Tinni in Japan!

A lot of things have happened in the first 4+ months of this year. Including my trip to Japan!

Before going to Japan, I undertook a six-week course on Project Management for Professionals with RMIT. I have been doing project management for the last 10 years, but I felt that it was good to do a formal course to plug any gaps in my skills.

This is the second short course I took at RMIT. Two years ago, I completed a course on Business Analysis to consolidate my knowledge on that front. But unlike last time, we had to bring our own project to manage for this course.

Most of my current projects have an element of confidentiality and were not suited to the waterfall management methodology we were supposed to apply. So, instead, I did my final assessment on a planning project for my trip to Japan!

I had to submit the project a week early because of my planned trip since the last two weeks of the course overlapped with my trip. So literally the day before I was flying off, I was finalising the documents and recording the presentation.

I got the results back shortly after the Easter holidays, and I, unfortunately, had to redo the budget sections to demonstrate more clearly that I knew what I was doing. So that sucked, but I redid the project schedule and other documents and re-recorded the presentation. And I passed!

Tinni in Japan

In between my RMIT submissions, I, of course, went to Japan to try and catch some cherry blossoms! I succeeded to an extent, but the bulk of the blooms were delayed due to the weather still being wet and cold.

I had a lot of fun. I experienced a Tokyo earthquake and missed my flight on the last day because of how much fun I was having. I spent way too much money, but now I am back!

I am glad to get a bucket list item of seeing the Sakura bloom in Japan, checked off and now on to the next thing!

Putting some cred behind things I am already doing!

Due to the nature of what I do with start-ups and small businesses, I am already using tools from the Business Analysts toolbox. So it made sense for me to do a short online course with RMIT University to put some official credentials behind my skill set!

It was a bit of a challenge as April ended up being a very busy month for Kyco related activities and in May, I became severely ill with a seasonal cold. As a result, I fell behind and had to play catch-up for most of the course. I even had to take the automatic 1-week extension and I was still audibly sick in the final project presentation video, which you can see below.

Medisafe 2FA: RMIT Assignment Presentation

I am happy to complete the credential and fill the holes in my knowledge when it comes to the business analysis process. It’s an ego boost given that I was working on this at the same time I also started a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment through TAFE QLD.

I have a new respect for my mom, who is a secondary teacher, and my trainer from the NEIS program. Because that certificate did my head in! I had to withdraw, which is something I have never had to do in all my years of learning. I fell hopelessly behind and didn’t think I could catch up but it is something I am interested in doing. So hopefully, I’ll be able to restart next term and actually manage to orient my brain around the adult learning and vocational education space!

Group Mentoring with Nyree McKenzie

I spent the first Friday of March by attending a group mentoring with Nyree McKenzie, the founder of Bidhive and a fellow MIT Bootcamp Alumni. She also won the AWS 2019 Founder of the Year.

It was a great session that covered Nyree’s journey and the lessons she learnt along the way. She emphasised the need to have your personal life aligned with your founder dreams. She talked about how her previous business, Thought Bubble, that she spend 16-year building was both a source of inspiration that lead to Bidhive but also something she now has to exit to commit to Bidhive.

She pointed to some tech she found very helpful. Namely Canny, which she is using to gather customer feedback to help her map out a product roadmap that will lead to her releasing exactly what her customers want. It’s a great idea. I will note that tool down for future use.

Speaking of tools, and a slight aside, I don’t think I ever mentioned Kiite.ai, which can be used to create a sales playbooks. It was recommended to me during a sales workshop I attended. But I don’t think I ever blogged about it. But I think it’s worth noting here. Because sales strategies were something Nyree covered at length. She mentioned that from day 1 she only went after enterprise, using language that would cause small businesses to self exclude. Enterprise can be a mixed market to go after but it has its downsizes. Namely, procurement processes for Enterprise are long and complex. So the conversion takes time. Also, per Lewl Jury’s mentoring talk last month, Enterprise customers are very needy when it comes to customer care attention.

Nyree has earmarked Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as a way to help ease some of the pressure currently on her small group of staff. RPA is something I am familiar with through my work with Comprara. I will definitely watch Bidhive to see how Nyree’s strategies workout.

