Starts & Stops for 2022

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Today. We are talking on the serial entrepreneur hour. Every here we go, Michelle, let me just give you a moderator there. And Rachel and Rachel and Michelle, if you don’t feel free to help moderate today, I I’m hoping that we can get as many people in the audience on stage as possible today, because we want to go around like staccato, like real quick, you know, tell us what your new year’s resolution is for your startup in 2020.

What are you going to start doing? And what are you going to stop doing? You know, it’s interesting because, uh, with all of my companies, we do a strategic planning session and we just did one that was led by Michelle for startup club. Um, and interestingly enough, the first exercise that we did in that strategic planning session was asking each member of the team, [00:01:00] what do you think we should start doing?

What do you think we should stop doing? And what do you think we should continue doing in 2022? And, uh, we put all of that together and it created the basis for our 22 20 22 strategic plan for startup club. And that was led by Michelle. So I thought like, wouldn’t it be interesting if we can get as many people on stage as possible.

So raise your hand. I don’t give you, I’ll give you a minute to think about this. Okay. But, uh, we’ll share some of our, uh, New year’s resolutions, Rachel and Olivia hope. Hopefully you’re ready for that, but please raise your hand. We want as many people on stage as possible to talk about what they’re going to start doing and stop doing in 2022.

Rachel, any thoughts about the topic? Hey, Colin. Yeah. Thanks for asking. Um, let’s see. Let’s see. I had to pull up my notes because we, in our brainstorming in our strategic planning [00:02:00] session, we came up with so much information, um, so many goals and let’s see, I’m thinking that I want to start putting you on the spot.

Yeah, you totally did, but that’s okay. I’m gonna roll with it. I want to start, um, I want to start some recognition. I want to like bring out some moderator badges profile rings for leaders and maybe even get into some revenue sharing with moderators and stuff. That’s very cool. And you know, what I had for my starch, I had started connecting more with moderators, my new year’s resolution and leaders.

We have no, those, those who are actively involved Ms. Me, either Rachel, those who are actively involved in the club at startup club become leaders. And so I thought it would be a great idea if we had one meeting per month with the moderators leaders on startup for 2022. Now let me [00:03:00] also say that I’ve been accused of, and one of my weaknesses is I don’t recognize the achievements of my team or others.

And so in 2022, my new year’s resolution for all my startups is to identify those things that members of the team do really well and let them know it. And so I’m going to put a metric to that. I’m going to take one person. Identify that person, either email talk to in person a zoom call, whatever it is I’m going to recognize their achievements.

And so that’s my commitment for 2022. If you’re in the audience, we want to hear yours as well.

Great. Thank you. So for me, this is, you know, this is always a really important question, not so much what I start I’m like totally add. And I love like grabbing onto new ideas for me. It’s more about what I [00:04:00] stop. So for me, I would say to really pick those top three initiatives and just focus on them with laser and tent, like what we also might call doubling down.

You know, there’s a lot of jargon terms for these things. You know, just, you know, and every business that I’m running or associated with, like what are those three top initiatives and just really staying on top of them and not letting a day go path that we don’t make progress on it. So that’s what I want to do is spend even more time focusing because then I feel like I’ll have time to entertain real opportunities.

And that would be the start being very, you know, pragmatic and analytical about what I’m actually starting. It’s not the case for, is this the case for a lot of entrepreneurs? [00:05:00] I think we’re all ADHD by nature that if we could somehow organize our time a little better, then we could accomplish so much more.

So I think that, thank you. I’m curious, Colin. I don’t think I heard you say, well, you’re going to stop. I know you like to start things like we do, but what are you going to stop? Okay. I don’t have it. I don’t, as, I can’t think of anything, I was trying to think of something for a few minutes. I think, I think that’s probably the hardest thing to do.

Um, we often talk in strategic planning that, um, you know, you see, when you do the start, stop and continue exercise, you’ll see the stop is the least most covered area because especially as serial entrepreneurs, we just want to keep doing things. We, you know, and I think what we needed to stop is overloading ourselves and become more focused.

And I think that goes to what you were saying [00:06:00] as well.

Absolutely. I agree.

So I think Jeff is joining us now, Jeff. We’re all just kind of round tabling at now. And, um, you know, if you’re in the audience, please raise your hand. You can see it’s a very open format and we’ll be able to feed off of each other and figure out where do we need to put our efforts, our resources starting and where do we need to stop so that we can be better at the starts.

So dying to hear what your thoughts are for 2020.

Hello? Thank you, Michelle. Yeah, I think, you know, I, I apologize for that came a few minutes late, so I’m not sure if you talked about this already, but I think that, that, um, Uh, great resolution for startups to have is really to focus on having a plan, you know, focusing on [00:07:00] having a plan that’s broken down as we’ve talked about many times, uh, here in the serial entrepreneur hour about, you know, breaking things down from an annual plan to a quarterly plan, to a monthly plan, uh, so that there are achievable goals and targets that are set up in achievable chunks.

And I know from my own experience, that’s something that’s been really hard to do for startups, especially in the early stages, because you’re just on this mad scratch. To get shit done. And you’re on this mad scramble with everyone doing things and roles at the early days, roles overlap. Um, sometimes they overlap too much where you don’t know who’s responsible for what, um, and that’s an issue.

