A few months ago I met Doug at Capital Cabal (a networking event)  – we didn’t get to talk much at the event, but we did exchange business cards.  From there we began playing the email game and finally ran into each other again at an Open Coffee Club meeting where we had the chance talk a little more…some additional email game ensued afterwards until we arranged to meet for coffee again at Starbucks.

Since the coffee meeting at Starbucks, Doug has been doing his homework on WhyGoSolo: he’s been asking me a lot of questions and making calls to his network and other people to gather information on whether or not WhyGoSolo is a solid concept and to answer the question “Is WhyGoSolo saleable?” 

Doug has been doing sales for many years – that is to say, he is an extremely experienced sales guy – the type that doesn’t sale you a darn thing, but rather helps you solve your problems whether or not he is the holder of the answer.

Every time I spend time with Doug I am amazed and fascinated by him and last Friday he completely blew me away.

Doug sat me down and he sold me on WhyGoSolo – I mean he SOLD me on WhyGoSolo – the way we need to pitch and sale WhyGoSolo to investors. I was stun by how powerful, simple and concise the pitch was…it was pitched in a way that anyone can understand it, with the value proposition clearly stated – income models easily quantified and it took him less than 15 minutes.

Doug wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know – I built and created what he was selling me with everything he told me in mind – the key is, he was selling me. 

I’m not a salesperson.  What Doug did in simplifying the pitch and the sale is priceless to us moving forward. The process he undertook in gathering information and narrowing it down to the strong key factors that matter is something that would have taken me a long time to do – his years of experienced in sales allowed him to get to the core of the message so that once you’re done listening to him you want to proceed or you don’t.

I didn’t find Doug – Thank God, Doug found me.  You can read about what you need and you can be advised on what you need at the early stages of a startup and still not have a clue what to do with that information.  I was blessed by having Doug show up, offer to help me and open up my eyes to what was missing. Note: Doug didn't sale himself to me - he proved himself to me by showing me what was needed and missing.

Luck. Every entrepreneur needs luck and your luck will come in different shapes and sizes.

I’m starting to understand more and more why investors invest in proven teams as I’m learning what a real startup team needs. I wouldn’t do another startup without Doug or a “Doug type of person” – because you have to know upfront – Is your idea saleable, and if so, how and to who? I knew WhyGoSolo was saleable, I had a slight idea to who but the exact how…and proving it; I had no real clue on how to go about it.

An Additional Thought

I'm sitting here today appreciating just how pretty cool of a journey the whole startup game is, not an easy one at all, but a cool one – meeting the right key people and learning from them is a lot of fun and rewarding. I’ve learned a lot about the development process and now I’m learning a lot about sales and additional business development “stuff”.

I’m the CEO – my job isn’t to know it all…my job is to build the strongest team possible and than empower the people on the team to work at the top of their games, learn from them, make the best decisions possible for all those involved and keep the train moving forward through finding additional resources and people.  Thankfully I’m lucky – I attract amazing people with very strong skills sets and it’s wonderful to watch and be part of the pieces coming together.