Overall, it was a great talk. I am glad I attended. I asked a bunch of questions. But I left straight after and thus missed the River City Labs, First Friday Bytes. I wish I stuck around but I was “peopled out” as they say. But maybe in April, I’ll get to attend the First Friday Bytes!

Group Mentoring with Llew Jury

Last Friday, I attended the Group Mentoring with Llew Jury, at River City Labs. It was a great event that sent me home with some essential tools. The first one was the correct way to fill out the business model canvas. For me, this was a refresher. Still, it’s always good to remember that your focus should be a problem -> customer - > unique value proposition -> solution before moving on to other things. Many startups make the mistake of either trying to start with the solution and looking for a problem. Alternatively, having problems, solution and customers but not having a unique value proposition.

The other concept Llew Jury talked about was market product fit, instead of product-market fit. I think this is a very venture capitalist way of thinking about it. I have heard Steve Corlett express that he isn’t as concerned about a business’s product beyond it can effectively address the problem for which there is a market. I don’t think inventors and innovators want to hear, but it’s true. You can have the greatest product in the world, but if no one is willing to pay you for it, you can’t make a business out of it.

The completely new concept I learnt during the group mentoring was the SaaS Mission Matrix. Llew Jury credited Edward Ford’s Advance B2B Blog post on the topic. The matrix posits that the same sales strategy does not work on businesses of all size. You can’t be hands-on and in-person with a small business who have a meagre customer lifetime value. Likewise, you can’t be hands-off and automated with huge enterprises who are injecting millions of dollars into your business. So you need to work out what you are and focus on the sweet spots. I would like to kickoff a SaaS business one day, and I know that marketing can make or break, SaaS. So getting introduced to the SaaS Mission Matrix made the trip to attend worthwhile.

Following the SaaS Matrix, Llew went on to discuss marketing. It wasn’t anything new per se. But I liked how Llew laid it out (see photo). I need to start marketing Start with Tinni. So I need to start thinking about personnas, marketing channels, brand positioning etc.

One of the last things Llew covered was how to raise money. It flew by quickly. But the biggest take away was that sales speak louder than anything. But he also mentioned team building, and once again, personality tests made an appearance. Llew said that his venture firm uses the Belbin model of personalities. I am currently working on writing an article for Medium on personality tests. So I’ll talk about Belbin more there. But it fascinates me how big personality tests are in startup land.

Llew Jury ended the session with some book recommendation. He recommended Good to Great, Scaling Up and Secrets of Sand Hill Road. I will be adding them to be Audible list, Overall, it was a good session, and I would recommend attending the next one!

The NEIS Program

On Saturday I made a small post to celebrate the 1st Anniversary of Start with Tinni. One of the things I mentioned in that post was that Start with Tinni was part of the NEIS scheme during its first year. It was a good experience.

The NEIS grant amounted a little over $10k, most of which I used to upgrade equipment, insurance, necessary saas service, pay for travel to Launch Festival, costs beyond tuition I had in associated with the MIT Bootcamp. Finally, the out of pocket expenses I had for Impact Boom Elevate+ accelerator. So, in essence, I used the grant to expand my network and build my knowledge.

I am incredibly grateful that I am in a position where I could spend the grant like this. I know that for many, the grant goes towards more essentials things as they wait to generate revenue

I also received training and mentorship through the NEIS program. The training happened in a group setting, so if you believe that the value of accelerator programs is mainly in the cohort, I am glad to have made the acquaintance of such a great bunch of people.

As for the training, I started my six-week in-person workshop-based training in July of 2018. But I didn’t officially launch my business until the 1st of November. I needed the extra time to implement everything I learnt properly. The workshop training also led to a formal qualification in the form of Certificate IV in New Small Business.

I went through the Sarina Russo Group, and so received my certificate through their institute. I thought I had a good grasp of business basics, but there were holes in my knowledge that the training helped to fill. Also, it was nice to have time and space to stop and think about the business.

Finally, I was assigned an official mentor through NEIS and Sarina Russo, and that was extremely helpful. Because sometimes, you need a mentor who has been there, done that and can help guide you. Mine was Sandra Gartner, and I am very grateful to her for her year-long mentorship and support.