So breaking down responsibilities, as Colin likes to say responsibilities, not tasks, you know, that would be a great resolution is to make sure that every thing that’s important in your business has an owner that has one person, not three people, not two people, but one person that is ultimately [00:08:00] responsible for it, uh, and accountable for it.

That doesn’t mean they necessarily have to do all the work, but it means that at the end of the day, the buck stops with them and they have to be accountable for it. So just even that, organizing that as a new year’s resolution for your startup, I think would have a huge.

Excellent. So I say we have Gabby on the stage. Gabby. We’d love to hear your thoughts, your plans for start starting and stopping for 2020. Yeah. Thank you guys. I’m happy to be here. So, um, we just made a huge restructure, like internal restructuring and to kind of echo Jeff there. Yeah. There’s been a real understanding of so many different hats were worn by so many different team members on different teams.

So sort of level setting. Okay. What did you actually do and understanding what the [00:09:00] responsibilities were love that a breakdown, verse tasks, and then going into the new year, actually creating new titles, new, uh, teams, uh, and actually putting people on, in different departments based on what they were actually successful in, in the title role that they had had.

Um, because we have this flexibility and we have a real, real talent learning where to that talent has true impact and where it can be best grown and where we can scale that talent, uh, into the new year. So for us, we sort of did a facelift and, um, and I’m, I’m, I’m grateful that there has been so much, uh, let’s say everyone is very encouraged by this type of internal change.

Um, and instead of, you know, going into another hiring round, really maximizing the current talent, um, and that’s our basic resolution at this point. Yeah. And Debbie, do you do strategic planning with your team? And if so, how does that look for 2020? Um, yeah, [00:10:00] so I’m not the, I’m not the founder here of my, of my startup, but, uh, there has been a lot of strategic planning done across, you know, the C-level, the mid-management and then different departments.

Um, and we are in some, some parts of our company, our go to market, other parts are a bit more, um, true. Tried and true. Um, but what, what specifically do you, are you curious about what the strategic planning question? Well, it’s interesting how you talked about getting the right people in the right place.

Right. And then how do you do that? How do you communicate that with the team members that, you know, we really don’t want you focusing on this, but we want you focusing on these other tasks and goals. Yeah. Um, I think that it’s never a surprise where transparency is a huge value of my company. And so every week at the all hands we unders we do a breakdown of all the it’s all data-driven.

So it’s really based on the production and the outcomes. And so if we’re noticing that, uh, let’s say on the sales team, there’s a, there’s [00:11:00] a heavy handed, uh, you know, outcomes based on some data analytics they’re able to provide, you know, maybe entry level sales could, is there any interest? So basically because we have these weekly meetings of transparency of the data, of the outcomes, and then every month we have check-ins, um, there is an open opportunity at this stage for people and people are aware that this is something we encourage, um, going into the new year.

Does that, does that make sense? Totally, totally, absolutely. Makes sense. Um, Olivia, we haven’t heard from you yet. Do you want to come in with their thoughts for 2022? Sure. I’m hearing you all has been like, oh, I want to add that to my list too. So on top of everything else that you’ve said, um, I think for the past year, or maybe two years with the pandemic and everything, we’ve worked really, really hard.

Um, maybe even more than ever. And I [00:12:00] think I would like to take some time at the beginning of the year to actually enjoy, um, the achievements and what we’ve been able to build so far. And I also want to keep dreaming big and I want to position startup club as not just the largest club on clubhouse, but I would love to be like one of the top entrepreneur digital content hubs of 2022.

Um, and of course, like as Jeff. Um, reminding us all creating an actual plan to achieve it. So going from community to content and keep growing, and I guess the stop would be, um, like stop stressing over things that are really out of our control. Um, and focusing on the things that we can do on our end.[00:13:00] 

That’s pretty cool. And again, just to reset the room, if you’re in the audience, put up your hands, have some fun, enjoy yourself, come on stage rich. We’d love to hear from you on stage as well, but to give everybody a minute to think about it, cause I know this was sort of putting everyone on the spot, you know, what is it you think you’re going to start next year or stop next year?

You know, what is it? What is your new re new year’s resolution for your startup? Um, I, of course, I’m going to ask Google, right? So I did. And it came up with, with 10 new year’s resolutions for your startup. Number one, review your business planning goals. We talked about that, right? I think that was one of the first things that we talked about here.

A number of us have talked about that. Number two, plan more, number three, prioritize number four, start a blog and update it regularly. I’m not certain about that, you know, but that’s interesting. That’s an interesting, uh, new year’s resolution. Here’s one [00:14:00] that we’ve not done at startup club, but we have talked about doing for 2022 is use social media more that’s number five, Michelle.

And maybe you can talk a little bit about that, Michelle, about how we’re going to use social media more because I know we just launched a Twitter account, a Facebook account, and a number of different areas. Oh, gosh, that’s a huge initiative for us because obviously, you know, we’re the largest club here on clubhouse, but my gosh, you know, there’s a huge universe out there globally people to connect to.

Um, you know, we spend a lot of time curating content, producing content, writing blog posts we’re even started a podcast, but what’s really more important quite actually at the end of the day, is that we actually get it out there for people to consume how they choose to consume it. So, yeah, where we’re in the middle of, you know, defining what our social [00:15:00] media strategy is, we’re in the middle of, you know, deciding.

