Tools and tips to help make your startup idea a reality?—?part?2

Ok, here we go. Third blog on this! You’ve got the idea and the team — covered in the first blog “My Startup Journey — Finding the Idea, the Founding Team and Always Learning”, you’ve got a little clearer on ‘the why?’, managing the to-do, market research, managing internal comms, gathering feedback, the company bit, name, logo, website, Google Analytics, Google Maps, newsletters and social media from the second blog “Tools and tips to help make your startup idea a reality — part 1”. This is a little rough and ready - so saddle up!

Now, I run through each of the following and share some startup advice:

• Customers
• Finding a property
• Funding
• Partnering
• Momentum (building it and sustaining it)
• Task management / completion
• Processes
• Press
• Complacency and failure
• Work / life balance and running a business with your partner

There’s then a brief run through at the end on how we still use startup friendly tools from the first blog.

But first, some context. It’s been seven months since the ‘Part 1’ blog (October 2017). A lot has happened and things are really going to ramp up in the coming weeks, so am doing this now! Why do I do these blogs? The short of it is that I think a lot of startup advice is given with the benefit of hindsight from people that have succeeded and are looking back, which inevitably gives a little haziness and also a possible rose-tintedness to proceedings. Alternatively, they come from people that failed dramatically (I go into this a little further below). I want to provide insights of what happened from the start and whilst in the midst of it with no clear outcome yet, particularly from the perspective of a non-tech startup (they do exist! Ha). Selfishly, they are a nice way for me to reflect and document the journey also - as will forget otherwise!

My startup journey could end up being a story of failure or success or nothing of note either way, but hopefully there are some actionable insights for first time founders along the way!

In summary, just to give some context for the advice to come, since the last blog we’ve (my partner Diana and I):

• Both went full-time in the business in October 2017, Diana was working through her notice period then, but we’re all in now!
• Spoken on a panel at a startup event with Virgin StartUp in January with the co-founder of MADE.com — serious imposter syndrome! Been asked to speak at another one with Hotel Elephant too — so must have done ok!
• Featured on Alex Chisnall’s brilliant startup podcast Screw it Just do it!
• Doubled / tripled volume of classes -> went from hosting classes 4 different types of creative class once or twice a week to 6/7 nights a week, multiple afternoons a week and 13 different types of creative classes— see what we’re now doing here.
• Quickly clocked up hosting over 1,000 lovely people while they got creative and got lots of positive reviews along the way — thanks everyone!
• Were listed as one of the best places in London to get creative over Christmas.
• Got filmed by and featured on Business Insider — 160k+ views.
• Hosted the likes of Moet Hennessy, Beefeater Gin, London & Partners, Lucky Generals, The Premier Inn, The Law Society and many more companies while they got creative.
• Secured a lease on a 2nd studio in the awesome and colourful Peckham Levels (home to 50+ artist studios, bars, restaurants, Peckhamplex to the front and Frank’s Cafe on the roof) and a little funding to fit it out — we’ll be fitting the space out over May 2018 (new challenge!) and launching there in June (all going well!).
• Revamped the website a little, hired and trained in a pool of great team members to help us and spent time on the boring but important stuff like getting Xero set up to keep track of finances — zzzzzzz (but useful).
• Got into more of a routine with exercise and leisure time. Our bodies will thank us when we’re old!
• Did a little blog for virgin.com and a digital detox one we did was re-tweeted by Medium.com. It’s the little things!
• Fallen even more in love with the idea of providing the creative space for people to express their creative side and gotten so much energy from friends, family and guests - thank you all!
• Had many ups and downs and lots more besides!

It seems like the above happened over years, but feels like yesterday at the same time. And the funny thing is, everything could possibly fall apart and unravel tomorrow! Such is startup life and running your own business (still feels odd saying that).

Granted, we’re only really 7 months into this now, but how have we kept going, which you could do too? Broad strategies, before I go into detail that we’ve done:

• Protected the downside / tackling challenges head on. What’s the worst that can happen? Have a little plan for tackling it. 
• Staying positive.
• Focusing on laying solid foundations for the years to come.
• Keeping your eye on your strategic priorities / long-term goals.
• Spending some time each week or month reflecting on progress made and goal setting.

