activity does not equate to progress, it just causes you to lose perception of what you ‘should’ do and what you ‘need’ to do. You ‘should’ create reports, measure, check, verify and strategize. What you ‘need’ to do is launch a product. All the ‘should’ work will delay or even prevent you from doing that.

And by the way, I did miss a couple of days posting. I took the weekend off to hit the 98RockFest in Tampa and Festivals of Speed in St Pete. So the pic is of Stone Sour closing out the show.

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 customers to stay using their product longer. That’s overly simplistic but we’ll figure the rest out as we go. For Sales Strategy – yes, we will have sales. That’s about as much as I can share.

What did I learn today? That the exercise I did yesterday (list all my mistakes) paid off today. Somebody wasn’t responding and we went with someone else. Probably waited a bit too long. So add that to the list: if you’re going to cut a service provider do it quickly and move on. It cost us time but no money, at this stage they’re equally valuable.

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 how much. He really hooked me up with some great comps and I really appreciate Brantley’s help in putting this together.

At this point the company name has been picked and a quick logo has been put together. By the end of Friday I’m looking to have the articles of incorporation filed and EIN paperwork submitted. Roles and responsibilities have been chosen by the three partners as well as initial number of shares and their valuation.

The product name has also been chosen and I’m putting the roadmap together, should be ready by Thursday to discuss with the rest of my partners. I’ve also come up with an initial list of potential strategic partners to begin contacting.

I also feel like I’m not getting enough done. Not working hard enough, not working fast enough. Not sure if that’s realistic or I’m just ready to haul ass and get this launched. Since I’m sitting around a lot more (as I’m now working from the house) I want to get more consistent in my training. The bike has been sitting around for a few weeks – unfortunately the bottom bracket seized and it’s in the shop. Should be ready by Thursday. To prep I put together a quick schedule to start getting back in the groove. I usually train from 4:30 or 5 AM until 7:00 AM for 3-5 times a week. That’s a bit much all at once so for 2 weeks it will be 5-6:30 AM for 3 times a week. That’s about 85 miles a week. From then on I’ll add about 20 minutes a week and an extra session every other week. So in about six weeks I’ll be back up to almost 3 hour sessions five times a week. Personally, I like getting into the office already having my workout done. By then I should be able to post shots like this one of Tampa Bay.

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 great advice – because now I’m not cramming a bunch of crap that a) nobody is going to read and b) …  No need for b), if nobody is going to read it then you shouldn’t write it. Writing the pitch first let’s you clearly see what points your trying to get across and in what order. So today I spend about 3 hours writing the pitch. It’s about 15 slides and still needs some editing. I doubt I can get it to 10 slides but It’ll be close.

All this got me thinking – if I forgot to write the pitch first, what else am I forgetting? I took another 90 minutes or so and wrote down all the mistakes I’ve made with other ventures. So here it is. You might be able to make out some of them. They range from “bad partners” to “Focused too much on what we could do rather than what we should do.” In terms of “bad partners” that stems from a small investment fund I put together when I was 23 to invest in internet stocks. This was 1992 and when someone said they were a “high-roller” I believed them. That was dumb. I found out later that he was with Amway. Bullshit detectors had clearly not started to form at that stage for me. For “Focused too much on what we could do…” I didn’t put a stop to endless feature creep when I should have. This was a few years later and the product got unwieldy and was just too much to deal with. Other examples of where I bombed were “Not calling someone on their bullshit” when I should have. It may have saved a few people and a lot of embarrassment for others. If people make absurd statements then it’s your responsibility to make them prove it. There’s about 20 examples in the picture but the final one I’ll cover is “Tried being everything to everybody.” My mistake on previous products was to put in tons of “stuff” and have something for everyone. I don’t think most of it ever got used. All the time that was spent creating it could have been used make the one or two really important features bulletproof. I really lost track of what problem I was trying to solve. So every week or so I’ll review the list, just to make sure I’m not repeating old errors.

With the weekend wrapping up I’m finally, back home. With all partners present and working for the entire weekend I can honestly say this much: there’s a great chemistry between us. To me, that’s the most important part – we can overcome anything but personality conflicts. They’ll rot the team and you’ll get nowhere but pissed off. The “no asshole rule” is now in aeffect.

On the drive back I had a good three hours to get more of the business plan worked out. The financials are pretty much done at this point with the exception of building out staffing. The prototype is up and running – needs some more work but it’s coming along nicely. One thing I’m trying NOT to do is have more of the business plan complete than the product.

I also had time to finish Seth Godin’s Poke the Box. Typical of Seth, I got about $5k of value for about 5 bucks in the Kindle store. One thing that really stood out was the contrast he drew between “flux” and “risk.” Flux is all the stuff going on around us. Risk is the potential of failure. He goes on to explain that the real risk is in not doing something new, of not jumping into the flux and building something. Anything. And do it now. I highly recommend the book and it’s only a few bucks.

Even on a limited budget for the next 18 months I went and splurged on a Keurig. I figure between my girlfriend and I we spend about $6.31/day on coffee most days, on some days we’re as high as $10. The Keurig was on sale at Macy’s for about $140 so I should be at break-even between 14 and 22 days.  Not only that but it takes me about 10 minutes to get to Starbucks and back so I’m also saving an hour a week that I can put towards getting the company up and running.

Weekends are work days too. Covered multiple business models and worked out next steps and timelines. All without Starbucks and a shower. Oh, I’m learning how to go cheap on everything too.