’cause we don’t know. Right. You don’t know when you first start a social media program, we’re in the middle of, you know, laying out a test plan, trying to figure out what works. So that’s a huge initiative for us over here. We want to make sure that all the great wisdom and experiences that are shared to clubhouse, that we’re able to share them out to even a broader audience.

Um, in fact, I was thinking that we could start doing a recurring show here on startup club to take people along with us on our journey and building a social media presence. I think that could be really great for us to come and I’ll exchange ideas and share what’s working and what’s not working and help each other along.

So for me, it’s a really exciting time for us that we’re able to, you know, lift our head up, so to speak and take all this cool [00:16:00] content and start to really get it out into the world. So, you know, you should look for it at the beginning of the year. Um, I’m imagining that we could start doing some really cool show on, um, start, you know, start ups, entrepreneurs and social media.

So it’s cool. And I’m just giving the audience a little bit more time to think about their new year’s resolution, but number six, uh, and I know Michelle and I are doing this is attending network networking events. We’re actually going Michelle and I are actually going to C E S to work with P and G ventures to, um, do a number of shows live from CES, uh, the week of, um, the week that the show’s on, uh, number seven, learn to delegate like Jack, you talked about that one, right?

To delegate responsibilities, not tasks. Isn’t it true that as startup leaders, we’re always overloading yourself. Michelle, Jeff, you wanted to add something? No, I, I agree with you and it’s not just [00:17:00] overloading. It’s just, you know, delegating is really hard. When you’re starting out because you’re, if you’re a founder or a CEO, you know, it’s your baby, it’s your idea.

And more than likely you started out doing everything yourself, or maybe you had one co-founder in between the two of you, you did every task from accounting to fundraising, to marketing, to product development and letting go of those things. When you’re used to doing them is really, really hard and challenging, but it’s so essential.

You cannot scale your business if you don’t learn how to delegate. Um, really.

Yeah. And then number eight, get rid of what doesn’t work. Um, and it’s interesting. It’s, that’s the hardest thing to do, you know? Cause we all fall in love with our babies. Number nine, listen to your customers and employees, uh, listening is always key, right? Following what their needs and uh, and what their.

Their wants [00:18:00] are, and then lastly, documenting your processes. It, that sounds so horrible and boring, but I know, um, the E-Myth by Gerber, he talks about how you can scale your company by documenting processes. And that’s, that’s one of your keys to success. So I picked that up on the digital.com blog. We’ll add that to the show notes, um, and on the startup.club website on the recording, um, I thought that was pretty cool.

10 new year’s resolutions for your business. Rich you’re onstage. I hope you have a sense of what we’re trying to do here. Do you want to share with us what you’re thinking about? Hi Colin. Um, thanks for inviting me up. Um, I came on and, and, um, sort of, uh, God, I’m way late in some, some other, uh, situations here, but, um, to answer the question, um, of the room, really just sort of focused on customer discovery [00:19:00] and, and, um, yeah, it sort of goes back to your strategic planning piece and sort of flushing out the, uh, um, the customer discovery process and, and sort of picking up on some of the, uh, uh, new opportunities that, that hopefully that, that sheds, and then, um, building a strategic plan around our, around executing that.

So that’s my plan.

There’s a theme pair. There’s a lot of plans, right. That involved planning, I think now is, you know, of course, like the great time of the year to do that, but I’m curious rich, like, you know, what kind of like preparatory work? Like, is it formal for you? Is it informal? Like maybe there’s like three things that you could impart with us that you do to make your planning, you know, actually worth his time and, and, and how do you just make it.[00:20:00] 

Yeah, sure. Um, great questions. Um, you know, from a, from a high level, the, you know, the focus is, is really to ensure that, you know, we’re really focused on, you know, the, the most important customer and identifying, you know, who that is, and then understanding, um, their attributes and, and also, uh, their goals and objectives and the desired outcomes for them to go forward and, and their own business and how we.

Enable that, uh, going forward. So that’s sort of, you know, our, uh, our focus and, um, that’s a little bit of our, our methodology, but, you know, from, uh, to build on the method methodology piece, um, just really understanding the use of, um, the jobs to be done theory and really executing that to, uh, [00:21:00] uh, understand where the unmet needs are in the marketplace.

Yeah, that’s interesting. I don’t think I’ve heard the jobs to be gut be done theory. So could you tell me a little bit about that a little bit more? So jobs be done was, uh, a, uh, Clayton and Christian sons, um, Harvard business school, um, innovation, a few would as well as in discovery and along with Tony Ole work, um, and some of his works on what customers want, um, and really was sort of born out of the IBM ThinkPad days, uh, for any of you remember the, the ThinkPad and, uh, and how that came into the marketplace, et cetera.

And some of the, uh, successes that, that had, um, prior to Lenovo taking [00:22:00] them over from IBM. But, um, the jobs to be done is really to understand it and to identify the, the, really the key executer, um, within a job. And as an example, um, Get away from the theoretical practical, excuse me. So really a densifying in the case of COVID as an example, understanding the, the nurses and physicians needs for PPP or PPE and, um, yeah, maybe it’s something in that.

Right. Um, and, and understanding, you know, the use of sterilization potentially, and, you know, the case of, uh, a medical environment, et cetera, and then understanding who would be in charge of that, uh, ex execution of the. Um, sterilization and, uh, is that [00:23:00] housekeeping within the hospital? Is that a, um, a maintenance function is that, you know, some other function within the, uh, maybe the team or within the ICU, um, and who are the supporters and, and, uh, have that kind of, um, need and use.

