Here’s how you play it: In order to achieve A you need B but in order to get B you first need A. So what comes first, A or B? The chicken or the egg?

It’s a very common game that investors engage entrepreneurs in. Here’s how they play it: In order to get blank amount of dollars; you must achieve milestones 1-3…meanwhile, you can’t achieve milestones 1-3 without the blank amount of dollars.

So what’s my current chicken and egg game??

It goes soemthing like this…

In order to entice venues to give Tickets with a Twist free tickets to upcoming shows they want to know I have a solid foundation of members (currently around 1,000 WhyGoSolo members). However, in order to appeal to a solid foundation of members I need a nice (good size and variety) selection of tickets.

What comes first…the venues (tickets) or the members?? Venues are attracted to the members and the members are attracted to what the venues have to offer.

How am I playing the game?

I’m going after the chicken and the egg at the same time:

1. I’m contacting venues and pitching them. I’m also reaching out to the actual entertainers and promoters for the venues who can also make things happen.
2. I’m working to rally members. I started the Facebook Group – We Only Go Out for Free to raise awareness about Tickets with a Twist and WhyGoSolo. Say we had 5,000 members in DC. That would make for a very appealing crowd to the DC venues…
3. I’m pulling my resources. I’m figuring out who knows who in the right communities to reach decision makers. I’ve bought quite a few people lunch this past week
4. I’m letting people know. I have the mission to aggressively let people know about Tickets with a Twist and the many win, Win, WIN situations it creates for venues, entertainers and people who love going out. I’ll continue to blog, engage others to blog, I’ve made videos, a squidoo lens, posted on Craigslist and will be attending many upcoming networking events and meetups to talk about Tickets with a Twist and hand out information. I’m also planning some other things through Yut Media, Inc.

I’m sharing this because if you’ve ever played the Chicken and Egg Game you know this is an extremely challenging game that drives you crazy and keeps you going in circles.

Am I nuts to blog about being in a Chicken and Egg Game…possibly, but people can’t help if they don’t know what’s going on!!

Fast forward three years…one failed venture, losing multiple partners and getting burn by a plethora of other things I didn’t know anything about; I now feel anxious and a certain amount of fear about launching my new company.

I get it now. I realize why people said I was brave and courageous to start my own business. (Although, I’d like to clarify that it’s easy to start your own business – what’s hard is turning it into a success.)

I clearly remember all my struggles, pains, disappointments, lessons learned, and heart breaks. I lost my house, went into the debt and isolated myself from many of my friends and family.

With all that being said, the truth is that the anxiety and fears are based on more than knowing what launching a business and trying to grow it is about – it’s mostly based on the fact that there is nothing else in the world I rather be doing. What happens now that I’ve found my calling if I can’t make things happen? This is the proverbial fear of failure. Many people never try or do the things they really love and are passionate about because they can’t face the possibility that once they try; they might fail.

Three years ago I didn’t realize how passionate and in love with business/entrepreneurship I was. I didn’t know that my world would come to revolve around it and that it would bring me such a high level of satisfaction and happiness. I never would have guessed that being in business would challenge me and push me to grow faster than anything else I had ever done before. I definitely didn’t have a clue of how free being an entrepreneur would make me feel. As a matter of fact, I didn’t actually realize the depth of those things until I took a billet back in the Marine Corps. But now I know.

Defining Moment – This Fear is a GOOD Thing

I will soon step back out from having steady income (from being back in the Marine Corps) to running my own business full time again. My hunger to succeed is greater than ever before. The anxiety and fear that exist is new and actually welcomed.

It’s not the absence of fear that makes us brave – it’s doing those very things we fear in the presence of fear. I’m glad I’m feeling this fear. It will keep me conscious of not repeating any past mistakes. It will keep me on my toes and make me think things thoroughly instead of my former “jumping into everything head first.” This new fear is making me a wiser entrepreneur and although, I have never in the past appreciated having fears – this time, it’s a good thing.

I began to blog with the purpose of capturing the entrepreneurial journey I was undertaking with WhyGoSolo however, what blogging turned into, was my introduction to brand new and exciting worlds.

Becoming a blogger and a blog reader, opened my eyes to so many things that were happening on the web that I wasn’t aware of; although, I was starting a web startup and claiming to know a lot about online communities/social networks. Bloggging has been a key to establishing my foundations in the web/social media communities, where I definitely needed to be for my undertakings.

I jumped into blogging the same way I jump into everything – head first. I absorbed everything there was to know about blogging and began learning about all aspects of all things that relate and “touch” the blogoshere.

I say that blogging is a journey because you don’t know who you might meet, connect with and what opportunities your blog might open up to you. Entering the world of blogging is entering a world of new opportunities and potential.

I now have three blogs…why three?? Because my world is a complex one My interests, my knowledge and what I dabble in expands in quite a few spectrum and although, they all tie back together, it’s best to separate them at the moment to appeal to the right audiences.

