What happens when you realise your path is entrepreneurship rather than employment? Lindsay takes up the challenge and shares an account of her journey as it unfolds

The copy and materials to sell Mirror Mirror were pushed through to completion just in time for another trip to London. Every time I go through the presentation and talk to people about Mirror Mirror, interest is held, I get feedback, a door opens, people talk about next steps….

Here’s how these kind of trips go… all scheduled in advance…

Straight out of Heathrow late afternoon to visit a top contact in the City – a high-level strategy implementation consultancy.  By chance a client of his had been on the phone this morning with an issue that apparently Mirror Mirror would be perfect for.  By the end of the meeting he’d agreed to add it in to the proposal he’s sending out the next day.

Noticed the wording on the price list wasn’t very clear. Adjusted and sent it to follow up the meeting immediately.  Iterate, iterate.

NEXT DAY

Meet with an expert level practitioner who has been referred to Mirror Mirror to do our training course, but he is sceptical.  I’m with my fantastic associates Steve and Judy, who made the introduction to start with. We all talk. I get to understand his views. He asks some great questions. I learn that the competitor slide I was thinking about how to put together is more like a ‘choice’ slide for practitioners – when to use Mirror Mirror, when to use a different tool.  EXCELLENT inputs there.  Very thought provoking.  Make a note to create that slide and add it to the next practitioner training. Iterate, Iterate. By the end, he’s sold and happy to introduce us to a colleague…

Run on to a meeting with a well-connected, old contact of mine at the Royal Society of Arts. I thought was going to be critical about Mirror Mirror. Let’s face it, up to now there’s been little progress from an external perspective.  He spent a lot of time describing his successes and learnings, asking very little about what was going on, but seemed supportive.  It was nice to see him again. Good to have him on side.  He gave me a name for low cost social media support.

Ran up to the Ivy Club on Leicester Square to meet an agent of mine (someone who wants to sell Mirror Mirror on commission but doesn’t want to get involved in delivery).  Always great conversations with this contact – by the end he’d agreed to connect me with a Danish company that needs alignment help.  Realised our new business model would impact the agreement we have.  Made a note to adjust it.  Iterate, iterate.

And back down to Charing Cross to meet the guy who was going to join the business last year but never came through with anything.  I’m thinking he’d be interested in a selling tool that has been created at a nearby University. It diagnoses teams that need alignment across whole organizations – fascinating stuff.  He is interested.  To be continued.

NEXT DAY

It’s 8.30am and I’m at Vauxhall where the Oil and Gas consultancy I’m working with are based.  We have a call with a company in Aberdeen – referred from the client who so badly let us down earlier this year (at least something came from it!)  The new contact there is interested, wants more info and gives us three more contacts.

Get a space at Starbucks to update my pipeline spreadsheet, process everything and follow up with stuff I promised to send.  The messages that practitioners need to see are becoming clearer…. Iterating, iterating.

Over to Victoria for lunch and an expert practitioner contact I’ve known for a number of years is now working with a new client, who he thinks would be interested…

Up to a quiet space in the lobby of my next appointment for a call with a small consultancy I’ve been referred to – a new contact.  I’m waiting on the zoom call but she doesn’t show up OR let me know she can’t join. I take the time to go through my emails.  Processing training registrations, feeding back on draft materials from the designer.

This next appointment is with a large consultancy and I’m a bit worried they’re just interested in stealing my ideas – people have said that they’re not so trustworthy.  This is my third meeting and the lady I’m in contact with there has brought along a new director to find out more about Mirror Mirror.  He asks great questions but strangely, is worried that their revenues will drop if they use Mirror Mirror.  Hmm.  But his questions give me food for thought.  He wants me to send a copy of the presentation and takes a hard copy of our new sample report.  I’m a bit worried about whether sharing these materials is the right thing to do.

Back to the same café at Charing Cross but this time to see an informal coach / Mirror Mirror facilitator – yet to become active but fully supportive.  We discuss trust and how to deal with the likes of the large consultancy.  We agree we have to give them the benefit of the doubt as his questions were all about doability. And I realise how tired I am, atill waking up at around 4.00am every morning.