Customers (in our case guests)

Never forget who they are, why they come to you and be as proactive as you can with them. 

Seek feedback, figure out what’s best for them. Basically, love them. Without them, you are nothing. With them, you can achieve great things.

For us, aside from doing the general things to ensure a class runs smoothly, we take a pause 45 minutes before each one. Then, a deep breath and think what’s the best we can do today to ensure people that come to the studio leave happy and relaxed, having learned and created something? We also get feedback forms at the end, to see if areas we can improve on, which we can action and document in our class checklists. We now have to instil a similar caring and proactiveness into team members we bring in — will update on how that goes in future blogs.

Fundamentally, for an early stage startup, especially in a digital (which is increasingly expensive) age, where word of mouth is absolutely huge, take as much care of customers as you can — any short term pain is generally worth it in the initial months.

It still amazes me every time a person or company comes to M.Y.O, or a birthday or hen party is celebrated in the studio. ‘You chose to come to us!? Over all the things you can do in London on a Friday!? Get out, seriously!?’.

I genuinely feel that way, but…

there is also a nervousness that things could go wrong, both of which energise me to do the best we can with our guests’ valuable time. 

Diana is an air of calm of course and in fairness has done the majority of the hosting :), but the balance of my energy being focused on the practicalities and Diana’s on bringing positive energy to the room strikes a nice balance. I’ve travelled for 2 hours to deliver kiln fired ceramics as was afraid the Royal Mail would break them after a guest had spent 2 hours carefully painting them. We’ll start to fail the moment we, as a business, lose that feeling, so we’ll be working hard to minimise the risk of it happening wherever we can.

So — never forget your current customers!

How to find a property for your startup

We decided at the end of 2017 that we wanted a 2nd site that we could use full-time. Currently, we share a lovely studio space with the amazing Sara in Borough. The search started during February and we latched onto the eventual site in late March, with the finer details taking a couple of weeks to sort out and us getting the keys on May 1st. So, how did we approach it?

• We got very clear amongst ourselves on what kind of site we wanted (condition, length of lease, size etc), where we wanted it, when we wanted it by (ideally the sooner the better as creates urgency all round) and what we could afford. It took a few viewings of places to get a sense for this, but that’s fine. Much like when you move house, it takes a few viewings to get a feel for what you want and in what location — treat this similarly.
• Articulated what we needed in a 1–2 pager, outlining what your business is about and the above info. Adapting it as we went. 
• Had a plan A, plan B, plan C, plan D…. Broadly speaking for us we wanted a space to ourselves for 6 months plus that was 700–1,500sqft, that we could call our own:
• Plan A — find a meanwhile space (typically below market rates due to lack of security of tenure as tend to be part of a re-development plan) within a 1 mile radius of our Borough studio through the local council or a meanwhile space platform (we ended up meeting a guy from Southwark Council after a kind intro from a friend (thanks Raj!) who was incredibly helpful, who mentioned the vacant property register that we got updates from (you’d be surprised what great properties local councils control), Network Rail (they own a lot of the railway arches and rent them out), property guardians (e.g. Live in Guardians) and sites like MeanwhileSpace.com. Luckily for us, the kind of business we are in has a lot of benefits to the local community, so is appealing to councils and meanwhile space projects — of which there are tonnes in London. See if there are any similar property platforms keen for your type of startup. 
• Plan B — Similar to above, but outside the 1 mile radius — beggers can’t be choosers!
• Plan C — Partner up with another company to share the risk and double the search efforts and access to connections.
• Plan D — Start looking at more commercial properties within 1 mile radius — which would require a lot more funding.
• I probably split my time on the property search 60:20:10:10 between each plan — it’s important not to hedge your bets on one plan as it may not work out.
• Circulate the 1–2 pager to people (adapting as necessary to the recipient) you think that can help with the search — from a Google search, friends, property agents or otherwise. Check in with them regularly to see if any updates — the property world moves fast and things can come and go very quickly, so keeping on the right people’s radar is crucial.
• Follow up on any useful intros quickly!
• Go to the companies / organisations that might have what you are looking for, MEET the people there face to face and keep them updated on the search so you’re on their radar. Sitting behind your keyboard will only get you so far, getting out there has to be done.

