in Business, Leadership, Startups

Starting your own business is like walking across an invisible bridge a la Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom. A little bit of faith to know its there, mixed with fearlessness to get you to take the first steps across is what’s needed to succeed.

Happy New Year! Hope you rang it in with style.

It’s been exactly 90 days since I left VoIP Supply to launch Pitch + Pivot, a sales and marketing consultancy, that provides expertise, advice, execution that drives revenue growth, new customer acquisition and organizational change for startups, early stage and transitioning companies.

Many of you, because of the holidays, or out your own curiosity, have been reaching out in recent weeks to see how things are going. Rather than try to respond in kind to everyone individually, I thought I’d write out this post for those of you who may have been wondering (and anyone else).

(If you already know what I’ve been up to, please skip ahead to signing-up for my newsletter.)

It’s simpler to send a link then write this out hundreds of times. Shoot me 🙂

Taking the leap of faith

As you might imagine, deciding to leave a role that you created at a company you’ve helped build for almost a decade can be scary. It was for me, the first few weeks. It as well as humbling, challenging…and the one thing no emphasizes enough, a lot of FUN!

I once read that entrepreneurs don’t know the outcome of what they are attempting, they just aren’t scared to fail. That the most successful of people will tell you they have no idea what they are doing, but they will however tell you they are finding themselves.

When it comes to this recent journey, finding myself I am. Scared of what comes next, positive or negative, I no longer am.

I know this is the direction I need to be going.

Not lost, but still not found

The last 90 days have been an incredible journey of self reflection, gut checks, thinking and exploring who I am and what I should be doing with my personal and professional life.

I’m not exactly lost, but I haven’t yet completely found my calling. Or at least fully realized it yet.

That’s why over the last 90 days I’ve been blessed, humbled and overwhelmed by the support from my first set of clients across a number of engagements. These great set of folks have shown faith in my abilities, belief in the future I would like to build and allow me to deliver value each and every day.

Thanks to them, I’m finding my way and Pitch + Pivot is off to a great start. If you’re reading, you rock.

Thanks again.

Zero to this is a business in 90 days

Over the last 90 days I’ve been fortunate enough to engage a number of companies about their sales/marketing problems and have secured a number of engagements that have me booked through 2014.

From trainings to strategic business planning, building channel sales programs to executing on SEO campaigns, there’s been no one size fits all package yet, but the work is fun, pays the bills and is making some profit for reinvestment into growth, new ideas or a rainy day.

It’s times like these I thank my lucky stars for a lot of the work done early in my career. Without the opportunities made available, constant hustle and that darn blog I started, I wouldn’t have had the network to tap into and turn Pitch + Pivot into a real business, with real potential to grow beyond initial expectation, this quickly.

We’re no McKinsey or R/GA, but are delivering results, changing mindsets and transforming the way our clients do business. I don’t see Pitch + Pivot stopping its current growth any time soon and I said “we” just now because I am looking forward to bringing on my first full time employees over the coming months.

But before I get to all that…

The next 90 days

If I thought the first 90 days went by fast, was a little hairy and often chaotic, the next 90 days should put me to the test. At least that’s how the plan is looking.

While successful in closing a number of engagements, it has become very clear that solo consulting, advisement, mentoring and even project execution has its limits. Nothing wrong with that per se, because it’s a joy handcrafting everything yourself, except with my personality type, I know it will lead to burnout quickly.

After reflecting, I realized that I’d get the same joy out of helping others build their own practice, in the same areas as mine or in complementary ones to increase Pitch + Pivot’s offerings. Plus someone to help cover so I can take a vacation would be nice.

Soon I will begin recruiting for some positions and contractors to assist me in the execution of certain projects, freeing my time to be spent on the most critical client tasks, while also allowing for some time to build complementary offerings to our consulting services. Over the next 90 days, I will also be spending my early mornings and weekends creating standalone education and training products.

It’s my hope that these products eventually forming the basis for a much larger idea that’s been swirling around in my head for a while now.

While I’d always like face-to-face sessions and project execution to be a part of what I do, but in reality I also want to find ways to reach and help more people. I know this can be done through writing, audio and video.

The next best thing to me or someone smarter than me in the flesh. From a Pitch + Pivot business perspective it also makes sense to have a lower touch, more scalable service at a price point any business, or person, can afford.

Okay, I’m starting to sound a bit Tony Robbins here. It’s not like that, I promise.

Stay tuned for more on this as it unfolds over the coming months.

Keep in touch with my first product

One product that I have had wanted to create for years was a newsletter.

I like to write and every day I read so many articles, send to my social media feeds and share privately via email. I thought that it’d be valuable to pull that all into a newsletter on business sales, marketing, development, optimization and transformation.

Design it around a monthly topic with original commentary, editorial on that topic and you’ve got a resource you look forward to receiving.

Well, that’s what I am building. It’s almost finished.

You can sign-up here. You’ll be smarter and more successful if you do.

More details to come to those who sign-up, but expect the first email to come near the end of this month.

I appreciate your support.

Thanks for reading, don’t hesitate to connect

We’re already at 1,061 words, hitting my quota for the day. I guess that means I should wrap this up.

And thank you for reading through to this point.

I hope you have a successful start to your quarter and I look forward to hearing from you in the coming weeks.

Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter or Google+.

All my best,
Garrett

P.S. Don’t forget to sign-up for the newsletter either. It’ll be the best way to stay in touch with me.

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