“You can’t change the world from behind a desk” ~ Gary Graham, Leadership Coach.

He’s right you know. What he added was that often people with sound business concepts that can make a meaningful impact spend a lot of time behind a computer. I will share a bit of my own experience as the Founder of a startup company. To take an idea from concept to market you can’t expect to get real feedback from prospective customers from behind your desk. You’ve got to get out there, folk. By this, I mean that you have to schedule appointments to show people something that you haven’t built yet. Sound weird? “How?!” we all cried when Annu Augustine of NedRock said “good luck with your customer meetings”. Annu’s course content for us was UX and agile product development.

Now you’ll never hear me saying anything other than “Go to market, folk. Tell or show (minimal viable product) customers what you want them to know and ask them for feedback.” Been there. I’d do it again. I’m a believer.

I recall how daunting this “go to market for market research” block on the enterprise development programme was for the group of Entrepreneurs on the Telkom FutureMakers programme in 2016. I was one of them. To my major surprise, I had the most fun engaging with real customers. Really, I loved meeting people who I identified as “the profile user” and “the profiled customer”. In hindsight, I want to say “duh”. Of course, they’d be interested. My company was started with the customer’s pain in mind and I have the solution.

Gary’s quote in a different context:

I’m a connector-of-dots so naturally, I’ve considered Gary’s quote and found that for job-seekers it is a little different. You can’t change the world but you can change your own prospects. I spent 4 hours yesterday and 4 hours today designing and executing a campaign to match the interests of prospective employers. The trick is to see yourself as a product, a solution to your prospective employer’s pain.

24 hours later and the result is 1 meeting. This does not mean that I’ve been successfully employed or landed a client as a consultant. It is definitely an indicator that a conscientious approach to job-seeking certainly tops the old ways of sending CVs about wildly.

It’s Wednesday and I want to wish you well with your entrepreneurial and/or job-seeking efforts. I wish that by the end of this week that the right opportunities come along.

You’re probably wondering why a Founder is looking for employment. You’d be right to have that question in mind but that’s a topic for a new story.