Other things we did:

1. Zoomed in on Google Maps in the target area to see was there anything obvious that could be suitable.
2. Multiple walks around the area looking at commercial properties for rent (helps get a sense for main local property agents too) and speaking to people at various properties that look suitable from the outside. Along with seeing properties we found via step 1. 
3. Telling everyone about our plan and what we were looking for, many useful intros / bits of advice came from that. Don’t underestimate the power of that and people’s willingness to be helpful. 
4. Contacting similar places to ours and seeing how they got their space and did they have any suggestions. Obvious, but again useful!
5. Kept stating the short timeframe (1–2 months) as created urgency in everything and was ultimately achieved in the end. 3 months might as well be next year buddy!

From doing all the above, we got about 40 leads / introductions, viewed about 12 properties and picked up a bunch of knowledge (I now know what ‘core and shell’ means!), so when the eventual opportunity came we were ready for it and sounded like we knew what we were talking about. I did try and engage with local property agents, but got the impression we were too small fry for them (probably true).

In the end, a good friend of Diana’s (thanks Liv!) suggested we contact Peckham Levels as she was there recently and thought it was cool. We did immediately after researching them to understand if it may be the right fit for us. We met the commercial director Aoife (a fellow Dub!) there the following week and after it became clear our visions aligned and the space would work at our budget, we started working towards closing the deal. In the background, we’d also moved flat from West London to South London (Camberwell) as were convinced we’d find a second site South of the river and wanted a shorter commute between the 2 studios and back to base (home). We set ourselves up to succeed in the process and it eventually worked — even though technically it’s plan B! One studio is 15 mins away and the other is 25 mins from home, with them being about 30 mins from each other. Makes logistics a lot easier. 

Don’t rely on estate agents for your startup property search unless you have a budget for market rates, go on the ground, speaks with local council, similar businesses that are in the area and any local startup supports that may be in the know on local properties. 

This brings me onto...

Funding

Property ain’t cheap. We decided to bootstrap (self fund) the startup up to this point from savings and cash flow from the business. Initial logic at the time was that it allowed us to stay in control and figure out the business model first (spark the fire as it were), then get investment to help us grow really quickly (fuel the fire!). We also didn’t like the thought of blowing investor money on things we didn’t need, having to hire too quickly and / or giving equity away so early on. We wanted some time ourselves and pressure cash wise to figure out a model that worked quite quickly, whilst also figuring out could we work together full-time. YES WE CAN.

So, we had a think about the potential avenues of funding that could be right for us — the main ones available for us were (it may be different to your startup type) equity investment (in exchange for cash, the investor receives a percentage of your company) through an angel investor or crowdfunding, equity investment from friends and family or debt funding. At this stage, we don’t need much, so decided to go for some debt funding (a loan) through Virgin StartUp, which we eventually secured after uncontrollabe delays out of our hands, which will hopefully help provide funds to fit out the site and fund the business as the 2nd site takes time to grow. All whilst not yet losing equity in our business. It’s the right thing to do at the moment we feel, but each business has different dynamics. We’re happy to grow month to month over the next 10 years and own a lot more of the company than to give equity away too early. That being said, I suspect we will be looking for equity funding in late 2018 / early 2019 to fund a larger 3rd site, invest more in marketing and really ramp this up — provided the 2nd site goes well of course! Fitting out and properly launching that , while maintaining the other site, has to be the focus for the next few months. The main point here is, consider what YOU want to give up in return for the funds you need to take your next step and in the context of your business and where you want it to go. Seek advice from people and read up on it too….

Don’t feel you need to know all the answers. 

