Back to School...

Last Friday was a great day!  Not just because of what you’re thinking… end of the week.. weekend.. party-time!, etc.. no, not that at all.  In fact, at 5:30pm, I found myself driving up the 5 freeway from Irvine to Glendale, locked in bumper to bumper traffic, fighting dense pockets of folks leaving town for the holiday weekend.  Thank god for the last two days to give me lots to reflect on during my long trip home.  I didn’t have time to think about partying, resting or just hanging out - much less the traffic jam I was in.

 You see, I spent the past 48 hours sitting in a classroom.  Most of you are probably saying, “I’d rather be sitting in traffic!”.  In most circumstances, I’d agree with you.  But this was different.  For 48 hours, I went way back in time… to a time where I had passion for an idea.. where I found every day an opportunity to enhance the idea and continue to make a business out of it.  I went back to a time where creating, inventing, building & managing the process was all consuming - and everything I enjoyed.  Yet somewhere along the way I got sidetracked.  We all do at some point or another I guess.  But to me, it was frutstrating.  Despite my efforts, I didn’t know quite how to get it back.

Then along came the Venture Farm Boot Camp (www.venturefarm.com).  Venture Farm is an Irvine-based venture capital firm that is focused on helping early stage companies get education about creating and running a start-up and in the process get better prepared for the prospect of raising cash.  Managed by VC industry veteran, Sid Mohasseb, the two day boot camp brings local entrepreneurs together to engage in real-life business building exercises that are intended to re-invigorate not only the individual businesses but the entrepreneur as well.  Let me say from first hand experience, it did the trick!

The two day experience was exactly what the doctor ordered for me personally.  Sid’s vast experience and incredible (and relevant) teachings allowed me to hone my entrepreneurial skills while affording me the opportunity to re-assess where we’re taking Service Omni.  More importantly, I found meaning to what we are trying to deliver with our product.

Finding the meaning, although it sounds trivial, was a very important (and missing) ingredient to the message we are trying to deliver to our audience.  Without meaning, we were not targeting our message - much less, delivering the right value proposition with our service offering.  Not to be confused with the Value Proposition, Meaning, in this instance, is what you want your audience to take away from their experience with your product or service.

We have a cool site that allows businesses to create a web presence for free, summarize their services, upload some pictures and videos and have access to some cool features.  But in our case, the meaning was still unclear.  The Venture Farm Boot Camp helped me to find that meaning.

Justice!  Simple.  Justice for smaller businesses.  An equal opportunity to compete on a level playing field.  In a space where there is so much clutter and where its terribly expensive to effectively get seen, we endeavor to give smaller businesses a chance to play with the big boys.  By creating a just-based system that combines marketing control and rewards for community feedback, we’ve enabled smaller businesses to get noticed more on merit than on paying the big bucks to buy visibility.  We’ve come full circle and come back to what started this idea in the first place!  We realized we were on the right track all along but we, ourselves, got caught up in the clutter game.

Now its time to get back to basics… to, as they say in the great state of Texas, “dance with the one that brung ya”.  The Venture Farm Boot Camp got us to remember what’s important.. it’s not so much about being the fastest in terms of growing the business, achieving the so-called “critical mass” of users as it is to be honest with ourselves and with our community.  It’s about providing real value to small businesses who struggle with getting visibility in an incredibly crowded arena - the internet.

And this is what we are going back to.  Back to the beginning and move steadfastly towards this common goal of creating opportunities where they might not have existed before.  I owe a lot to Sid and his mentoring.  He’s made me realize that it shouldn’t be a struggle to produce a real meaning - that it should come from the heart and, more importantly, from a real desire to make a difference in what you offer in a service.

Thanks Sid!