And how’s it being, uh, supported today, you know, what are the next best alternatives to that, achieving that goal. And then looking at those, uh, um, outcomes that they have today and looking at the various metrics and understanding what those metrics are and where they’d like those metrics to be in the future, and then determining whether there’s a, an unmet need there and then go forward.

I hope that sort of gives you a high-level view of what. Yeah, it does. Thanks so much for sharing that. Yeah. It’s like, we like to think about creating jobs, but, but I think you’re right, like starting with [00:24:00] what the need is and then create the job around that is really important. Many times to be successful.

Okay. So we’re now over to David, David, what are you what’s in store for you here? What are you starting and stopping? What’s on your mind. Yeah. Thanks for asking Michelle. And thanks again, Rachel, for bringing me up. That was really an awful, have you, um, what’s let’s starting and stopping. Yeah. This is a new, uh, pandemic era that I think a lot of the clients we work with are starting all over.

Um, They’re not stopping anything necessarily, but they’re starting to create more content, but the content isn’t necessarily what they’ve been credited for the last couple of years, because they don’t seem to know what they don’t know. So they’re, re-examining their personas. They’re examining their industries.

They’re speaking, uh, [00:25:00] more often and more detailed to their current customers. And they’re also looking at the market and trying to make predictions on what’s going to happen to the market. Um, it used to be that a lot of the startups that we work with will kind of just throw spaghetti against the wall and see where it was going to stick.

I don’t think that they had the luxury of doing that anymore. There’s too much at stake. They’re running out of money. And so they’re looking at specifically, you know, okay. If. Deeper into the retail sector. How do they do that? And more so than not, they’re willing to spend money, um, on the PR in different ways than they were before.

They’re looking to spend money on sponsorships, um, sponsoring, um, articles, sponsoring a conference, uh, attendance, even paying to potentially get an award recognition. And, uh, so. Even though their budgets are thinning out. Uh, in some cases, not in all cases, they’re willing to [00:26:00] spend a little extra and then spend extra in deep areas.

So if they’ve had some, some success in the retail sector, they’re going to go to NRF. If they’ve had some sex and success, um, in the consumer sector, you know, like I heard earlier, they’re going to see us and they’re their fingers crossed that these are going to be in-person events and not virtual events because the virtual events unfortunately have not been yielding as many, um, as they would say, sales qualified leads as they had hoped in, in some cases, um, in, in other cases, Um, they’re, they’ve had more success, but also one last thing to note is that they’re also relying heavily on trends, um, like artificial intelligence, um, data.

I noticed that there, you know, for a client, for example, that was big in the, um, robotic process automation space, those kinds of messages are too complicated. They’re easing up on their messaging. They’re going for much lighter, much more [00:27:00] digestible and much more, Hey, this is what can help you today. And here’s how it works.

Here’s how we do it. More like story telling story booking more like, um, a film really in how it would kind of lay out the story versus, you know, a thousand page book. So there’s just some, some, uh, starts and stops that, uh, have been top of mind in our clients have been discussed. I think that 2022 is a key year for startups to begin to use technology if they’re not already doing so.

We talked earlier about social media and expanding social media presences, but there’s, you mentioned AI and there’s technology in so many different areas where that can help just start off. And, you know, especially myself being a little bit of an older entrepreneur, I tend to shy away from some of these new technologies.

Uh, we were just talking yesterday about, you know, handshake domains and FTS, you know, stuff that’s pretty far out there, [00:28:00] but they could have an impact. Um, Michelle and I were talking about, um, a very popular character on Milt on me. Ellington’s called Milton and they sat over 2.2 billion Giphy images used.

And, uh, we were talking, you know, could we actually create an NFT around that? Now this is something that we haven’t thought about, obviously. Until recently, but in 2022, if you’re not as a startup, you’re not looking at these technologies. Um, and you’re not thinking about how you can apply them. Then I think you’re falling behind.

I think that’s something that every startup needs.

Yeah, I agree. I’m not just to comment on that. Collin. I just posted something about this on LinkedIn this morning, I noticed a red that the global mail back in late November has been using, um, an AI new Sophie AI court’s publishing business. And for those of us, or, or anyone, you know, who’s in the [00:29:00] startup publishing world.

Um, Quite remarkable that they’re relying less on advertising Laurence subscription services. And that leads to personalization. This artificial intelligence system is actually personalizing the global mail for you, the reader or the readers. Um, and it’s, it’s quite fascinating what they’re doing and they’ve made this investment and deleted, even shared the, um, uh, increase, uh, in, in it might’ve been in revenue and in, um, in readership that they’ve been expressing and it’s surprisingly good.

So to your point that, you know, it’s worth experimenting with these different solutions and, and seeing, you know, what comes.

Yeah. One thing I hear that you’re saying, David is like COVID and you know, the changes in the economy, whatnot has presented an opportunity for people [00:30:00] to really try new. And gosh, there is a lot of new technologies, so that in itself is very different. Like the status quo may not work anymore. Right. Or maybe it does, but if you really want to move to the next level, what I hear you saying with your clients is they’re really investigating these new technologies.

So that’s definitely something to stand up and take note on.

