#03 - Another Trip to the ER; VL as a Business Accelerator; Hunt for a new Revenue Co-Founder?
(3.5 minute read)
Greetings on this week of Thanksgiving.
My transformation into a full wad of cookie dough should be complete by this Saturday as I finish off what's left of the Halloween candy & the Thanksgiving leftovers.
It's been a couple weeks since the last update, mostly because life happened, complete with travel & trips to the emergency room as my mini-me broke his arm (again, different arm this time) - it was gnarly too.
Here he is grinning as the EMTs roll him out of school knowing that his holiday break started early.
He's trying to keep pace with my four broken bones by the age of 8.
Alright, enough about my mini Mr. Glass. Let's dive into this week's build-in-public update. Sticking with the swimlane approach for now... and this one is pic & gif-heavy. Buckle up.
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GENERAL & ADMINISTRATIVE
Search for Revenue Co-founder?: I've gone back and forth on this since the beginning, but I'm leaning towards finding (another) Co-founder to run the revenue swimlane. I started out with one in the 2nd half of 2022, but parted ways at the end of 2023 due to poor fit & timing.
I've been working with a go-to-market firm to get launched, but I'm still buried with all that this swimlane requires. I was hoping more would come off my plate with them, but it's feeling more and more like this function needs to be in-house with someone who loves it. It's too intimate to outsource, too big to take on myself, and I don't enjoy the day-to-day of sales & marketing.
I currently have 75 pieces of content to review (carousels & videos) for upcoming marketing campaigns. 😳
PRODUCTS & SERVICES
We're a BUSINESS ACCELERATOR: The biggest update since last time is that we've decided to make Vision to Life an accelerator program for businesses with between 5 & 30 employees looking to exit in the next 3 to 5 years.
Personas we're targeting are Visionaries trapped in the weeds and Ops Leaders that are on the hook for taming complexity & executing.
It's a milestone-based program with a structured curriculum. Ideally, I'd like to make it a 12-week program, but I suspect considering the amount of change management on the client side, it'll end up being 6 months.
So, if you know any frazzled CEO's or Ops Leaders looking to streamline their organization in order to get a higher multiple at exit, please send them my way.
Quarterly Planning Quick-Start Guide came back from my Creative Director & he never ceases to amaze me. This will be used as a leave-behind for webinars, a lead magnet to grow our list, and possibly a low-priced product as an entry point into the VL ecosystem.
The community product that we'll be using to run the accelerator program is looking good. A lot of work went into standing this up the past few weeks. Thank you, Jenah!
Verticalized LLM Agents: We're building out our own cluster of verticalized LLM agents (AI chatbots) that map to the entire Vision to Life framework. A ton of work went into making our own personality assessment for oranizational & role design the past two weeks. These LLM agents are what I'm most excited about with the business. A lot more to come on this front.
REVENUE
MARKETING:
Upcoming Event: We have an upcoming event on Wed, Dec. 11th. Our go-to-market firm is almost done with the funnel so we can start promoting the event. The event will be a webinar+QA showing companies how to get started quickly with quarterly and annual planning. That snazzy new quick-start guide will be a leave-behind for those who attend.
Videos: I'm behind on approving marketing content, but we did figure out how to get those dumb-face thumbnails swapped. Here are a few that will be out soon.
My main goal this week is to get all 75 pieces of content reviewed and approved.
SALES
Ahhh, and now my favorite part of every newsletter... updating everyone on another stretch with no sales. Come to me, Shame.
This isn't surprising considering we haven't launched marketing, and aside from direct outreach on LinkedIn, I've been focused on defining our offer, building out the community, and finishing marketing content.
See why I need a Co-founder to run all things revenue?
6 clients puts us at breakeven... the rest is gravy. We are burning cash and need to bring clients on soon. We're ready enough to bring clients into the program. I'm maniacally focused on this swimlane, perhaps begrudingly so.
My goal is to bring 10 customers into the accelerator by the end of January.
CLIENT SUCCESS
Not a ton to report here because, well, there are no clients yet. We're building out a short, 10-minute, new-member onboarding course that'll be integrated into the community platform. It's mostly complete aside from recording videos, but it's not a priority this week.
THIS WEEK
Kids are out of school for the break, so fingers crossed for some productivity, peace & quiet.
G&A
Create a job description for a potential Co-founder
PRODUCT / SERVICES
Finish construction of Community module in Kajabi
Finishing touches on Quickstart Planning Guide as a leave-behind at the webinar
REVENUE
Update all collateral & touchpoints with our new Accelerator Program offer (website, social properties, sales collateral, quiz, all courses). Yikes.
Review, edit, & approve 75 pieces of content in the queue. Double yikes.
Create slide deck for upcoming webinar
CLIENT SUCCESS
Finish creating new-member onboarding course
QA new-member onboarding journey
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Have a great Thanksgiving,
Scott
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