I just read one of Gary Vee’s early blogs and feel so inspired!  The message he shares is how investors are throwing money at start-up business “ideas” without being tested.  His BIG statement from the article which resonates deeply with me is: “fundraising should be a byproduct of success, not an excuse to start.”  What is going on right now is investors are ok with investing in untested businesses, and then celebrating what they learned when the investment went nowhere.  This is not ok.

Instead of “I can’t code & you can’t sell crap” I’m titling this “You can code & I can sell.”

I word it this way because as a life and business coach I have to know my strengths!

“You can code…”

So identify that as your strength, and be the best possible coder you can be.

“…and I can sell.”

We both know our strengths!  So team up with me, we’ll build something the world really wants and needs, and make a ton of money while we do it.

When an investor teams up with an untested software business—coders that can’t sell–they are really rolling the dice.  And if we keep rolling the dice the whole market will eventually collapse like the housing market of 2009.  Right now, investors as a collective need to take it down a notch because sooner or later, this is going to end.

I love that there’s someone else out there that feels the way I feel and is putting it out there.  It inspires me to help further that message, which is what I plan to do with my blog today.

 

Invest In People. People are the greatest asset in a start-up.  We live in a world that says “failure is trying and falling down.”  I say failure is not that at all…but rather, “failure is falling down without learning something and getting back up and trying until you succeed.”

So many great business ideas fail because talented Entrepreneurs weren’t brought in to bring the idea to reality. I’m not sure what causes, this, but I do have an opinion. Entrepreneurship isn’t just a business building skill or talent. Sure it begins with talent…very special unique talents…that are honed and grown over years of so called…failures.  But the difference and what is at the heart of an Entrepreneur…is an insatiable desire to discover success.  The words “giving up” don’t exist in a true Entrepreneur.

The heart of an Entrepreneur is like that of Thomas Edison, and Steve Jobs…failure just means you’re one step closer to the solution…the idea that actually works. Only people can make ideas work.

 

Invest In The Right People – of course! As the title of this post suggests, “You can code and I can sell.” Having the right people in the right place, doing what is necessary will create energy around the idea. That energy begins to take form and shape and take on the characteristics of possibility. The right people doing what they innately do best will see the possibilities and work together to achieve the impossible.

“Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” – St. Francis of Assisi

As St. Francis of Assisi so aptly wrote in her quote on accomplishing the impossible, you must begin with doing what is necessary. Failure incubates apathy but is remedied by doing what is necessary. Of course that requires “knowing” what is necessary. In launching a business, product or service…what is necessary lays the foundation for everything that leads to accomplishing the impossible. Doing the necessary is the bedrock of eventually succeeding and should never be rewarded with an investor’s money.

Even doing what is possible doesn’t really deserve investment.

What does then? The inaugural glimmers of impossible deserve an investors reward!

WHY? You may ask…A business startup that has the right people at the decision table will have risen to the top like cream. Therein lies the secret to success. Only the passion to drive the idea to market with the talent of a strong Entrepreneur and his or her team will soar to greatness and beyond to the impossible.

 

Know Who The Right People Are! As a Gallup trained Entrepreneurial Strengths Coach, I have witnessed the use of Gallup’s powerful tool for identifying and forming teams of Entrepreneurs around science and research. The assessment ranks an individual on 10 themes of talent present in successful Entrepreneurial people and teams.  With a trained coach, the Coaches Insight Report, can shed further light on the strength of the person in these 10 themes.

Every Venture Capital Investor and Angel Investor should require the assessment before investing!

A bold statement…YES…Decide if you want to invest in order to celebrate a successful profitable venture, or celebrate what you learn from the failure.  It’s a statement that will pay dividends on your investment.

Make your next step to take Gallup’s BP10 assessment and get your CIR (Coaches Insight Report). Build your success around the science and research of this tool and a trained coach.

As Gary said, the correction will be akin to what happened with the banks in 2009.  There is a ton of money going out to businesses that have no business getting money.  They are getting people to invest in them because they need a paycheck, instead of investors investing in the people who can drive a successful product or service toward profits 5, 7, 10 years down the road.

A business needs to prove its capacity for success before acquiring investment.  In order to create change we have to use our voices, sharing our messages on social media, having conversations about it, and not celebrating entrepreneurial failures.

Let me know what you think!  Message From Cheryl

To take the BP10 assessment, click here.