A lonely journey…
They say, entrepreneurship is a lonely journey. Customer is upset? I’m the customer service manager — my responsibility. Have a disgruntled former employee? I’m the HR manager — my responsibility. A key partner feels wronged? I’m the CEO — my responsibility. Cash flow is tight? I’m the CFO — my responsibility.
I recently had a stressful business experience. It was the usual hectic December, I had been exhausted since November, which happens at the end of every school year. I don’t normally get stressed in business, but this recent experience tested my limits. I was negotiating with an Australian tutoring company to give them access to our white label curriculum content. Strategically, we seemed to agree: we both had goals of delivering fun, accessible, future-focused skills for children. However, we disagreed on delivery and risk allocation. In my view, they wanted me to carry a lot of risk for little reward in the short term, whilst they received a significant return whilst carrying low risk in the short term. This would shift, according to plans, in the long term with greater return for both us. This imbalance in the short-term did not feel right. What made sense to me and what I would have preferred is an incrementally increasing reward and equivalent risk over time.
It is easy to feel alone when you are a sole founder running your own business. The buck stops with you. I know that it is my responsibility. Yet I also recognise that when I don’t know very much about a topic that I can take it as an opportunity to start learning. So I reached out for help to my fellow Fishburners members.
First stop, I spoke to Shaw, co-founder of Arkava and Fishburners’ Community Champion Award Winner 2018. I can always count on him for moral support. We had a quick chat and recommended I speak with Duncan and read the book on negotiation “Never Split the Difference”. The book gave me a practical template of how to engage in negotiations.
Next, I caught up with Duncan, CEO of Matchfit.io, at the Solo Founders meeting he runs every Monday morning. Straight away Duncan opened a spreadsheet and we started creating a quick financial model so that we could see what different scenarios look like. Thank goodness for Duncan!
Speaking with Cat, Community Product Manager at Fishburners, at lunch in the kitchen she mentioned that Brett, in Fishburners Sydney, was facing a similar situation with licencing his products. So I sent Brett a Slack message and over a quick phone call he helped me better define for myself what my values are so that I can better judge the type of people and organisations that I want to work with. Because making money is not everything, especially if it is misaligned to your values.
I tracked down Guy on LinkedIn, Principal Wealth Strategist at Whole Wealth, and sent him a message. Guy’s a virtual Fishburner member, but he was so kind as to drop by the Fishburners office one day to have a chat. His insight into my situation was to do research on publicly listed companies in my space and see how much they spend on R&D. That’s one way of identifying how much a company might value what we do.
I reached out to Simon, Founder of The Ageing Revolution and an expert in partnerships. We realised we were (almost) neighbours. So I dropped over his place and we had a look at the details of what this partnership deal currently looked like and how I would prefer it looked like. It helped me paint a detailed picture of what I would say yes to. In addition to his advice, I also got some of Simon’s homemade chilli sauce made from his own homegrown chillies. Delicious!
I was hoping to turn the painful negotiation experience around to create a win-win solution for both parties. I wanted to create a partnership that I could be energetic and enthusiastic about. A partnership where I wanted to see my partner win because that would mean that I was also winning. I want to end my story with, “It was a long hard slog, but an adventurous journey and many new friends made, and in the end, we created a mutually beneficial partnership that we are excited to launch.” But that is not how it went.
I made the decision to walk away. It was tough, it felt like I was walking away from long-term, scalable, near-passive revenue. I sent a polite and professional email and wished them all the best. Interestingly, three months later, I haven’t heard from them.
Now, looking back, I can confirm that it was the right decision. An ongoing partnership under those conditions would have been untenable.
I could have chosen to go through this challenging negotiation process alone. I chose not to. I asked for help from people who had the skills I knew I didn’t have. I am grateful for the community to which I belong and can depend on, for people who can whip up financial models, generous business advice, or a homemade chilli sauce.