Partnering

To date, we’ve spent fairly limited amounts on marketing — c￡150pm on Facebook / Instagram ads and some flyers have been the main things. We’ve spent lots of time, however, on customer service, newsletters, social media etc. Word of mouth has been huge for us, along with working closely with partners. The main advice around partnerships is figure out what YOU CAN DO WELL FOR THEM first and then what they can do for you. The smaller you are compared to them, the more you will potentially have to do to get some of the impact they can provide you with — marketing, clients, staff, customers etc. Aim to provide serious value to them and that you get something really meaningful in return. Some quick examples of how we have leveraged partnerships, where both sides win:

• We work with a few brilliant listing platforms like Funzing, Obby and Creoate. We invited them to come and get creative with us (on da house!), which turned into a great opportunity to get to know them properly. We keep in regular contact with each other, exchange opportunities / learnings and are proactive as issues arise. The crux of the relationships are that we work very hard to put on enjoyable experiences for guests that book through all the platforms, so that the reviews on their platform are high. In exchange, the listing platform earns a commision for each sale on our behalf. We want more sales from them, they want good, highly rated creative experiences for their website. Everyone wins when both sides keep that in mind and together they account for a significant number of our ticket sales! We couldn’t do what we do without them. It’s kind of like outsourcing sales and getting to work with a great, smart, cool, team too. If you are thinking of doing your own creative learning experiences, check them all out.
• A local creative studio for full-time artists called Hotel Elephant have membership based artist studios and do regular events to support creative businesses. We promote and support each other on events, mention each other on social and newsletters and have sourced some great teachers for our classes through them. We’re also going to speak at one of their events next month on setting up a startup. We tell each other about opportunities too. 
• Feedr is a delicious group food delivery startup. We cross promote each other online and with potential customers, along with exchanging discounts and prizes. We work with a lot of companies, as do they.

The above is very light touch I know, but works for the stage where we are at (we’re still very fresh!). The hope is that the relationships get deeper in the months and years ahead. Basically, don’t be afraid to partner up and support other businesses even if you’re fresh, so you can help each other get closer to each others goals. Nobody is interested in the long run in a relationship (business or otherwise) that is too one sided. Start with a small, easy, mutually beneficial action in the near future if it makes sense for both sides and see how that goes. If it goes well and you enjoy working with them, do a little more. Repeat. Don’t overcomplicate things at the start with huge partnership plans and ideas. After meeting them and if you like each other, agree on the meaningful action quickly. Then do it. If you can’t agree something that is clearly beneficial for both side relatively quickly — say over 2–3 weeks — it may be best to move on and devote your time to other relationships that could happen quicker — unless you really believe it will happen and is worth the hours you put into it. I am not talking ‘sales’ here, this is partnering.

Momentum breeds momentum — HUGE

As stated, this is HUGE! HUGE I tells ya. Every scrap of momentum you get, articulate it clearly! Think of it this way. Every startup is usually competing with some sort of huge multinational company. The big company has no doubt been around for years and have millions (potentially) to spend on marketing. You’re a little startup of less than a handful of people and will hopefully be taking customers from them or doing something so new people haven’t bought it before. A certain amount of prospective customers love new things and are willing to give them a try, so will buy from your startup quickly. Others, need lots of assurance / comfort so they feel they aren’t making a bad decision — which is completely normal. For both types of customer, seeing what momentum you have will help hugely! It could be things like your first customer, first BIG customer, passing a milestone (hosting 1,000 people was huge for us), celebrating 1st team member, getting some press coverage, getting funding, new product, new place etc etc. Telling people you meet (potential partners, customers, staff), stating it on your website or in your communications channels isn’t bragging, it merely provides an update, along with positive re-enforcement that if they decide to buy from you, it’s a good decision (which it should be if your product / service is good and adds value). Never lie about momentum, I think that’s just not fair, but celebrate and communicate the little and big wins early in your journey and throughout — there is enough downs to balance them out. If your product / service adds serious value to customers / guests (in their eyes, not yours!) more opportunities will come your way and keep the momentum going. It’s kind of amazing how momentum works. You must believe in what you are doing and keep articulating your vision for your startup as you go and be receptive to feedback — magical things will happen, I promise you.

How do you know if you are building momentum when you can’t see the impact?

