Today we launch a new format for Confessions.  The glossier “Disney” style is out, and I am speaking a bit more from the heart about our challenges as well as our successes.  It might take a few episodes to really get it right, but I think a more frank format will provide a much more honest and open window into the company.  Enjoy!

(And we want to hear your thoughts–comment below!)

Transcription:
Hi, I am Adam Neary, and this is “Confessions of a Startup CEO.” This is sort of a different format this week. Looking back at the last 6-7 videos I am starting to feel that they have started to feel they got a bit “Disney” on us, and they are looking more like sales pitches than the natural confessions of what is going on here, you know, windows into the company, and I think that is a shame. I feel that this is a great forum to be actually being able to open up to you guys and talk about what is actually going on. You know, really step through some of the insecurities that we have and some of the fears that we have got and some of the challenges that we have got as well as all the great things.

So we are doing a bit of a more informal concept but I still want to keep it energetic and engaging but want to let you know what the challenges are. You know, I think it is a mirror of what is going on, on the sales side of the work where there are actually a lot of great things going on sales side. We have got target right now that we have set of 10 customers this morning and we have got 15. So 50% further along where we should be on this stage and you know that is great. The down side and the flip side of that is I feel like as we go through this process and I have been talking to customers, I feel I sound too salesy, and people sometimes gloss over and they kind of say what is that you are selling and that is very difficult for me because I haven’t spent a lot of time on the sales role. I am a data guy not a sales guy. I am an outcome guy and a problem solver. I kind of just want to have a heart to heart with customers sometimes and just say, “Listen, I know that you have got struggles because we all have struggles and I think some of the struggles that you face are the kind of things that I am well suited to fix and help with. We are going to do that by pulling through your quick books data and running our analytics on it. We think our analytics are pretty best in class. You know these are the kind of things that we would charge $350,000 for Procter & Gamble or Unilever to have as diagnostics for their business, and I think we are able to do this in a scalable way that allows us to deliver you for free and I think it is going to add some more value there,” but sometimes it is tough to get that sort of message across and you have got very limited windows to catch people’s attention.

I get that but I think that what I am going to do over the next month or so and in so far as I am having the sales conversations I want to open a little but more and take some of the gloss off and take some of the sheen off it and say hey listen…we think it is going to add a lot of value to you and I want to talk to you about whether or not this makes sense for your business and so we want to follow the same pattern here.

What else is going on? We have a brand new office behind me. I would walk around and show you the office but that seems…if you want to see the office you should come in and visit us. We are down at Broadway and Prince, and we are enjoying the space. Team is really working out well. We have got Francis really doing a nice job. We have got Chad Pugh who has been working with us from the design standpoint and that has been going very well. I think right now the biggest challenge that we face and this is something you know confessions of the startup is that right now we have started engaging with these customers and we need to show them the value. I think everyone that we talk to is like wow great idea, fantastic, or sounds good to be true, show me that it is actually working and I will meet you at the work site. That is an understandable position. So the challenge for us and the goal I think for the next you know for the next couple of weeks is to put couple of chalk marks on the board that will say hey listen we talked to the company that was making $50,000 of profit every year and we were able to identify another $10,000 in profit that we think they can go after and get that will be really exciting. If we do that 10 times then I think a lot of people would say wow this sounds like this is really good…and gets the attraction that it needs. To say for the fact that those 10 businesses we you know 10% better off than they were before we were talking to them. So that is where our attention is and we are hope you stay around for this as we go through it. We hope you like the new format. We hope that a bit more casual of a video blog format will be appealing and we want you to forward this along and we want you to tell everyone you know and let them know what is going on and leave some comments. We really love to hear the feedbacks. Love to hear what you think about all this. So get engaged and type in some comments right now and tell about this to all your friends. We will talk soon. Bye.