Greg’s Update:

Fails:

  • Haven’t finished sales page / order forms as ClickFunnels is proving to be a bit more of a pain in the ass as i had hoped.

Results:

  • System.ly Revenue –
    • MRR: $22,050
    • September One-Time Revenue: $9000
  • As usual, the travel and the event really prevented some significant work to be completed but it was a super cool experience which I’ll chat about.
  • Most of my time was geared towards finalizing S2S as we have a webinar tomorrow.
    • The sales page is about 60% of where it needs to be for tomorrow
    • All the webinars were set up and ads were running but my ads were sucking so I don’t have as many registrations as I’d like for this webinar tomorrow but it will be practice anyway.
    • I just realized how i need to put a lot more thought and time into setting my ads up and just didn’t give myself that time this time around.
    • I had a few fb ad friends reviewed and got good feedback so I just need to get time this week to plan it out strategically/
    • I recorded 2 bonus interviews that went really well
  • We’ve also had a lot to do around our house the last two weeks with our renovation starting today.
    • Packing our house since the renovation starts
    • Its really derailed my thinking and mental bandwidth..i’m hoping now that its starting it gets better but we’ll see.
  • I spoke at Social Mitten in Ann Arbor Michigan and got to speak in the Crisler arena where the bball court normally resides and it was pretty cool. We also got to go out on the field at the The Big House and see the view from a private suite and learn about the stadium’s history which was pretty interesting.
    • As a gift I they gave all the speakers the new Amazon Echo Tap
  • Overall, with the house and travel and “the whirlwhind” i’m pretty tired and exhausted I have to say.
  • We planned our annual meeting and the team is coming to Denver for a few days in early December to discuss this year and plan out 2017.

Plans:

  • Tonight here in Denver, Zero to Scale is the co-sponsor of a cool entrepreneurial event alongside General Assembly and I’ll be the moderator chatting with a few awesome founders on the topic of “The Best Advice I Never Took”.
  • Present an audit to a client
  • I’m getting interviewed for Navid’s List Building School Summit
  • My webinar is tomorrow
  • I’m speaking with Infusionsoft tomorrow about potentially getting a booth at next years ICON
  • Getting interviewed for two podcasts
    • Art of Paid Traffic
    • Conscious Millionaire
  • 3 sales calls
  • 3 client strategy sessions
  • I’m blocking time on my cal to work on my ad strategy as well as reaching out to potential partners for JV webinars

Justin’s Update:

Fails:

  • Start making some progress on some of the bigger LeadFuze bugs that we have currently.
    • I mean we “started” making progress, but this was sort of a weak goal so leaving this as a fail. I’d actually like to start knocking more of our bugs out and finalizing them – not just “start making some progress”. So holding myself accountable here. Not as much progress as I’d like.
  • Hopefully get an outlet to pickup our PR piece.
    • PRX has been doing some outreach to journalists for our funding story, but no dice yet. So far one has expressed some interest and 3 have declined. This is outside of my control really, but hoping future follow-ups will bear fruit.

Results:

  • LeadFuze software revenue is $29.9k MRR.
  • Damian and I put a healthy whiteboard session in on Saturday and mapped out a clearer ideal customer persona and our value prop, and then built pricing plans around this.
    • These plans also help shape the immediate product development efforts as we are going to be splitting plans up based on feature set.
    • The nice thing is, the feature set of each plan is tied specifically to one of our customer persona’s. So this was a super healthy exercise.  
  • We’ve zero’d in on an office space that we really like. It’s going to require a lot more than just new carpet and paint though, so we’re in the process of making these negotiations happen. A commercial broker can really save you a ton of money and headache.
    • We got an offer back on a 3 year lease option and a 5 year lease option. Here in the Phoenix area, it’s common to get a month free for each year of the lease. Their original offer was for 1 month free on the 3 year option and 3 on the 5. Not only did he counter with one for each, but he also front loaded it so that we’d get 3 free months or 5 free months upfront.
    • He also countered with the four covered parking spots at $55 down to $35 and ensured we’d get first right of refusal on the office space next to us.
    • Now, the big thing is the tenant improvement budget. On their 3 year plan it was at $5 per square foot which would cover paint and carpet and some minor things, which won’t be enough as we are wanting more glass walls, we need to build out a few offices and move some walls for others. I’m also pushing for new blinds (there’s a ton of windows) as the blinds are old. I’m also going for exposed ductwork in the reception and breakroom areas. I know this is a stretch, but you always want to shoot for the moon and work your way back. Otherwise, you don’t have any negotiating leverage. On a five year plan, they are open to giving us an architect and coming up with a mutually agreed upon plan, but we’ll see what happens. If we do a lease that long, we need to make sure it’s a place we love.
    • We’re excited by it, but trying not to get too married to it until things are finalized.
  • I’m also deep into negotiations with a data provider. This, coupled with the office, are some of the larger negotiations I’ve been in where I’m the one paying.
    • I’ve secured five figure monthly deals in the past, but it’s a little different when you’re paying large sums of money versus receiving those larger sums of money. You start really taking deep dive into your P&L and forecasts and start playing out a lot of “what-if” scenarios. This is a healthy exercise I recommend any Founder should be doing on a regular basis so you can see what the impacts will be down the line of the decisions you’re making today.
  • Talked with Andela regarding developer placement, but they didn’t have anyone experienced with Go out of the gate. It might make sense for us to look into that option in the future when we have some other experienced developers on staff already, but not right now.
  • Finalized three new interface designs for the upcoming release later this year. It’s now in the hands of an html/css person. We still have several more to do. I mocked up a few more and began the design process on those as well.
    • I will say on these mockups, I had been trying to rattle my brain around how to simplify the interfaces along with how much more power we’re adding. Mark Twain has a quote that said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” It’s very difficult to keep things simple for sure.
    • I cracked open some beers and stood at my whiteboard though and things just started flowing. I really feel like creative minds must work like mine does when I’m buzzed. I’m very analytical and not creative, so the alcohol helps me break down some of those creative walls.
  • In addition to the new in-app UI, we also finalized the design of our new ZenDesk knowledge base which got started last week. Looks SOOO much better than the default generic template and keeps our branding elements consistent.
  • In our weekly marketing meeting, we mapped out a solid content strategy where we’ll be focusing more on pillar pieces and maximizing those pillar pieces through promotion, while tying it in with a bigger project we’re working on and also upcoming product releases. Michael will be working on a schedule and workflow template for this which will make repetition and planning much easier going forward.
  • I wrote a blog post this week on office vs remote. It’s a little contrarian in our space since I’m taking a pro-office approach to this piece. It’s a little risky as I’m calling out a couple of bigger companies that are pushing the remote work agenda, but at the end of the day it’s just my honest opinions on the topic. Hoping I’ll be able to get this placed into a major publication, so we’ll see how that goes.
  • Jason, our CTO consultant, had another round of interviews with our potential local developers. Before the scheduled call with one of them, he emailed us to inform us his old boss asked him to join him at his startup and he decided to accept that role. The call went well, but he ended up saying he was looking for $180k. So this is way above where we wanted to go and what I told him upfront, so not sure that he really wants it.

Plans:

  • Fix at least 2 bugs from the app this next week
  • Finalize design concepts on our new prospecting engine
  • Get placement on our PR piece
  • Map out more of our product update that’s coming at the end of the year, in particular on our data management side
  • Prepare our first investor update email
  • Discuss a masterplan for our content marketing efforts
  • We’ll be putting together a playbook for upcoming sales and support staff

Resources Mentioned:

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