Go Farther

Woke up thinking about marketing so I spent the AM planning marketing for our Udemy course. That went well. Then got in a 5+ mile run to maintain sanity. Second run in as many days and third in four days. Very happy about that.

Filming lots more on Monday and need new cameras for that. Buying a Sony 220 camcorder. BestBuy supposedly had what I needed. So off to Woodland I went. Not so bad – only 15 minutes from home, but ugh… a retail store.

Customer experience is everything. I eventually got what I needed. It’s just that it’s not about the product I bought – it’s about the customer experience.

Quick roll call of #fails:

• Waited for help when I arrived at the camera area – manager had to retrieve someone
• Showing one in stock but I needed two – “we can order it for you” Yeah. So can I. From Amazon. I’m here because I need it today. This is a best-selling camera because of its capabilities at this price.
• They did have the next model available – the Sony 230. The rep didn’t know difference between the 220 and 230. He said – “They’re pretty close.” Yeah, except one is $50 more than the other. How are they different.
• Once we figured out that the Natomas store had the cameras in stock, I asked about 64GB memory cards. The rep wasn’t much help here. As I was Googling the SanDisk on my phone, he seemed a little peeved watching me.
• Once I had that settled, I asked about an adapter cord for the camera to upload directly to an external hard drive. I had the product I needed pulled up on my phone via the Amazon website. None of the three associates knew about the cable adapter. I mentioned – “Maybe Radio Shack will have it” – one rep said “I don’t know” while smiling, suggesting that he wasn’t going to help me shop at another store. The other rep walked away. The last one said – “I thought they closed.” thanks for helping me out after I’ve committed to spending $500 with your store.
• We went to the front desk  to call the Natomas store to make sure they pulled their stock for me. The rep said – “Do we have the number for Natomas or do I have to Google search it? Oh wait, here it is…” on a post it note on the wall between the register and half wall. Jeez – that shows real organization.
• The sale rep passed me off to the customer service rep (I was exchanging  one product for store credit to partially pay for the cameras.) One guy working exchanges. Waiting 10 mins with only one person in front of me. I finally asked another rep – “Can you help me out? I’m ready to spend $500 with you guys and I’ve been here waiting.”
• Turns out the store can only do returns on two registers. Oh. That makes sense. Huh?
• Finally this second customer service rep – Kara – helped me out. She had to call the manager twice for approval of the return and exchange.
• Finally took 30+ minutes from the time I was ready to buy to walk out of the store to get in my car to drive to Natomas, which is 20 minutes away, and now 30 minutes from my house.

At least Kara was nice and finally plowed through the transaction, and at the Natomas store, Phoenix (Sales Operator there) was very helpful in picking up the cameras I needed. She was a champ and apologized for my troubles in Woodland.

I really don’t have time for this post. Focusing efforts on three things – 1) awesome outcome with our consulting engagement, 2) building our Udemy course, 3) website & marketing.

Problem is… beneath the surface of each lies a root system that meanders – all of it important to make the tree grow.

Spent much time, with more to go, writing thank you notes to people I’ve met and who’ve attending recent workshops. I let this go much longer than I’d like, and regardless of how busy I am, this action is something I refuse to give up.

I tell my students when they get stressed out – “Focus on now, now. Later is later. Do now now and later later.” So I did lots of now and did pretty well. In between, I made a trip to Target for supplies, stopped by UC-Davis and a local hotel to check out meeting and filming space, and remembered that I need to find new health insurance by the end of the month.

I’ve mostly stayed even keeled this week, which is like someone saying they’ve done a really good job of sticking to their diet for three days. It’s not about adhering to a predetermined regimen. It’s about changing behavior. Today was a little rough.

Thanks to Mark Suster for his excellent post about motivation. I woke up this morning to make a couple of calls to the East Coast at 6am. That was worth it. Then I got that anxious feeling that I’ve got lots to do, little time to do, and what I think I need to do and what I plan to do, may not end up being the most important things that I should do.  (I just left this blog post to verify a Google Voice number I needed to set up and to send an email. Argh…)

Had an outstanding client day yesterday. Still feels good being on my own. And it should – it’s Day 3.