From a founder perspective it’s great to have a list of things that have been done, so you can look back on it and get energy from it. I tick as complete all non-trivial tasks I’ve set out to do at start of week or which came in and had to be done in Asana. It’s helped me pull together info for this blog, but also provides assurance that there isn’t much more I could be doing as a lot has been done — some of which the impact may not be seen for many months or even years. As a founder, a lot of mental energy can be burned by worrying about things you haven’t done, rather than…

getting energy and a boost from things you have done! 

There will always be things on your to do — regularly reflect, (re)prioritise, then just chip, chip away at them. Try not to spend energy on worrying, use the energy to work through things and look back at how far you have come. 

Task management and completion

The urgency of completing an important task properly should increase the closer to getting it done you are. 

Read that again. The urgency of completing an important task properly should increase the closer to getting it done you are. The aim should be to finish or make progress on 2–3 impactful tasks per day at least, which turns into 18–21 per week. It all adds up! This is aside from day-to-day stuff. I’ve worked in quite a few places and have seen the complete opposite happen. People spend 10 or 20 good quality hours on something over a couple of weeks, then just spend the minimum to get it over the line and /or don’t spend the time to get the buy in that is required to make it a success - really reducing the impact of the work, wasting the good 20 hours and not adding a solid block to the business. There are tonnes of non-urgent tasks that will seriously impact (for the better) the growth opportunity of your business if done properly — this is relevant to them. Researching a new system for 6 hours and then 1 hour implementing it to a minimum standard won’t move the needle of your startup upwards. Spend whatever time you can doing it properly, finish it and move on in knowledge you have added another solid brick to your startup. I’ve used this analogy before, but consider thinking of your startup in blocks. You want to lay a solid foundation in the initial months and years. Is this tiring to do, yes, but will it really help your startup in the long run — YES. Last note on this. The expression ‘perfect is never done’ is bandied around a lot in startup land. I believe in it, but think a lot of people use it as an excuse to do sloppy work. 

There are big gulfs between ‘ok’ to ‘good’ to ‘really good’ to ‘perfect’. Try not to forget that — still be really good whenever you can.

Where possible, keep things super simple!

Complicating things isn’t impressive or smart. Only add more complication if absolutely necessary, if there is a clear system around it and sufficient resources to maintain it. An example, to help. For managing finances in the initial months, we just checked the bank balance regularly, had a spreadsheet tracking expenditure and made sure we had a folder in Google Drive for receipts and invoices which we tried to properly label and date. Super simple, probably even too complicated (but didn’t want to end up having to spend 3–4 days going through everything!). If bank balance went a little low, we put more effort into marketing or drew on our savings! Zero forecasting. Now, as things have stabilised a little, we use Xero to maintain transactions and are starting to use it for forecasting income / expenditure for future months more. It was a pain loading everything into it after a few months of transactions (even after saving things pretty well), but was worth it and helped with securing funding as we could print out some fancy reports. We could have set Xero up straight away, that is probably the recommended thing to do, but kept it quick and simple, so we could focus on the product and seeing if people actually wanted it. My boring accounting background knows the value in properly keeping track of finances, but was a time and place to ‘professionalise’ it, which for us wasn’t the priority in the initial months, so just didn’t worry about it.

Do things with the future in mind — “Future Proof”

This takes a little more upfront time, but saves TONNES of time in the future and will help you make step changes in your startup.

• Use correct folder names and relevant subject names for documents — think about if you were bringing a new team member in, would they find it?
• Review processes regularly (monthly) — think could they be improved.
• Have a little press pack — with your why (mission), blurb on what you do, little about your history and your show stopper pictures in high quality that give a sense of who you are and also your product / service / experience. I speak about press a little further below.
• Brochures / flyers — do them well, not half a$$ed as is a poor reflection on your startup. It may be the only time the person who got it ever sees your brand.
• Review customer / guest experiences online and offline. We do this at least once a month and have started to pay experts to help us, as have been winging it ourselves so far.
• Which leads me to — when you can afford to pay an expert to do a job you can’t do (and don’t have time to learn) really well, pay an expert. We got a UX expert to offer advice on our website for couple of hours and a graphic designer (thanks Louise!) is working on tweaking our logo and brand identity to ensure it is consistent and on message. Diana and I have looked at the website so many times now, we might as well be looking at a white sheet of paper! Friends and family have been great at offering suggestions too, but there comes a time when best to pay experts to support you on it. Tonnes of great and affordable startup friendly freelancers out there. Getting them also helps reduce back and forth between Diana and I — they help cast the deciding vote if we’re not in agreement!

