Getting your house in order

I'm getting close to the one year mark for Tandem Learning, and I've been thinking a lot about what I've learned in this first roller coaster of a year. One of the biggest lessons is one I'm just now learning and taking care of. 

People who know me well know that I'm a bit of a control freak. That said, I've learned over the years that there are things worth me controlling, and things that aren't worth it. A lot of the things that aren't worth it may be inconsequential, or in many cases, they are just outside of my scope of expertise and are better "controlled" by someone else who knows what they are doing. This is where trust comes in. 

You have to surround yourself with smart, capable rockstars to be successful and to allow yourself to delegate confidently. You have to have good, challenging communication with the people you work closely with, and you have to trust them to do their jobs without you looking over their shoulders. That said, you have to have systems in place for them to report back to you on the state of affairs in a way that you can keep things on track if they start going astray. 

In some areas, I did a fine job of this in the last year. But there were some new areas in starting Tandem Learning that I really had no clue and had to rely more heavily on others than I'm honestly comfortable with. Legal issues, insurance, IT set up and support, bookkeeping and accounting...all new things that I had to put trust in others to handle for me. Some of these relationships worked really well and my leap of faith was rewarded (did I mention how much I like my sharkweasel?). But there were some other areas where I just never got comfortable.

SO...the lesson I learned? If you don't feel comfortable, make a change. Perhaps more than anything, I have more confidence in trusting my gut. I let a few things go on too long this year, in part because I wanted to trust the people I was working with and in part because I didn't know what I didn't know. But from the beginning, there were some things I just didn't feel 100% comfortable with and now that I'm taking control of those things, I feel so much better. 

Worst case scenario

The last few weeks have been full of interesting conversations about such uplifting topics as "what happens to the company if I die?" and "what happens to my equity if I get divorced?" I'm lucky that these conversations have been relatively painless, but they have emphasized some important decisions that need to be made now to anticipate bad things that could happen in the future.

Its not fun to talk about (although I have been prone to giggling during these conversations) but its necessary. As we start to plan for rapid growth, bringing in new employees who will depend on the company to support themselves and their families, I feel an obligation to both the Rockstars and whomever else comes on board to make sure that no matter what happens to me, the company would be well prepared to move full steam ahead without me.

And while we're on the subject, have you updated your will? I mean, just in case...

Fun with contracts!

Oh, the fun you have with contracts! Let's start with client contracts--the necessary evil in my current line of work in order to get paid. I'm guessing most b2b companies have the same issue, but for those of you who get to avoid this glorious process of contracting because you're a direct to consumer business, let me provide a few details.

So you land your first project with a company. Woohoo! They are happy to let you start working, but you really should concern yourself with how you are going to get paid. This means you need to start talking to their accounting or procurement department to make sure that all the paperwork is in place so that you can send them an invoice and they will pay it. But wait! The procurement department is never going to pay up until you have a PO# assigned to the project, and you don't have a chance of getting THAT until you have a Master Services Agreement, and possibly a Confidentiality or Non-Disclosure Agreement, signed. You can try to send your company's MSA and NDA (which hopefully you've gotten your sharkweasel to draft for you), but more and more companies want you to sign theirs. Once they send you their contracts, you need to send that to your sharkweasel to review to make sure you're not giving away more than the project entails. Your sharkweasel will likely have some changes to their MSA, which will result in a lovely match of volleyball between the sharkweasel and your client's legal eagles before everyone can live with the MSA. THEN, you can send the Statements of Work (SOW) for the project, which may need to be updated by this time to reflect the new MSA agreement. If everyone signs off on the SOW, then you'll probably get your PO# shortly thereafter (although sometimes you have to hunt this down, too) and then you can finally send your first invoice, which depending on the payment terms of your particular client, they may pay in 30, 45, 60, sometimes even 90 days (from the date that they RECEIVE the invoice, not the date of the invoice). The only good thing about this process is you only have to do it for your first project (or until the MSA agreement expires, at which point you have to do this all again).

And this is just the contracting process for your clients. You'll also have to go through a process for contractor agreements and employment agreements. But I don't want to scare you. Did I mention you should get yourself a good sharkweasel? I'd recommend mine, but as you can see, I'm currently keeping him quite busy...

Protecting your ideas

I did something new this week, especially for me. I asked people who I was talking to about Tandem's future initiatives to sign a confidentiality agreement.

For some people, that probably seems like a no-brainer. But its a big deal for me. I like to trust people and expect the best out of them. It seemed like asking someone to sign a pre-nup when you're just dating them.

But boy, would I be pissed if someone took my ideas. So I gave the confidentiality agreement to a couple people to sign, as a "just in case." I think the sharkweasel will be pleased.

There are more people out there like me

Yesterday we met with another company to see their design and animation capabilities, to see if we could work with them on upcoming demos and projects. I got a lot more out of the meeting, though--we met some guys who are kind of like us, but farther along in this entrepreneurial road. They started their company a few years ago, and during our meeting with them yesterday, we got a glimpse into their "start up story"--some of the why and how they left the corporate machine to start their own gig.

It was a good day to have that meeting and hear those stories--yesterday morning I met with the sharkweasel (my lawyer) and realized there's a whole list of things that I need to do that I haven't done yet. (like insurance...evidently I need that...) I realized that I'm only two weeks old and although I started out feeling like I was really smart and could do this, every day I've started to feel more and more like an idiot. Not because what I know is wrong, just because there's so much I don't know. And so much that I don't know that I don't know.

I'm looking forward to meeting and making friends with other new entrepreneurs. They make me feel just a little bit smarter. And that there's hope. Because I'm only two weeks old...