Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur – Stress & Ukuleles
Well launch date for gofer.run has come and gone, and we did not make the date. We got sidetracked and went down a rabbit hole, but we are back on track and moving forward. It is very easy to get sidetracked as everything is possible when you are building an app. For example, the location of where a button goes matters, so it is easy to get distracted. The app must be intuitive and useful, and it is hard to translate those two requirements into reality. This is by far the hardest part of app development as it is subjective. We look at other apps for inspiration, which is what we should do but, in this case, it took us off target. We started looking at recipes and shopping app user interfaces and decided that our look and feel should function more like those apps. So off we went to build a home page like the apps we are using for inspiration. The homepage we built had recipes, flyers, and suggestions for products for users. Sounds and looks good but now our new home page tells you nothing about what the key competitive benefit of our app is, which is to shop all the products in all the stores in your local area and find you the best combination of stores and products to save you money. Always lead with your strong points.
I should have stopped this sooner, but the team was making compelling reasons for the changes. We have now refocused and are looking to ensure that we are indeed focused on the compelling reason to download that app which is the gofer run. As well we are going screen by screen ensuring that the app is intuitive and useful. This one little detour put us behind about two weeks.
In Stroma Service Consulting Inc. (earlier company I owned with two partners) we resold a product called Marval. Marval was an infrastructure support software product developed in the UK (think IT service desk+ product). One of the owners of Marval named Don, once said to me “you have to ask yourself once in a while are you getting any benefit from paying an employee 40 hours per week”. Surely in 160 hours per month you can easily point to the benefits.” It stuck with me. As an employee, think about your time and can your employer easily see the benefit? But our rabbit hole chasing was my fault, not the employees, as I should have realized we were off track earlier. I would stack my team of three developers against any dev team.
Now when I realize that I just wasted time heading in the wrong direction my blood pressure went up – fight or flight. I can feel it happen; it is akin to hitting your thumb with a hammer. All the symptoms are the same except the pain experienced by the hammer. It used to be useful as my body kicked into another gear and I could work all hours to get things done and I could do this for weeks on end. My body is not so good now that I am older as I can no longer sustain the same crazy schedule. Work generally relieves stress, but I am not a developer, so it is somewhat out of my control. Precursor to bypass surgery was high blood pressure for me so pay attention.
My wife Gina would like to spend part of the winter away, and I’m not sure I can make that work this year. It’s another reminder of the personal trade-offs that come with the launch phase. I also feel stress as I have dragged her through all of this when she would rather be retired and enjoying the sunny south.
I’m also balancing several other ventures, each at a different stage and demanding focus in different ways. We are trying to finish off our first semi-mobile explosive plant (2 shipping containers) that can make commercial boosters used in the mining industry. Plant delays have stretched our timelines, and we will need to raise additional capital shortly. Another company I am involved with has a new game on the market called Tripped that is in about 55 stores in Canada and we are starting to see signs of early success. It needs attention but I do not have time to give any, and we have not yet hit the breakeven point. Oh, and I need to find some place to store 15 pallets of games.
Here is the crazy thing about Canada’s investment community. When I look at Nexco (explosive company) and One Red Maple (gofer.run) I see two companies that could easily reach market caps of $1 billion or more (or unicorns as the investment community calls them). Both could have 100’s or 1,000’s of employees. If we get funding, it will most likely come from the US or international markets. In the long run ownership and control will belong outside Canada and maybe the jobs remain here. That is the best-case scenario but the most likely is we get acquired earlier in the process by a foreign company and all the technology and jobs leave as well as the intellectual property. The reason why Canada does not create giants; it is because the investment infrastructure is not in place to support them.
Amid all this my father’s health has been deteriorating after my mother passed away this summer. He has been in an out of hospital numerous times. My wife’s mother has also been in and out of the hospital numerous times in the past year as well. At one point last year we had three parents in the hospital at the same time. My father recently moved into assisted living at the Empire Living Centre where he is enjoying it. The Empire is directly across the street from my office, and I pop over when I can to say hi. On Tuesday this week I popped over and he told me the North Bay Ukulele Club (Uke4ia) was performing that night at 6:30 pm and hoped I could make it. I told him I would try but could not confirm as I had a bunch of running around to do. I pulled in about 10 minutes late and pulled up a chair next to him.
Now when someone tells you there is a Ukulele Club in your city, expectations aren’t necessarily high. I envisioned a bunch of people trying to stay on time playing the ukulele and was doubtful of the outcome. I had heard about the club but had never heard or seen them play before. I was pleasantly surprised by what I encountered. As I sat there and listened to them the stress started to leave my body. In a world that seems to have gone crazy and with all my businesses pressures pushing down on me, I find myself sitting in amazement at not only the show but the number of people in the group (30 to 40) that had volunteered to do this. Many had to learn to play the instrument, learn how to sing the songs and practice and perform on a regular basis. For this tiny moment I thought as Sam said to Frodo “That there’s some good in this world” and here it was on display. Kudos to the North Bay Ukulele Club for making my day! I needed that.
This post may sound like I am whining but I thought it was best to state the real pressures in a real way so you can feel the stress. When I wrote my just in case letter to my kids prior to bypass surgery, I stated that one key role of a parent is to build resilience in their kids so they can handle all the shit that life will throw at them, helicoptering parents do the exact opposite. Little Johnny needs to learn how to scrap his knee get up and keep going on his own.
Next week I will move on to my early days at Canadore College and how entrepreneurism can happen anywhere. Thanks for letting me vent.