Will stop this bit here. 

Press

Have a plan for dealing with press enquiries - even if as basic as below!

• Dealing with press has been a little funny so far. Our strategy to date has been to drop everything if an enquiry comes in and try and get whatever the opportunity is across the line asap! The media world, especially in this digital age, moves very quickly! Journalists are under serious time pressure to generate good content, so make their lives as easy as possible and deal with them as humans. So, we’ve basically done everything we can to accommodate any press opportunities and have built up a little bit of a press pack to help with future ones. Main learning has been to prepare for a landslide of enquiries, but not expect anything at all (it may never go to press) and keep other marketing things going as normal. As mentioned, it may be handy to have in your press pack a narrative on your business, your “why”, how you started the business and what to achieve, you best selling products and descriptions as well as your best hi res photos in an easy to find folder. 
• Where you can, be proactive. Keep an eye on #prrequest #journorequest hashtags on Twitter (although that is quickly getting saturated) and see if there are any requests appropriate for your or if you can help the journalist out on them by linking to people you know that may benefit from it. It is important to always be helpful to others where you can, without expecting anything in return.

Have a plan for dealing with demand post big press coverage

• I would suggest thinking for an hour or so about your system for handling a large volume of enquiries once the coverage goes live and customer interest is (hopefully!) flooding in. For example:
• - a simple automated mail saying “we’re dealing with your enquiry asap as are experiencing an influx”. If delays on responding, try to automate it a little and be honest. Communicate.
• - a spreadsheet to track enquiries/orders vs stock and lead times to deliver.
• - Teeing up a couple of friends / staff to be available during this time to help fulfill the enquiries

Pre-thinking the plan will help you be a little less flustered if an influx does come too — you’ll be able to focus better on meaningful action. 

Generally, most press can be a slow burn impact wise, but is always a useful thing to include on your website and in announcements — it adds credibility and comfort (as mentioned above). It’s also nice to think 100s or 1,000s of people may have read about your startup. Over 140,000 people have seen the recent Business Insider and Funzing.com video on M.Y.O across various channels — but I won’t be driving a Ferrari any time soon! Was cool and a nice thing to show the family, but onto the next thing quick! (after sticking it up on the website, of course). 

Complacency and failure

I’m definitely growing to find that there is zero place for complacency in startup land — not that I didn’t think that anyway. If we take the foot off the gas during the working part of my week, it always comes back to bite us, always. You’ve jumped on a speeding train (hopefully!), it needs the fuel to keep going (your time and team’s time, along with funding in most cases) — so you just have to throw everything into it. The momentum mentioned above quickly slows if you don’t.

Quick note on failure.

There is so much talk out there about ‘celebrating failure’, rather than setting yourself up to succeed. Failure is inevitable in parts of your business, it can happen daily and you learn from it of course, but the aim is to set yourself up to succeed by being agile, persistent and proactive to customer feedback, but also building a business for the future, worrying a little about the dangers to your startup and trying to growing more each month — generally speaking. 

It’s almost getting to the stage where ‘failure’ is cool. It’s great that it’s not deemed embarrasing, because it isn’t. It happens, but it’s not cool and so much of it appears to be avoidable. But, if nothing is done to counter it and ignorance is deemed the best path forward, it can be inevitable. Work on setting yourself up to succeed and it’ll reduce the risk (it can never be eliminated) of a catastrophic failure to your startup! If you do fail, at least you know you gave it your best shot and drew on all the resources at your disposal.  

If a corporate booking enquiry doesn’t come through, I think about it for 5 minutes — what broke the deal?— timing, product, price, try and get feedback, then move on and learn from it. It happens. If it keeps happening, look at the process and try and fix it — get an outside opinion if necessary. Don’t fear failure, it happens all the time, but be pragmatic about it, move on from it, but reduce the chances of it happening by learning from it when you can. Hopefully some of the advice in this blog helps us both on that front!

