Push now Mr. Forbes

Many of you are now moving into the action phase, leaving behind old identities, passions and limiting beliefs. And me too. It’s almost six months since I left corporate life. I no longer feel defined by it.

And now, in the words of my tough coach Miffa, it’s time to push. 

To continue the analogy (which I’m sure is already making some of you wince), I’ve reached that point when it has to come out, whatever shape it’s in, however it looks, whether it’s viable or not.

I’ve been seeing Miffa for several years now and for the past nine or so months we’ve been firmly focused on my new life beyond bp: Familiarize, consultancy, Corporate Escapologist, McKinsey gigs, InRange, mentoring, home schooling and all the other experiments I’ve been running.  But my session last week was different. This one was about committing to one thing – having connected my-purpose-to-my-passion-to-my-need-to-build-my-own-business. I have reached the conclusion that my identity is Founder of Familiarize and I need to bring it into the world.

So what have I been doing?

Well firstly I had to stop helping my very dear friend with his startup, which I’d kind of joined. Although I had been clear from the start that it was an experiment, I felt like I was letting him down, but once we talked it through in a pub (whoohoo), it was a huge weight lifted. More “feeling right” feelings.

Then I pushed back a couple of other things and decided not to follow up on some others.

I looked at my runway before the children are back for the holidays and realised I have a good six weeks to get started.

Then I ran one of those great brainstorming sessions where only brilliant, constructive ideas are proposed, because they’re all yours. And landed on four focus areas:

1. Product – I need to get Familiarize out of my head and powerpoint into some software that I can put in someone’s hands and say in Seth Godin’s soothing voice “Here I made this for you”.

2. Proxy Customers – although I’d love some paying customers who can best demonstrate the elusive product-market fit, right now I’ll settle for customers who will pay with their time to help me validate the product.

3. Philosophy – one of the things that makes Familiarize different from other customer research tools is that I see customer discovery as the front end to customer acquisition – and potentially a way to accelerate product-market fit and reduce marketing costs. I need to write this down in a compelling way.

4. Marketing – I need to make potential buyers aware of my product and I need to make sure I tell a good story (the philosophy) about Familiarize that makes them want to give me a chance to help them

So that’s what I’m doing. And so far so good. I’ve found a lovely developer in India called Harleen who’s helping me hack together the product using AirTable, Typeform, Zapier and Stacker…I’ve got a bunch of startups from Carbon 13 and some of you (thank you!) who have agreed to exchange coaching on customer discovery to try out my product. And I’ve tuned up the website and done my first InstaLive with Katie @productjungle (follow Katie to see it in all its g(l)ory). Not bad in a week. But much more needs to happen.

Here are a few tips when it comes to the Big Push:

1. Get yourself in peak fitness – pushing takes real stamina. For me it’s back to fitting in the daily clarifying walks, which I realised I’d stopped as I got busy. They began again this week.

2. Drop everything that’s not in service of getting the business into the market. I found the book (admittedly I only read the summary) “Will it make the boat go faster” a bit dull, but I find the title helpful enough – if it’s not helping launch Familiarize I need to stop it

3. For me it’s back to Trello – but whatever tool you prefer you need to get super organised and deliver ‘til done. It’s back to extreme ownership and focus because it’s all on you – and me

4. Perfection is the enemy of done – one of my favourite lessons from Launchpad and corporate life. I know the product, the website and the branding will all be rough, my InstaLive was rough. The main thing is to not allow the quest for perfection to stop us starting and pushing ourselves outside our comfort zone

5. Each week step back, with a beer and Trello, and look at what you’ve delivered, how far you’ve come – and then plan the next one. Start Monday knowing what the following Friday needs to look like.

I have been so grateful for your feedback and your stories on this journey of escaping corporate life and I hope you’ll enjoy this next part – building something.  Please keep giving me a prod when you think I’m going off course (I get plenty of this feedback too!)

Next week I’ll talk more about the product, how Harleen is getting on and I’ll have had some practice of sharing it with my happy band of early adopters.