All right, Kelly, you’re next up. We’re not going to let you off the hook. We know you’re one of the, uh, writers. Uh, are you, are you at the, uh, microphone now? Are you able to share with us your 20, 22 starts and stops? And I can see you at the window here and making you all nervous. Come on. Do you want it?

Give us a try. Come on. You have some fun. Tell us one thing. Okay. Hi everyone. Um, this is my first time speaking. Um, so my [00:31:00] staff, the 2022, um, is to actually think about moon. She may be my own stock-up, I’ve learned a lot from the people around me. Um, they’ve had a huge influence on me in the last few months, so that’s going to be my stuff for my stock.

Um, I’m going to go along the same lines as Olivia, um, just stop worrying, stop stressing, and just lead with ideas. So, yeah, that’s my, so that was your first time talking on, on clubhouse. That’s amazing. Like in you’re very articulate, very smart person. We appreciate all the work that you’re doing, uh, with all the articles that you write on startup.club.

If you get a chance that you hadn’t seen it, you should check it out. She’s she and many others here are doing a lot of, a lot of great work. Carol, thank you for coming on stage. Oh, thank you so much for inviting me. Um, this is I’m so happy to find your [00:32:00] club. I’ve actually been off of clubhouse for a little while, while I was getting busy with getting a startup started and it’s going to launch in the new year.

So that’s my start, uh, project and, and I’d appreciate feedback of anybody on, in our pre-launch stage. So I’m going to, I haven’t even added that to my bio yet, but I’m a people person. My company’s called people smart enterprises. And, and so the do’s and the things that have to be done. And I heard some comments earlier about the importance of knowing your people and in jobs and in, in filling the positions that you need to get the right people in the right jobs.

You just save so much time, energy, and money. When you know that. Personal behavioral style needed in any given job. So there’s actually a way not only to profile people, which is what I’ve been doing for 40 years, with thousands and [00:33:00] thousands of entrepreneurs and business owners that come through different seminar programs that teach entrepreneurs, unlike money in you and business school for entrepreneurs.

So those people profile themselves, but most people don’t know you can profile a job from the personality style or the it’s actually not personality where we’re measuring we’re measuring behavior work, behavioral style. Um, And it’s so important because each job has a particular perfect kind of a person that will be so happy doing that job.

And there’s people that will interview for a job and say, oh, I can do that. And I’m really good. Let’s say they wanted a job just to get paid a paycheck. And they said, oh yeah, accounting. Sure. I can do accounting. You know? Right. If they don’t know what the field is and that they don’t love it, they’re not going to stay.

So I, I [00:34:00] believe that if you motivate your people, you have to know how everyone is motivated. But we all are motivated differently. So getting to know your people, what turns them on, what lights them up, how can you acknowledge them? Bring out their gifts, honor their gifts. Um, it just makes a place of going to work, whether it’s remotely or in a office, um, together, people need to be heard and feel heard, valued and understood.

So I say people it’s, it’s everything. And, um, getting to know yourself and loving yourself and putting out your best gift is so important. I’m so happy to find this club because there’s a lot of, I can hear really great expertise that I will look forward to tapping into and supporting you with tools. If you need people to please contact me, I can supply you with things you can brand and put your materials [00:35:00] into.

So, thank you so much, Carol. Um, I have been a student of disk for 20 years and I’ve used it with almost all of my companies. Uh, we run the show by the way, Carol, every Friday at two o’clock. So you’re locked her hour. It’s also a podcast that you can now find serial entrepreneur club, our sword, but it’s a podcast that you can find out on apple iTunes.

Uh, and we would love to do a show on hiring great people, using profiling, hiring, and managing great people. And I think, you know, we’re going to ping you because I think we’re booked until near the end of January, Rachel, but I think the last week of January is open or the, but we’d like to have you back on to talk about this particular topic.

It is it, you know, if you, if you don’t know about profile. And you’re in the audience here and you’re running a startup. Then this is a show you, you, you definitely want to watch or listen to, I guess you don’t watch you sorta listen to and watch, but, [00:36:00] uh, it, it is truly amazing what you can do. And by understanding personality profiles, I was doing a podcast this morning, uh, for, for a company.

And they had asked me a question around this and I said, they said, what’s more important, the resume or the profile. And I said, it’s the profile? It’s the personality that fits in the job. The resumes are so outdated. It’s such an outdated concept, but when it comes to hiring people and how hiring managers simply look at names or resumes, but don’t look at the people and they don’t look at the position and they don’t connect the people with the position.

So you’re coming in here today and sharing that with this is great.

Thank you so much. If I can just be so bold as to say, if anybody would like to preview what we’re doing is people smart staffing and we’re adding a free disc profile, a little summary version. It’s not a complete one with all the graphs and bells and whistles, but [00:37:00] everyone gets a free. Disc profile, um, summary report so that we put them into the database with their style.

And then we have over 250 jobs already profiled that we know the basic style that goes so we can often match. Uh, the goal is to match people with the perfect job. Even, maybe not the one they thought they were applying for. If we have that service. So it’s not fully read it. The site is online, it says pre-launch.

And so any feedback and anybody wants to test it and see what you would like to see us add to that. That would be a real gift for me for the start of the year. So I’m the personality style expert on that or behavioral style expert. Sorry. And because personality is so many more things than behavior, but thank you, Colin.