Try not to use ignorance or insufficient planning as an excuse for failure on an avoidable issue, particularly as there are tonnes of brilliant supports, events and mentors out there for startup founders. Check out the likes of Enterprise Nation (we’re a proud member), startups.co.uk, Startup Britain and many many more. I have further resources in my previous blogs. Continuous learning is a key part of being a founder, it’s impossible to know what to do all the time. I haven’t properly done it before and still haven’t, so try not to stop training after winning your first league match (launch of company) — there’s plenty more games before you get to win the title (eh, IPO? or just making a happy living from a business you’re passionate about, which is cool)! etc etc. Anyway, I digress.

Leisure time, targets and work/life balance

Which leads me, errr, nicely to my final bit — leisure time. What’s that? Ha. It’s important to take breaks and relax. Since we went full-time on M.Y.O in October, it has been very full on, with mostly 7 day working weeks, lots of late nights and early mornings. But, we made sure we took some time over Christmas to recharge, reflect and plan — the festive period was manic with classes.

Targets

We always had in mind to give ourselves 6 months (October 2017 to March 2018) to really see was there something in this business. We kinda knew there was, but like a relationship, you date for a while before committing to the years ahead! After the Christmas break, we set ourselves a couple of clear targets to achieve by the end of March 2018:

• Average class review being 5/5
• Finding a 2nd site
• Having a certain amount of cash in the bank. 

This fed into tonnes of to-do activities, but ensured we stayed focused on putting on brilliant creative experiences, grew location wise and figured out the business model that generated enough cash to keep going.

After March and on reflection of everything, we decided to continue as we love helping people get creative (hurray!) and are now able to pay our bills from it (hurray!), but not much more, mind, as most is re-invested. We also acheieved the targets we set. We kept doing the quarterly goals and now have a clear hard stop to the working week — Sundays — where possible. Finally, we properly sit down each Monday morning and agree goals for the week ahead, that are also partly fed by the quarterly goals and other things that are going on currently. A little more routine is what the business needs now, but also what our relationship needs. It can’t be all work (as fun as working is!) and no play. We’ve been doing it this way for a couple of weeks now and it is going well. A goal for this week was to finish the draft for this blog — so am doing it on a Saturday afternoon before a class tonight. Diana will kick my a$$ on Monday if it’s not drafted :). Agreeing goals and actions between us and keeping ourselves accountable a little more formally (we always did it loosely) is a good thing for us now as provides focus, it also feeds into our wanting to be more proactive, rather than reactive, on things where possible. We put the weekly and quarterly goals up on a calendar in our house and on Asana as a reminder. I’m already excited for the day off ‘work’ tomorrow, but also at the thought of getting stuck into things on Monday morning, when I’m all fresh again. In summary, things evolve, there is no status quo with startups. 

Work life balance

Jeff Bezos of Amazon dislikes the phrase work/life balance, as feel it implies a compromise is needed - which I am tending to agree with now. I get as much energy from working as not working, it's all one and the same really. Running a startup is all encompassing, but massive guilt which uses mental energy can be expended when worrying about not ‘working’, so you don’t actually enjoy the leisure time as much. Solution? Basically, when making a to-do for the week, be sure to include leisure time and think of it as just a normal part of your week. It’s a subtle difference, but thinking of it that way will reduce the mental strain of worrying about not doing — you don’t want to burn out and it's great to have fun and still meet friends and family along the way! We’re testing the hard stop to the week currently as allows a big chunk of relationship time each week, but that may change in the future. Spend some time getting comfortable on this as it will give you more energy in the long run. 

Lastly, brief recap on the tools and tips from previous blog and how we still use them now:

The Why — Has become even more important as we get team members involved, so the original thinking on that has helped. It’s also really helped us articulate our vision as we go along and acts as a constant reminder for why we are doing this — to help everyone get creative, so everyone can reap the benefits of it and a litte more colour is brought into the world :).