On the 45 min flight back to Amsterdam the next morning, I write a short ‘brochure’ to attract practitioners to train up to be Mirror Mirror facilitators – with no hesitation.  I connect to my mobile hotspot on the train and ping it over to my super new great value designer, feeling altogether smug with how it’s all going.  Iterate, iterate. Within 2 days it’s back and I’m sending it out.

Say the right words, make a million, apparently.

Just today, the pipeline is getting more active.  Each call I have with potential trainees or clients has positive next steps and new ideas to incorporate. I wish I could take a photo of my inbox (maybe I should do that right now as a screenshot).  Every mail looks something like this:

“Do you have a video I can circulate to my network?”

“I just registered for your training.”

“Yes, I definitely want to run Mirror Mirror with my team in the New Year.”

I can’t tell you how much deep-seated excitement there is in my belly!! After all this time, after all these trips, the networking, the iterations, Mirror Mirror is really coming out of incubation. The iterations will never stop but the outcome, at last is traction. 2020 is going to be big.

Mirror Mirror – a comprehensive team alignment diagnostic tool and process in one, helping people align to strategy, as well as with each other.

Your story, our platform: If you’ve got a story and would like to share it with other Femflectors, please let us know. Femflection is all about transferring learnings to help others, be they big or subtle. We want to connect with your feelings, your learnings, your reflections or your hopes for the future – in blog or interview format. Express yourself here. Get in touch with us via anja.uitdehaag@femflection.com

For more content visit our website http://www.femflection.com

What happens when you realise your path is entrepreneurship rather than employment? Lindsay takes up the challenge and shares an account of her journey as it unfolds…

It’s still too hectic. I’m getting caught up in too many things and am starting to resent people who don’t seem to understand that ignoring the pressure to keep the momentum going, the relationships, the confidence, and the SALES is counterintuitive.

Of course, when people say

“You need to stick to your prices”

“Just go at your own pace”

I don’t think they get it – AND they’re damn well right.

What I learned just a couple of days ago is that if you have too many things on your active To Do list, then you will get overrun (especially if you’re the kind of person to just carry on ploughing through everything, as I am).

The secret is to have a Planning list, a Backlog list and a To Do list.  Move things aside.  Some stuff can wait until next week.  See www.trello.com – super-easy online board for this very process.

My active projects list went down from 8 to 4.  I felt relieved.

Then I’m thinking, for Christs sake, this is just prioritisation – why don’t I DO this already?!

ANYWAY

My story this time is about a presentation I did in Berlin last week.   It was to an Internal Communications audience – and with that profession as a 15-year background, I’ve been mulling over why this profession is ailing.  It’s pathetic, actually, to keep hearing:

“Why don’t we have more budgets?”

“Why don’t we have a seat at the C-Suite?”

“How can we move our profession forward?”

It is my personal opinion that the role of internal communication professionals should be to support managers and leaders as communicators, in a facilitation capacity. That by ‘owning’ communication it’s just wrong – and serves to DISENGAGE employees.

I presented on this by ‘holding up the mirror’ at traditional employee communications.  I did that confrontationally and with some humour.  I said it like I see it – dead straight.

The reactions were weird.  Some very depressed looking faces and some compliments from the more senior people in the room.

But I was authentic and I believe the content.  Later, I posted a summary of that talk on LinkedIn and got TONS of positive attention for it: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lindsay-uittenbogaard-1a653b_icc19-redesign-hr-activity-6595191772706557952-4SHB

And afterwards I imagined more content I could share like that.  I was in my own role – the Cheeky, Challenging Corporate Rebel that I am.

And what allowed me to go there?  Since we changed our business model, I’m not expecting people to hire me direct.  I don’t need to fit in anymore – I’m running a company that sells licenses to a tool and a process for practitioners to use with their clients.

People laughed at my jokes.

I could be expressive!

I enjoyed it : )

I found my voice!

Mirror Mirror – a comprehensive team alignment diagnostic tool and process in one, helping people align to strategy, as well as with each other.