I can’t wait. I would love to speak with you. I left you a message. Thank you so much. Thank you. And Kelly, we’re going to have to get you up there to do the, [00:38:00] this profile. All right. I picked on Kelly date. All right. Uh, Ruby son. Is that how we pronounce your name? What are you thinking for 2022. Hi. Hi, thanks Rachel, for inviting me on the stage.

Hi. Um, yeah, I’m at Ruby Simon. The location is the Silicon valley. Um, I’m actually a K to 12 technology educator. So of course, um, my scope and vision for next year is really focused on how our generation, the next generation learn what the application should have, give it to them. So for me, I think in 2020 second, the most importantly is, um, to get or case whatever I can influence the ways, uh, to learn the new [00:39:00] matters as a word to virtual world.

What should they learn? Um, you know what, in this Mo this morning, I happened to know, uh, from, uh, a, uh, website, um, the people are heated discussion about a dad, uh, deleted. He is nine year old sign man craft, um, account. And the nine year old son of course was crying. So he said he really wanted to keep this assigns to play the old style games, whatever outside or something, uh, like they played.

So there a heated debate online right now, uh, what to do our next generation real faced, uh, and. Uh, I mean, the parents should have facing at the same time, the meantime. So I think it’s not, um, like, uh, when, um, [00:40:00] the new, um, things comes in, our parents are really, um, uh, cut it off. Uh, I think we should think about more.

So for me, I think the most important is doing something in this area. Okay. Above you talked about the metaverse, could you just talk a little bit more about that? See earlier? Uh, I think it was David and I were talking about these new technologies and how startups need to embrace these new technologies.

And, uh, you know, a couple of old guys like us, sorry, David, I’m not calling you old, but it’ll get you. But the couple of, couple of us are thinking like, metaverse like, how the heck are we even going to one, you know, learn what that is to figure out how to bring that into our stores. Sure I can, uh, I can talk a little, um, that’s the matters.

Uh, the words really came from a novel, uh, into, in 19 and [00:41:00] 22. I forgot the name. Maybe you guys can Google it, um, with the time goes on. Um, I mean, you mean the imagination, you know, world in, in a novel is easy, but if you realize into a real war by technology, it. It needs a lot. Uh, that means like, um, our wifi speed should be very fast.

And our, um, the WHAS for, um, getting involved into the matters should be very, um, uh, well, uh, equipped. Um, and other than that, our operation in a system like windows in the metaphors world should be ready. But right now I seems like it’s just the get started. So that’s why Facebook can change their name, uh, into matters, uh, mighta.

Um, but, uh, should be, uh, in the [00:42:00] field will be our near future. We can realize something is all the things getting ready, especially our next generation. You can see our case, right. Um, Um, I think most of them spend like 30% of the time, at least, uh, in the show world every day, uh, in the work world, uh, there could be something like the real world.

They have their values. They even have their money system, like a nappy, uh, block can, um, uh, system like monies this term and they have their values tool. Um, the centralize of, uh, everything in that world is a little bit different with the real world, but the thing is, uh, our idols are as a parent, we should, uh, or we must notice this trend and [00:43:00] to be, uh, get ready to understand our case.

Um, by far I think we’re expecting airport. Um, to, uh, give us some of, um, future, uh, technology, um, like, uh, an example in the filter, but it takes a little bit time, even though Facebook has already changed the name. Uh, so we still, uh, on the way, um, all right. That’s awesome. I think I saw that movie ready player one.

It was a 2018 movie and it reminds me of what you’re talking about is like a virtual reality movie. David, I sort of, you know, insulted you there. Did you want to join in and talk to us a little bit about the Metro versus, well, I don’t know what your, what are your thoughts on that, David? Yeah, I just want it to say ready Claire at one before you did.

Uh, yeah, I, I agree. I think that’s right. You know, it’s [00:44:00] folks, folks need to be open to different technologies. And I think that that’s really the. And that’s something that we, we may not have been used to, but now, because the pandemic has turned everything upside down, you know, we have to take advantage of including NFT.

Yeah. I don’t know if you jumped off or folded into our business and our marketing dropped her just a second, but I really liked that as a resolution that we have to be open to new technologies in 2022. If I told you 15 years ago that, you know, I’m going to give you a digital coin and you got to pay me us dollars for that coin.

Uh, you’d be like, wow, that way I’m going to do that. Now today it’s $50,000 a point Bitcoin. Right? So the fact of the matter is we can sit there and say it doesn’t make sense and whatnot. You know, the [00:45:00] resolution is just to at least learn about it. You know, is there something to this matter verse, is this something that, that the metaverse can help with your startup and a Ruby saw it?

I thought gave us a lot of different ideas around. Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to jump in and cut you off there. Colin. I just wanted to quickly add that. And one thing to do this, to find the people who speak to it best, this is something that I’ve also gone to the last year. There are thought leaders in particular areas that really easily and clearly explain what this new technology is and what the applications might be.

And so for the whole crypto space, I would look at Shelly Palmer. Sally has written this fantastic book and just type in Bitcoin, Shelly Palmer. It’s a free book, or you can get the hard copy. I got, I just took the PDF off the internet, uh, cause he was distributing it and it tells you your. But if anything, about the whole Bitcoin crypto space that you need to [00:46:00] know.

Um, and so where it was once a very scary place to be, it may not be, and it may give you some background on whether or not we want to go in that direction, um, based on all of his research. So you don’t have to get this alone.

No, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Well, let’s move on. Uh, in 2022, what’s your new year’s resolution, Steven. Hi, Colin. Thanks very much for introducing me to the stage. So, um, for me, actually, I think that, uh, my plan is to start refining, expanding and accelerating the biggest. So just to give a bit, bit of background, I’m actually a CEO of a company called unit roof.

Uh, and we’re actually focused on decarbonizing shipping. And this year actually has been quite a fantastic year for ourselves. I mean, we set out with this intention to build while I would say, as, as the world’s first liquid hydrogen fueling facility [00:47:00] for fuelings or emission ships. And we, we set out to do that, uh, back in sort of July of this year.

And we actually managed to deliver that at the UN cop 26 conference in Glasgow, uh, just November of this year. And of course, you know, we had fantastic reception of that, but I think now we’ve kind of delivered that the idea is that we want to see how we can expand our vision and grow this to be even bigger.

And I think one of the things that’s kind of helped with this idea is sort of sitting and reflecting back and saying, Hey, you know, if I were given, let’s say, you know, a billion dollars tomorrow, What would I do with it? And that’s actually quite a useful question. I think that, um, you know, um, we should be asking ourselves because I think for many of us, we don’t tend to think about things in that way.

And therefore, you know, we, we kind of lost into thinking, you know, we wouldn’t really have any idea of how we we’d sort of, uh, do anything without money, but yet at the same time we have this vision that we always want to be earning more and getting more. And yet if we had that, we just [00:48:00] wouldn’t know what to do with it.

So for us, it’s about, you know, having, having asked ourselves or asking ourselves that question, you know, if we, we, if we had a billion dollars, what would we do with it? And, uh, and, uh, and so that’s kind of a part of what we want to kind of flesh out for next year, um, in, of. Stopping. I say that, um, what we want to actually do is to stop restricting our possibilities.

And by what I mean by that is to try to stop limiting our thinking around the constraint of resources. So again, I think there’s this idea that, you know, sometimes we look at what we actually have, maybe that’s financial or access to networks and people, and we think, okay, this is what we have, what can we do with it?

But in some ways that actually restricts our thinking and. It is kind of like what, one of the things that we’re trying to do is to try to stop that kind of thinking, say, okay, let’s turn everything on our head, Ron, thinking about what resources we have and what we can do with those resources. We should actually [00:49:00] start by looking at the opportunities and then thinking about how we can resource them.

Because by doing that, I think the possibilities ended up becoming endless and that actually then unconstrained ourselves to, to, to, to anything. And right now, you know, we’re thinking about real possibilities of building out, you know, high-strung liquefaction plants, uh, and, and sort of rolling out this Sarah emission fuel in a larger way that, uh, that the world has never seen before.

And, uh, I think by, by stopping, restricting our possibilities, by stopping to think about things in terms of we have these resources and therefore we can only do these things with those, uh, will help to allow us to do that. So I think these two things will go hand in hand. All right. I like, I like the fact, I think he’s the first person who I was brought up in this session.

The importance of the environments and operating in an eco-friendly environment. I know here at startup club, we’re actually installing [00:50:00] solar panels. So I don’t know if we’re going to get off the grid, but I do know our intention is to operate independently from the grid. And, uh, of course you have to connect we’re in a city, you know, I’m not saying we’ll get totally off of it, but we want to be able to generate our own power.

And you know, that’s one of the projects we’re putting in place for 20, 22. Is there anybody here on the panel as well, who have, has thought about how they can, uh, change their startup or improve their startup with respect to health?

Uh, Steven and I, the only one I’d just like to add if I, if I may, just to the point. Um, so, so actually to, to come back to this whole big vision idea, I think, you know, for me actually, um, it’s been quite a reflective year, uh, in that actually, you know, not only were we thinking about [00:51:00] what is the vision for our company, but also what is the personal vision?

I mean, for me, you know, um, my, my personal vision is to create a virtuous world for the next thousand generations. And the idea is that, you know, by, by having your own personal, uh, sort of, uh, mission or aim, that actually is something that you can actually bring to the, to the company. And whilst what’s my company, unit trove, yes, is focused a lot on, on sustainability and, uh, being able to deliver clean and affordable energy for all.

Um, actually my, my personal vision is, is fitting in mind with the UN sustainable development goals. And the idea is that sustainability is not just all about clean energy, but it’s all about the wider picture of things like, um, diversity and inclusion, equality, health for all education for all. In terms of all of these different sustainable development goals.

It’s about trying to integrate this into the [00:52:00] ethos of the organization. And that, for example, even as a startup, you know, we, we, we could, uh, be looking at our invest in saying, Hey, you know, actually we need to hold our investors to account to make sure that they’re actually doing their part in, for example, the diversity and inclusion, uh, aspect of things.

And maybe we have to do the same thing in our organization in terms of, um, ensuring that that sort of also trickles to our advisory board as well. So I think it’s about doing these things holistically and having that big vision and ambition, and then being able to sort of make sure that you can actually enforce that ethos throughout the whole of your life and your organization.

That’s great. So let me rephrase the question. Is there anyone on our panel who is thinking about a social good, whether it’s, um, the environments, I love that you’re talking about diversity. Um, You know, these are things that we need to do, and we can’t just keep doing what we’re doing. We have to wake up, think [00:53:00] about it and actually make those changes in our organization.