Research tools — Google Analytics, Facebook insights, Google Trends or Moz — we’ve started to use these more as we grow and to see what has worked to date. Google Trends is great for spotting potential creative class ideas too! We haven’t been going to that many startup events, as are cracking on with doing and most of our sessions are at night time — but many of the connections we had already made have been invaluable. Events are great when you are still in the idea stage, but now that we have a ‘thing’, we can just reach out to people of interest and see do they want to chat one to one. Any time I do go to an event, I always meet great people though!

Slack — haven’t used this as much as expected. Mainly used as a resource to store relevant online content I read in its various channels — e.g. property, marketing. This has largely been because Diana and I go out and live together — so we see each other all the time and just Whatsapp / calls when apart. As the team grows, will no doubt evolve from mini-Whatsapp groups back to Slack. Is good to centralise things. 

Video calls — Skype, Google Hangouts or Whatsapp video are generally rubbish. We used them a lot during interview process for new team members. Will try Zoom next time if it’s easy for others to get. 

E-mail — still using shared Outlook inbox (hello[at]...). Working fine so far, but will need more specific accounts very soon as team grows. 

Storage — upgraded to 100GB of Google Drive storage, costs $1.99 a month and is a little cheaper if you pay the full amount in full. Worth it. 

*top tip* I do back it up on an external hard drive every couple of weeks — do that too just in case. Useful if internet goes down too!

Calenders — mainly used Google calender (linked to hellomyoplace[at]...) as syncs with a few things and other people easier, rather than the Outlook calender (hello[at]...). 

Surveys — we’ve moved from using Survey Monkey to Google Forms for surveys, just found it a little more straightforward and easier to access. Main bug bear on Google Forms is not getting a notification when someone completes it — please tell me how? We use it for group booking enquiries and for figuring out what the creative membership model could look like. 

Company stuff — a year after the companies registration date, you are obliged to complete a Confirmation Statement (previously ‘Annual Return’). Basically re-confirming shareholdings and some company info. Easy to do it online, once you have set up your Companies House Web Filing account — I suggest you do that. The HMRC site is generally great for info. 

Company logo — We’re now getting that made up professionally (thanks Louise Hill) in various formats and so that it looks better if in a small icon. Watch this space. We’re also getting some branding guidelines made up, will help to ensure consistency and make things easier in the long run. 

Website — we’re still happy we went with Strikingly. Helpful chat box, lots of useful info, even had a GDPR compliance switch — great. It’s easy enough for website novices for us to use and has a nice, fresh look to it which fits in with our brand, we think. Just today, I updated all the alt image tags on the website to help our SEO — see their blog on SEO tips here. Aside from selling some gift vouchers on it, we don’t use the e-commerce side much — will tackle that next and see what it’s like!

Social media — Facebook and Instagram have been main focus. Diana has just been natural with posts and we’ve used images of the amazing things people have made, mostly, as we’re damn proud! We use Instragram / Facebook stories a lot more now — evolving a little more from using the platforms to document things that have happened, to using them as a platform to show what is happening ‘live’.

Listing properly on Google Maps, Bing Places and Yell have been great. Helps people find us! Also good for SEO. Never did the Apple one — like everything with Apple, you need an Apple X,Y and Z which I didn’t have time doing. 

Newsletters — we continue to use Mailchimp for this. A lot of e-mails go into people’s spam folders or promotions tab in Gmail, but can’t think of alternative. 

Anyhow, that’s it for now, if you got this far I commend you! I hope some of the above is useful. Here’s to the next few months for our startups — ONWARDS AND UPWARDS WE MARCH! CREATIVITY FOR THE WIN!

Sam

I’m co-creater (with Diana) of M.Y.O, a creative space for adults in London, where you can make things, have fun and enjoy the mindfulness benefits of being creative through arts and crafts. Think of it like an art gym for your creative muscles! If you’re interested to find out more about M.Y.O and our journey, be sure to follow me on Linkedin / Medium, subscribe to the M.Y.O newsletter here and follow us on Facebook or Instagram.

With thanks to Mammy (still not on the payroll, but soon!) and Diana M. for reviewing / editing and both just being amazing people.