Slowdown to Speedup - February 2012
February was super slow, nothing new happened. Turns out, it was the calm before the storm, the deep breath before the race, and it gave us time to think.
Activities
I remember taking “Little Dude” to the doctor, what seemed to be every day, as my wife and I started accepting our new reality as parents. A trusted family friend who’s now an advisor of LiPi, Inc., recommended that I turn my consulting business into a marketing “agency” to better fund LiPi’s pre-revenue endeavors. I was introduced to CED where I discovered the Kauffman Foundation’s FastTrac program. When Anne-Katherine informed me that iContact’s former CTO was a mentor in the Spring session, I knew this would be an opportunity to gain professional feedback and improve my chances of taking LiPi to the next level. So, in February we applied for FasTrac.
Slowdown to Speedup
When times are slow, it’s easy to feel frustrated and think something isn’t working. But, I’ve discovered that these moments can be helpful moments to regroup, plan for the future, and prepare for what’s to come ahead. It's necessary, both in family and business to slowdown in order to speedup.
My business partner, Alex Rogozhin and I, took February to brainstorm what LiPi could be. We talked with the team about their desire to move forward with us on LiPi’s upgraded venture. We started writing down our goals and plans of getting there and the excitement began flooding in again. As we planned our bootstrapped funding, which was coming from the consulting clients, it was clear as day that we needed more funding.
Scary Road Ahead
I knew I needed to increase revenues per client and win bigger contracts to get us through the next season. The days ahead would involve having another baby in my home, my wife staying at home with the boys and hopefully helping her continue to stay home for the Summer, which totally depended on my personal income. In February, the coming reality began sinking in and I was getting a little nervous about navigating all the transitions at once. But, there were no other options, so I put pen to paper, discussed all changes with my wife, committed it to prayer, and took another leap of faith as we decided to keep moving forward.
Re-Engineering
We prepared to completely re-engineer LiPi at the same time I planned to relaunch our services as a “niche, engagement marketing agency”. For me, the agency concept was hard to swallow, in light of everything else in my life that was brand new. I wasn’t familiar with their approach to services, pricing models, retainers, ect. However, after seeking some advice from my attorney and a couple agency experts he connected me to, it began making sense, so we laid out a plan.
Here's some backstory about what “switch” I was making and why... Love it? Promote it! had become a very confusing concept for many people to grasp. On one side of our coin, LiPi was a free, word-of-mouth promotions company that helped generate authentic word-of-mouth promotions for local businesses from their local consumers. This was attractive to many, but it was FREE, meaning NOT sustainable, especially when I’ve got payroll to meet and mouths to feed at home.
The flip side of Love it? Promote it! was a social media management service for small to medium sized businesses. Up to that point, I had grown my portfolio through word-of-mouth, but we needed to grow, fast. When we attempted marketing Love it? Promote it! for the purpose of winning new paying clients, those new prospects were very confused and most often went the other direction when we starting talking about value and price. As my failed attempt to develop new business as Love it? Promote it! continued, it became evident that we needed a name change or divide the concepts into two companies.
Timely Investment
I had pitched the new concepts to my Grandfather back in December 2011. He's been a small business owner for over forty years and has always been interested in my ideas and business updates. I gain an incredible amount of confidence in taking risks and making decisions from both my Dad and Grandfather. In February, he decided to make a small seed investment into my ventures. That investment bridged a financial gap for me when I needed it most. And I shared with him last night over the phone, that I actually multiplied that money by 20x over the remainder of this year. Needless to say, he was pleased.
February provided helpful downtime to think through the possible new directions. The little bit of rest was nice because LiPi was accepted into CED’s Spring FastTrac program which started early March. Looking back, the small risk to invest money in this program was the best thing I could have done at the time. Alex and I both decided to attend the ten week course together, and it changed everything for us.