Spent the chunk of Tuesday onsite delivering on customer development and business development calls.  Much progress here. (Read more about these customer development efforts here on my company blog.)

More accomplishments:

• Settled on our third, and I hope last, website developer. It’s been a pain because my laziness performing due diligence and choosing inexpensive options quickly. Measure twice cut, once.
• More strides planning our Udemy course. Filming starts tomorrow.
• Plowed through outstanding emails and introductions made over the last week.
• Finished up final grading for a couple of courses I taught at Hult International School of Business. Happy to move this off my to-do list and happy with the teaching results.
• Came home rested and excited for Wednesday.

Focus today:

• Early AM client meeting – a data visualization company, based in Paris. Road trip anyone? I met this company via my book and have been informally advising them for a few months. Chance to meet the founder in person while he’s in town for a conference.
• Project focused re: enterprise sales training. Building out a curriculum and rollout strategy.
• Decided to begin recruiting engineers and sales development reps. We don’t have a software product in development, and I’m already pretty full with client engagements. That’s exactly why I’m starting the recruiting process.
• Preparing for tomorrow’s video time.
• Preparing a call list for tomorrow’s customer development work.

RE: Recruiting

I’m looking for engineers with experience building the following: CRMs and project management tools, voice-to-text-to-analytics applications, educational products.

Our next sales development rep needs to qualify inbound leads, manage our CRM and contact database, run marketing campaigns, and organize live events. Definitely some marketing sprinkled into the sales side of the work.

Outstanding items that bother me:

• I’ve yet to send out thank you cards to the people I’ve met and talked with over the past three weeks.
• I’m behind on preparing our next Meetup Group.
• I need to block time to begin preselling (read: earning revenue) for the Udemy course.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone that read my post, commented on Facebook, and sent me an encouraging email. The response to my post yesterday is overwhelming. I’ve yet to respond to nearly all of you, and I promise that I will by the end of the week. If I knew I had this much implicit support, I would have started life without a day job much sooner.

As for Day One…

I started an executive coaching program over the summer. One of the fundamental concepts this program espouses is that there are only three types of days – Focus Days, Buffer Days, and Free Days. Focus days are days where most of the day is spent with clients and revenue-producing activities. Buffer days are behind-the-scenes days managing the company, and free days are just that – no email, no work, complete detachment.

In Day 1 yesterday, I had all three types of days…

1. Focus – On a project for a client and learned about how to build an effective Udemy course.

2. Buffer – Monday AM weekly meeting with Robert (our Production Manager) around our top company priorities – revamp of the company website and the production of said Udemy course.

3. Free – Spent time with my son playing in the backyard, then to the soccer field where we played some more before I started coaching. Then back home to help with him bath and getting him to bed.

For the first 15-20 minutes of Free time, I almost tuned out and plopped my son in front of an iPad so I could push out a couple of emails. But I didn’t. It took me a while to let my brain relax, and once I did, it was well worth it.

Today is a Focus day – spending time onsite with our biggest client and a mega-important project from them and for us. Then on the train home to work out the company details on what I missed while the company is making money for everyone.

More tomorrow…

And away we go… I’ve been building for nearly two years to reach this point. And so it begins.

James Altucher and others talk about quitting your job all the time, and I finally did it. I ran into a friend at the Davis Farmer’s Market over the weekend. About a year ago, he left his day job to be a full-time flight instructor. He had a newborn baby girl at the time. He asked what the decision was like for me. I told him – “You know, there wasn’t a cosmic event where all the sudden you now see the 4th dimension.”

He laughed – “Yeah, you’re standing there waiting, waiting, waiting to make the jump, and then you do and realize the water is only ankle-deep.”

That’s about right. Already today, at 7am, a time when I used to be listening in on a sales pipeline conference call with a sales team based in Washington DC is instead filled with coordination emails around my website redesign, planning a SalesBarCamp, and planning out the rest of the week.

It’s here, and I’m in it, hiding the stress under building my business, and confident that somehow, someway, I’m going to make this work.