Making Unreasonable Requests

Laurie Brown, an experienced entrepreneur and former CEO of RESTORE PRODUCTS, shares tips for aspiring entrepreneurs about how to pivot and achieve their goals with confidence.

Photo by fotografierende on Unsplash

My father took his company from zero to hero, printing national magazines in a small town in Minnesota. As a witness to his success, I thought it looked easy! Only one problem…I was a woman, and I was Minnesota nice. I wasn’t raised to ask for what I needed, much less to make the unreasonable requests required of me.

So when I got to Springboard Boot-Camp in 2003, I knew I had a lot to learn. The pitch itself wasn’t so intimidating — it was the “ask.” Asking for money from family and friends, and eventually complete strangers — both were equally taboo in my world. So how did I navigate my journey? Here are a few tips that helped me along the way.

1. Make unreasonable requests. I finally accepted that I might always feel uncomfortable asking for money, whether from an investor or a prospect. Yet, it was critical to my job as CEO. So, I got clear about my motivation — my mission and my vision. For me, I had a business idea that could slow the trashing of the planet. And I had a great solution, so why not? Maybe your motivation is saving lives, or making money, or launching the next technological advance. Whatever it is, boldly make your requests, a lot of them, however unreasonable they may seem. And let your mission and vision be known. It will align you with the right customers, employees, vendors and investors. It did for me.
2. Be unstoppable. I’ve discovered that when I’m feeling stopped it is right before I’m about to have a major breakthrough. So how do I move past the paralysis? A couple of strategies: I select the easiest items from my to-do list, or I decide to just plow through the task at hand until the frustration lifts. Or, if I want to just walk away from my desk, I make a phone call to someone who can relate. Entrepreneurism can be lonely. For you, maybe taking a break is the answer, but I find that I need to stay put until I feel the energy shift. Entrepreneurs are creative beings and like other creative types we need to get in the zone. When you find yourself stopped, work your way through it or call for help. It very well might lead you to a massive breakthrough, but at minimum it will make you unstoppable.
3. Know your strengths. One of the times when I was stopped cold, I called a business friend. She gave me the name of her coach. His first assignment for me was to take the Gallup Strength Finders test. What I learned from the test was that my strengths weren’t at all what I thought. And, the recommendations weren’t anything about shoring up my weaknesses. Instead, I learned that I must refocus 80% of my time and energy on my top five strengths and leave the rest to my team. What a scary revelation. Like all startups, my team was painfully thin, and I was spending 80% of my time operating out of my weaknesses, not my strengths! Plus, I wondered how could I run a business with strengths like — Strategic, Communication, Futuristic, Ideation and Connectedness? I remember preparing for the most important meeting of my career — pitching Procter & Gamble to license my technology. What I knew from pitching the big soap companies was: 1) they are risk averse, 2) they do what they’ve always done because it’s profitable, 3) they say they care about the environment, but they really don’t (it was 2005), and 4) they are afraid of entrepreneurs (I could feel that when I met with them). So I put together a deck that would speak to who they were and ran it by my coach. This is not the right pitch,” he said. I had covered the patents (no risk), the business model (more profitability), and I left out anything about me (they’re afraid of entrepreneurs and environmentalists, right?). “But you’re not speaking from your strengths,” my coach insisted. “Don’t you think that one of the biggest companies in the world, scouting for the next big idea would hope you would passionately communicate about your strategic business idea that would connect them directly with the customer of the future?” BOOM! I rewrote the pitch, delivered it from my strengths and made an unreasonable request. We got the test! And from that day forward, whether I was leading my team, enrolling customers or pitching investors, I engaged them with my strengths.

I still practice these skills today, in my current career as a screenwriter. Almost every day, I unreasonably request producers to read my scripts. And when I get stopped, thinking that my writing stinks and I have no good ideas, I work my way through it. And always, I operate from my strengths. It’s my winning formula! I hope you find something here to add to yours!

Laurie Brown is an independent screenwriter working to take her first script, DISPOSABLE, to the big screen. Prior to this, she was founder and CEO of RESTORE PRODUCTS; a business that commercialized her patented invention that refilled branded cleaners in grocery stores. After RESTORE, Laurie worked as an entrepreneur, launching environmentally responsible products inside of existing businesses. She helped scale and assisted in the sale of the last company she worked for. She also participated in Springboard events in 2003 and 2005.