Brian and Scottie Elliott, co-founders of Gather, an innovative interior design project management app, discuss their journey as entrepreneurs. They share insights on recent hires that bolster their team and enhance operational efficiency. The couple reflects on the challenges of setting ambitious revenue goals and the emotions that come with this drive. They also candidly address the stress and anxiety tied to managing customer churn, emphasizing the need for resilience and strategic pivots to navigate their startup's evolving landscape.
The founders highlight the critical necessity of establishing organized processes and standard operating procedures as they expand their team to enhance business continuity.
Setting ambitious revenue goals, spurred by their attendance at a retreat, encourages entrepreneurs to rethink their pricing and strategic planning amidst their emotional challenges.
Deep dives
Navigating Team Expansion
The recent hiring of a virtual assistant and a marketing expert marks a significant step for the founders as they streamline operations and enhance their product positioning. With the addition of these new hires, the focus has shifted towards documenting processes and improving communication, which had previously been overlooked while they managed day-to-day tasks. Their experience underscores the importance of building an organized framework within a startup to support growth and efficiency. Implementing standard operating procedures not only helps in maintaining continuity but also prepares the business for future scaling.
Setting Ambitious Growth Goals
The founders’ attendance at a retreat sparked the introduction of an ambitious growth goal, which was met with mixed emotions. While it initially felt intimidating, the encouragement from seasoned mentors instilled a sense of confidence and motivation in the founders, allowing them to embrace the challenge. This new target acts as a catalyst for refined strategic planning, prompting discussions about potential pricing adjustments and marketing strategies. Ultimately, the goal represents a collective aspiration that transforms uncertainty into a focused roadmap, bolstering determination to succeed.
Confronting Entrepreneurial Anxiety
Anxiety has emerged as a pervasive theme for the founders, particularly in light of recent customer churn amidst their shift to an upmarket strategy. The emotional toll of losing established customers, coupled with the stress of meeting new competitive demands, fuels their apprehension about the sustainability of their business model. This situation exemplifies the often turbulent nature of entrepreneurship, where new directions can result in significant emotional highs and lows. Recognizing the inevitability of such challenges, they emphasize the importance of developing healthy coping mechanisms to navigate the entrepreneurial journey with resilience.
Brian & Scottie Elliott are the husband & wife co-founders of Gather, an interior design project management app.
Today, Rob chats with Brian & Scottie about their new hires, setting ambitious revenue goals, and managing stress and anxiety as entrepreneurs.
The topics we cover
[01:01] Update on hiring, new sales, and more
Hired a VA
Hired an industry expert to help with marketing/copywriting
Scottie & Brian now focused on documenting the processes
Had their first "team plan" subscription
One thing you'll notice as an entrepreneur is that when you start to expand your team beyond just the founders, new hires, propel you to get more organized, creating standard operating procedures like Brian & Scottie are now doing is a big step towards cementing the continuity and value of the business.
[03:18] Attending the TinySeed retreat and setting ambitious revenue goals
Brian and Scottie attended their first in-person retreat for their TinySeed batch
Setting batch goals are less of a punitive thing and more of a "let's do this together and let's be ambitious together"
Once we started talking about specific numbers, it forces you to reevaluate how you are thinking about pricing
There are a number of levers that we have at our discretion to pull. That number gave us, like, it allowed me to think about the numbers that mattered the most and the ones that would provide the most leverage.
[13:13] Anxiety, stress, and entrepreneurs
We had a pretty high churn month
Because we are now starting to carve that path to that new type of customer, our features are no longer speaking to the other subset of customers
The fear is that this (churn) happens every month
Whether you're going upmarket, whether you're changing from one vertical to another, whether you're expanding into other verticals going from vertical to horizontal, there are all these changes you can make that are really scary while you're doing them.
It's important to look a few months ahead and imagine what it will look like if it succeeds
Thanks for listening to another episode of TinySeed Tales. If you haven't already, be sure to check out Season 1 of TinySeed Tales where we follow the Saas journey with Craig Hewitt of Castos.
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