The ballsy meeting -- Jun. 23, 2010
Ye olde homework:
- Deal with what remains of today's email.
- Do all ASAP actions from the Marketing Plan (includes 39 emails, plus-plus!).
- Start working on Canadian Media Fund funding application.
- Make changes to Pitch Deck so's I'm ready for Wednesday's meeting!
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Okay, so, last night wasn't much of a post. Sorry. Personal issues, etc.
Anyway, I ended up sleeping over at a friend's place last night. Which meant that I didn't have my suit. Or... y'know, a change of clothes. So I was stuck going into my meeting with the gatekeeper for a local Angel network in a bad, bad situation.
But, after what happened to me at SXSW (refreshing your memory: a small fraction of my 28 dozen bagels were consumed, most of them went to waste because my apartment-mates and I can't eat that many bagels), I knew that this was my opportunity to make the experience unique. So, instead of lamenting my situation, or playing it off as if nothing had happened, I added the following 4 slides to my Pitch Deck, right up at the very beginning:
Now, these all went with a story. The fact that, last night, when I knew things weren't in the right place, I effectively handled the situation by getting away and into another one (yes, I'm being vague; yes, on purpose). I knew that staying where I was would leave me in the wrong headspace, something that -- especially at this fragile point in YouPhonics' birth -- can make or break my company's viability. So I added short-term stress to the situation in favour of longer-term benefits for it, and both short- and long-term benefits for myself. Though the immediate-term was still kind of screwy, since I looked like a hobo (no joke).
Pretty effective decision-making, if you ask me. Now that everything's settled down, I believe I'd still make that decision if push came to shove.
It's kind of late, I'm kind of tired, and I promised a friend I'd go see her. So here's a quick bullet list of what happened today (beyond the meeting, and loads of walking -- 19km in 19 hours!):
- More than 150 invitations to YouPhonics were sent out -- if you want one, sign up here: http://youphonics.com
- Got a quick write-up on Indie Music Tech.
- Fielded two requests for invitations from journalists.
- Userbase is growing nice and quickly, especially since the invitations were only sent at night!
Umm... yeah. I'm sure there's more, but friend just texted me again. And I still have homework to write up and such...
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Lessons learned:
- Lemons can -- and must if at all possible -- be turned into lemonade.
- Being friendly and genuine makes it much easier to be talked about.
- Emailing out invite codes "the old school way" (ie: one at a time) is fun and (arguably) meaningful, though it takes a loooooooong time.
Tomorrow's homework:
- Push out more invites -- not necessarily all of them, as it's a holiday and I'm finally devoting time to see a Montreal friend or two (haven't seen anyone beyond work capacity or family in over 2 weeks).
- Finish 80% of the press kit.
