Derek Johnson, a former UW student turned away by the Foster Business School, has proved that age, experience and business degrees are not necessarily prerequisites for success.
Over the last couple of weeks we have gone through some major re-thinking about how we do things at Tatango. As I re-thought things, I realized we had to get back into the trenches with our users, making sure that we built a true, meaningful, and long-lasting relationship with each and every group that is using our service. This is why I hired a full time “Community Manager”, in which her only objective at Tatango is to make sure every potential and current customer is happy.
During this re-thinking, there was a pivotal moment, which seems like a no-brainer after the fact. This pivotal moment came after I grabbed a ridiculously thick marker and where everyone in the company could see, I wrote the lifetime value of a customer at all of our different price points. For example, our lowest plan at $19, had a year value of $228 (I know this doesn’t mean “lifetime value” but you think I’m really going to disclose that, come on). The minute I did this, things started to click within our company. Employees started to finally understand why I fretted over one missed call or even one support email which went unanswered because of the spam folder. The lesson learned, make sure everyone in your company, most importantly the people that have interactions with your customers, know how valuable every single one is. For our company all it took was a marker and big handwriting.
There are a lot of other changes happening at Tatango and hopefully over the next couple weeks I will be able to share a few of these with you and let you in on the results.
I was looking around the Tatango office and it struck me that not one person in our office today was there at the beginning or even part of the original management team at the company. Ok, I realize most people are going to say this is because I’m almost impossible to work with. They are right. Anyone that knows me or has worked for me, knows I’m a perfectionist, I expect 200% out of my employees and anything less isn’t tolerated. This can either drive an employee to become a powerhouse or crush them. This blog post however isn’t about how difficult I can be to work for. It’s to bring up the point that when you as an entrepreneur start a company, you have to take into consideration that there is a good possibility that most of the people you surround yourself with at the beginning won’t be around in the end (or even in the middle). Don’t believe me, check out some of the companies I highly respect (Facebook & 37Signals) and see if all of their original founders are still there…. nope. Actually at both of these companies only one founder remains.
So what’s the point? Business is like chess, you have to be thinking multiple steps ahead to succeed. I have been very lucky to have amazing advisors and legal counsel that made me think about these harsh realities and plan for this type of thing from day one. If not, we would have never made it as far as we have. Plan for the worst, expect the best.
A great response to this blog by Bob Pritchett, check it out.
When we started our company, it was all men. Since then 5 out of 7 hires have been women. The women we’ve been hiring are extremely ambitious, hard working and very creative, which makes me worried for the men out there. Men, listen very hard, we have to stop thinking that we are only in competition with 1/2 the population (other men) for the available jobs out there. The game has changed! From what I’ve been seeing, women are kicking our asses right now and it’s going to get worse, unless you start stepping up your game… because I know the women have already done so.
For the last six months, as most of you know, I have been one of 100 agents for Ford’s Fiesta Movement. After months of craziness, the movement has come to an end and will culminate on December 1st at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. Ford is flying me down for the celebration, which includes a sneak peak of the 2011 Ford Fiesta (I’ve been driving around the 2010 model), the movement awards ceremony and a performance by musical artist Parachute.
I’m stoked to see all of you who are heading to LA for the event! Twitter me if you are planning on it!
Was just interviewed by the guys at YourHiddenPotential. Very thorough Q&A - we cover some good stuff on young entrepreneurship, teamwork and mentoring. Check it out here.