So Jeff. Yeah, so we’ve, we’ve done. So we fought a lot about this, uh, with regard to pod.com, a company that, um, uh, COO of, um, you know, we’re a products company. We make a physical product, you know, dog products, dog beds, dog blankets, other pet products in different categories. So two things we’ve done recently, really in thinking about how can we do better?

So one is, you know, we’re redesigning a lot of our packaging, uh, for next year and reducing the amount of inserts. And instead, you know, we’re putting a lot of things online with a QR code and we’ll be putting a QR code on the package that will basically replace, you know, several pieces of paper that we use to insert inside those packages.

Um, the other thing we’re doing to try and reduce waste, which was a big improvement this year is, you know, as, as with any products company, you get returned. Uh, and many times those returned products are in good [00:54:00] condition, but they’re not able to be restocked because they’re no longer in their original packaging, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, or it’s just too complicated or too costly to, to restock them. So instead of letting those products go to waste and end up, you know, clogging our landfills, we’ve set up a program where, you know, all the returns go directly from, they go directly to a number of animal shelters. Um, and other places that we’re supporting who actually can use those products, they don’t care if they’re there in the original packaging or not, or if they’ve been opened and then stuffed back in, they actually really value those products and can use them, uh, to help the dogs in the shelters, et cetera, et cetera.

So those are two things and we hope to do more, but those are two things we’ve recently implemented to your point, calling, thinking about what can we do? That’s both socially good and better for the. And of course there’s much more.[00:55:00] 

That was great. Do we have any other last thoughts from the audience before we close the room here?

We are open to any thoughts you have.

All right. I just want, okay. I actually do. Thank you. I couldn’t. I was trying to update my bio. I couldn’t get off the screen. Um, I just watched the new documentary, uh, by, um, now the name St me the, the space trip that the star Trek star took last month or October, I guess, through the, um, The rocket ship to, you know, was go to 30,000 feet.

And Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon that owns the, um, origin line that did this, he, his vision, the reason I’m thinking of this is what’s your question was this vision that he had was we have to [00:56:00] take to outer space, the dirty over cumbersome user of our resources, types of businesses and equipment and, and processes that we can take those into outer space, actually up and get them out of our heart of our own atmosphere and the user of all of our precious resources.

And he’s had that thought for many years, and now is testing. How do you take people up and how do you get them back safely? And you know, so all these little missions that he’s doing. Are about that going toward that long-term purpose. So I think it really is a great example that all of us can put into our own business plans.

How are we, um, as someone spoke to before about the ecology and the contributing back and re re Newing our own resources and making sure we’re making the best use [00:57:00] of people, time, energy, and, uh, and all the assets that we have here. So that’s what I would leave you with an ending up 20, 21 and opening up 2022.

Thank you so much gone. No, I that’s great. And what a great show, you know, when we came up with this topic idea, we knew that there’d be a few bold people coming from the audience to share with us what they’re going to start or stop in 2022. And hopefully. We’ve given you, um, some food for thought as to what you might do differently with your startup in 2022, if you haven’t already done.

So please go to startup.club and you can see a calendar and you can also see all the blog and recordings. Now we’ve recorded a boat 40 or 45 shows 40 to 45. I haven’t counted of the serial entrepreneur hour and we do this every week. Um, [00:58:00] we’ve done it every week since we started, uh, around February of last year.

We’re not doing it for the next two weeks. It’s Christmas Eve and new year’s Eve. And we decided not to run the show for the next two weeks, but we are coming back in January and we’re coming back alive from CES. Uh, we will, we’ve partnered with P and G ventures. And we are going to be interviewing a number of entrepreneurs directly from Vegas in CES.

We’re going to have, we’re not only going to have this show. We’re probably going to have four or five, excuse me, or six other shows that are going to happen during CES. And this is going to be an opportunity for you to also interact with, with innovators at the show, but also to understand what innovations are coming out in 2022 with all of these companies.

We’re very excited about that. And if you see the calendar, uh, in January, and I’m doing that right now, right on startup.club, checking out the calendar, [00:59:00] uh, we have a show it’s we haven’t posted January’s listings yet, but on January 15th, that is the date that we have Jeffrey Moore, who is one of the top authors.

And we’re going to announce that officially. We haven’t officially announced it yet. Okay. I’m getting a wave from the. The booth here that I’m getting the dates wrong, but, but, but Jeffrey Moore is coming in January, right? Rachel, January 14th. Okay. All right, Jeremy anyway, we’ll, we’ll lock down that date.

Uh, in any cases, Jeffrey Moore, he wrote inside the tomato, he wrote crossing the chasm. He’s considered to be one of the best business authors of all time. He’s never spoken on club as we pulled him out of retirement. And he’s agreed to come on and talk to us. Now, if you want more information about this and you want to make it easy for yourself, go to startup.club and just sign up to our mailing list.

Uh, it’s uh, it’s very easy to do, and we [01:00:00] give you a lot of updates. We do giveaways. Our community is growing. We are the largest club on club house, 750,000 members plus, and I’m looking forward to seeing you all on stage, all of you on stage here. Uh, I really appreciate it. And I really look forward to seeing you on stage again in future shows.

Talk to you later. Thank you for the.[01:01:00] [01:02:00] [01:03:00]