I’m on a train, pondering about how fascinating it is how the world can be seen through one of three lenses:

The first is how you are subjected to what’s happening around you.

• The school announced it’s going to close, which means the night classes that I teach will have to stop.

The second is how you want to see it, interpreting events and opportunities in a way that supports your motivations.

• The school announced it’s going to close but that could mean the buildings might become available for a community project and my night classes could also be day classes!

The third lens is to look at the world in terms of how you can fit in with what’s already there.

• The school announced it’s going to close. I could talk with the council about where the night class could otherwise be held. Maybe the other teachers want to do the same. 

The first is too boring to even look at. The difference between the second and third lenses is that one is inspired to create something new; the other is grounded and exploratory.

Here’s what I’ve learned. If you blend those two, you get a realistic approach to achieving an inspiring vision.

I’ve been looking at Mirror Mirror through the second lens for a while and trying to make it real, discovering that there’s a sales reality that is tough. You do have to be a little bit deluded to start a business in the first place, right so perhaps I needed the second lens to even get going?

But now here’s how I see it. Mirror Mirror is a fantastic, rock on concept. It’s where organizational communication is going to be in the future. But teamwork and leadership consultancy is a very competitive area. Almost everyone and their dog has gone into freelance consultancy, it seems, and the market is awash with ‘solutions’. From the buyer position, Mirror Mirror is still just something that someone made up. Why should they even spend time looking at it?

I need to put a sales and marketing plan together that is realistic, and that will get me from A to B.

The good news is that I have one, maybe two new trials coming up before Christmas. My short term goal is to ‘Beta Test’ the Mirror Mirror concept with 4 or 5 test cases in total. This will improve and evidence how well the concept works , making it easier to sell. That should complete in April. (I’ll tell you about the trials I have lined up in the next Femflection blog).

But then what? Fast forward to April 2018 and I’ll hopefully have a proven concept with much more credibility but unless I’m clever, I’ll still be scraping around, begging the connections I can find to give it a go.

No.

I’m going to need something MUCH more robust to truly get this off the ground. I’m going to need major marketing, a consortium of partners, a board of directors… I need a new business model to shake this up.

It feels as if I just keep reframing things until they feel believable. Maybe I am – that’s ok. As long as my business plan is inspired AND realistic then I can put this together and make it work.

Focus areas for Q4:

• Business and marketing plan 2018 (including a consortium of partners)
• Deliver trials 2 & 3
• Continue to develop the quality of the product with learnings from those trials
• Figure out how to finance this thing next year…

Mirror Mirror identifies misalignment gaps and opportunities and works with teams to address those, for clarity, alignment and momentum: www.mirrormirrorhub.com

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