Your story, our platform: If you’ve got a story and would like to share it with other Femflectors, please let us know. Femflection is all about transferring learnings to help others, be they big or subtle. We want to connect with your feelings, your learnings, your reflections or your hopes for the future – in blog or interview format. Express yourself here. Get in touch with us via anja.uitdehaag@femflection.com

For more content visit our website http://www.femflection.com

What happens when you realise your path is entrepreneurship rather than employment? Lindsay takes up the challenge and shares an account of her journey as it unfolds…

Hi again – can’t write for long.  Am on a train to Berlin – will be presenting at an Internal Comms conference tomorrow and I’ve got tons of work to do en route.  Everything is getting really hectic!

I can’t remember a more frantic time – I’m really having to get back to the old self-management techniques to moderate myself.

Don’t know where to begin – except that finally, I really know that Mirror Mirror will make it.  Every time I get the opportunity to present to someone with the new messages and business model, they love it!!!

“This is awesome, I can see so many places to use this.”

“Wow this is great – I know a few more people who’d like to see this.”

“Sign me up to the training – I’d love to learn more.”

And I am so pleased to have hit on two essential concept development insights during the whole message development process that will improve the saleability of Mirror Mirror 10 fold:

• We need to appeal to the ‘top down’ budget holder mentality so they can be assured that what we do supports them.
• We can talk about aligning people to the strategy AND with each other (rather than just doing the latter) – because we can and do indeed do that.

They do say that going into a creative process like text and imagery upgrades, leads to more questions and answers!

It has been a scramble to rewrite the ‘final’ key message set to incorporate these developments before everything is etched in our new materials – over the coming week – after months of preparation.

Meantime my graphic designer went off brief and missed my deadline so I fired him and I’m starting again. The reporting tool UAT process is being done rigorously but is taking a long time so I set a deadline of 1^st November to have it ready to use (secondary issues can be sorted out later).

Am having lots of sleepless nights with a lot going around in my brain.  Need to crunch down and move past this.

At the same time and with absolute confidence in MM going forward, here’s what’s going on:

• A pitch to an NGO in Nigeria via a delivery partner– they want a proposal to evidence the need for change – sent.
• A previous client phoning back for another team run in January, then calling again a week later for a different team run under ‘emergency circumstances’ next month – in hand.
• Twelve experts signing up for the training dates I’ve set up within 3 days of the courses going online because of referrals – confirmed.

A hugely exciting potential extension of our offer is a local university who have an organization-wide strategic alignment measurement tool for research purposes.  This would evidence which teams need Mirror Mirror. I’m talking to them about using it for our clients – just WOW.

I am looking at the year ahead and thinking about how to manage growth in a way that is healthy.

I did a P&L forecast for the next 5 years with best guesses of income and expenditure assumptions. It shows that BOY, if all goes well then we are sailing!

I am looking to recruit an Operations Manager on a profit share basis because when we start delivering we need to be READY but I can’t pay a salary now.

I reflect that possibilities to develop only come up when the opportunities to do so present themselves:

• I wouldn’t have looked at moving to the business model where we sell MM as a licence to practitioners if it wasn’t for our new reporting tool being so robust and difficult to copy (previously I felt the process was too easy for someone to walk away with)
• I wouldn’t have considered training up practitioners in every country if it wasn’t for the insight that virtual training and delivery were possible
• I wouldn’t have thought global rollouts were possible if we hadn’t developed the capability to train and deliver virtually
• I wouldn’t have thought we could cover a scope to align people to strategy as well as to eachother if this university tool hadn’t come up to raise the right questions….

Sorry – bit disjointed this time!

Mirror Mirror aligns people to the vision and strategy, and with each other.

Your story, our platform: If you’ve got a story and would like to share it with other Femflectors, please let us know. Femflection is all about transferring learnings to help others, be they big or subtle. We want to connect with your feelings, your learnings, your reflections or your hopes for the future – in blog or interview format. Express yourself here. Get in touch with us via anja.uitdehaag@femflection.com

For more content visit our website http://www.femflection.com