And the results are in. The following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have been tallied:
Business Leaders Support Group:
- Direct emails: 85
- Total Tweets: 39
- Total Re-Tweets: 2
- Total Favorites: 45
- Total Mentions: 2
- Total Linkedin Posts: 1
- Total Linkedin Responses: 3
- TOTAL PAYING ATTENDEES: 0
2 Days a Month:
- Total Requests for Proposals: 1
- Total Proposals: 0
- Total New Clients: 0
Butts Kicked: 1
As the results indicate this was not the week I was expecting. Somehow going into my first Business Leaders Support Group session I had imagined myself by week’s end either in the final stages of negotiating a multi-billion dollar buy-out with several global consulting firms. Or discussing with my advisors just how big a valuation was reasonable for my Initial Public Offering. Dragons Den….pffffft puh-leeez.
As I drove home from the event graciously attended by my three trusted (non-paying) advisers the magnitude of my arrogance washed over me in waves. The first wave can best be described as a feeling of numbness. In fact I was so distracted I missed several turns despite my GPS’s best intentions. Somewhat ironic that I was still failing to take advice from those around me.
The next wave to hit me, after I back-tracked and got myself pointed in the right direction, can best be described as shame and embarrassment. It would have been one thing if no one had showed up. But the image of my advisers entering the mostly empty room one after the other was seared into my brain. I remembered with disgust my initial brief inclination to not introduce them to each other so they would each think the other two were potential clients. But in the end there was no hiding it. By 10 minutes past the start time it was obvious; no Business Leaders were showing up.
As I got closer to home my embarrassment had turned to full-on anger towards myself. I knew better. I was armed with every resource imaginable including extremely knowledgeable and diverse advisers, my own years (and years) of experience, countless books, conversations and hours of strategic thinking. And yet in the end I had gone with my gut, ignored the fundamentals of Lean Startup, and paid the price.
So here’s the good news…..
Because I was loosely basing my start-up on the Lean Startup methodology Wednesday night’s failure could have been worse…..much, much worse. My initial product launch hadn’t been months and years in the making. I hadn’t spent hundreds of thousands (millions?) of investor funds leading up to that moment. And all things considered the visibility of my catastrophic failure was limited to a handful of close friends and advisers, 125 Twitter followers, and now anyone who reads this blog. Really all that had happened was that my first Lean Start-up experiment had failed. Total out-of-pocket expenses including room rental, mileage and presentation supplies was under $300. And besides, my direct email channel had generated a Request for a Proposal for our 2 Days A Month service offering.
So now what? Learning
Once it became obvious that the Business Leaders weren’t going to show up I decided to turn the evening into a review of my Lean Start-up Canvas. Element by element I explained what I was thinking and then took notes (as best I could) as my advisers responded. It turned out to be an extremely fruitful discussion. I was forced to come up with much more clarity in terms of the Problems I was trying to solve, and how exactly to define my Solution. And it did not take long for the group to focus on the biggest Risk; my Channels. Here again the diverse nature of my advisers yielded huge benefits. Having both client and marketing experts in the same room made for spirited and ultimately invaluable idea generation for me.
The next step is for me to get ready for Experiment Number 2: Toronto Business Leaders Support group scheduled for April 15th at the same venue. That is not much time to implement many changes. But on the other hand at least I did not set the bar too high as far as my Key Performance Indicators go.