My Blogs (It’s rather ambitious of me to have three blogs so we’ll see what happens)

On the Official Plugged-In Blog for WhyGoSolo I write about what’s happening with WhyGoSolo. It’s my least demanding blog at the moment but that will rapidly change in the next two months.

Don’t Spray and Pray is to talk entrepreneurship – one of my most favorite topic of all time.

The Marine Corps, Social Media and Millennials is new and I’m finding it to be a lot of fun because it involves a lot of new research and exploration. I’m taking my knowledge of Social Media and seeing how it applies to the Marine Corps/Military…while discovering what’s going on with MilBlogs.

The Next Year

My goals for the next year is to hone my skills and my knowledge. To apply more of what I know and to learn more about SEO and monetization. By this time next read, I want to have 10x the readership I have now.

I definitely look forward to meeting a lot of new people and opening up new doors. My goal is to make it to Blog World Expo in September!!

Oh…and I’ll work on my typos and bad grammar.

Thank you!!

A big thank you to all who read my blogs!! You’re awesome. A big thank you to all who support my many endeavors and who have become a big part of my world.

What I like about his new post: PR Secrets?? It’s Bullshit is that he acknowledges the amount of ground work he has done to establish his community in order to be able to launch his company without the help of PR folks and he points out that anyone can do this.

I wrote a blog post back last August called Who is Your Front man?? The blog post was something I was beginning to realize as an extremely important thing to identify and establish, as I was developing myself as WhyGoSolo’s front man.

What I wrote about back then and what Loic is writing about now is a topic I have been wanting to get into on this blog at some point, but looks like sooner is more an appropriate time than later. And that topic is Establishing Your Foundation: Building Your Personal Brand

I’ll write more about that in the next few days but here is some food for thought…since it is highly probable your first company will fail; wouldn’t time be well spent developing your own personal brand in order to increase your odds for your second attempt???

Back to Loic’s Post and a Comment that helps prove the Point which came from Jeremy Toeman

Loic, I think your assessment is fairly biased to your personal experience. The truth is most companies and individuals aren’t nearly as well connected as you are, and to just dismiss PR by saying “just go build a community” is frankly, naive. Even your business needs *significantly* more users than you have today, and at some point, if you truly want to accomplish your goals, PR will probably come into play.

Furthermore, many startup CEOs are heavily engaged in building their products/services, and don’t have the time to do the outbound marketing work.

There’s more to this than you make it seem. A lot more.

If you are a first time startup CEO let me dissect this comment for you and how you can’t listen to it:

1- It is your job to become extremely well connected. This goes back to other blog posts I’ve written on whether or not you are even qualified to start the startup you’re thinking of starting. If you aren’t well connected – GET THERE.

2- Building a community is a must. Again, your responsibility to excite people about what you are doing and finding your evangelists.

3- Seesmic will indeed continue to need more users, but anyone who is following what Loic is doing knows that he is continuing to grow his community. The main way he is doing this is through PARTNERSHIPS that come from his connections. Loic is bringing big names to Seesmic and those big names he brings to Seesmic have their own following…see how that works. PR is not required. Loic is a very smart business man. Not saying he might never require PR, but what he does is leverage his community, his product, his service and he adds value to grow on top of what he’s established.

4- All CEOs are equally heavily engaged in building their products – it’s not a reason to not build your foundation. Your team is going to turn to you and they’re going to rely on your connections and the foundation you’ve built to take the product to the next level. Which is why it’s best to establish your personal brand BEFORE launch or even better before you start your startup. You need to know what you’re getting yourself into.

5- Jeremy is right. There is more to this…it took Loic a few years to get to where he is and we’ll cover all the steps you need to start taking for you to be able to do the same.

I’m not entirely sold that the vision part is unique to the Tech Guys. I’ve met plenty of business people and entrepreneurs who can’t see past their initial business concepts/ideas…during my stint as a business coach the primary thing my clients needed was a vision.

Taking the idea to market…I have to agree with that, but here is why, and what I think are the real dings on the Tech Guy: Leadership and Creativity.

Leadership – or in this case the ability to motivate, build and manage a team. Our Tech Guy can build the prototype but the ability to take the idea to market requires building a team and surrounding oneself with key people who can move you and the product forward. That’s not an ability that many Tech Guys have…it involves a lot of networking, meeting people, and sharing of information. It’s more for the extroverted types, which the Biz Dev Buy normally is.

Managing a team requires being able to maintain a clear understanding of all the moving pieces…but again – this isn’t just the Tech Guy who can’t handle keeping everything straight. However, he is more likely to focus only on the tech end of things; forgetting there’s more to it.

Creativity – or in this case constantly coming up with alternative solutions and innovative problem solving. The Tech Guy is more logical in his thinking and the Big Dev Guy is more creative. Marketing, sales, and business development requires a great deal of creativity and quick thinking. Creativity isn’t a strong quality in most Tech Guys.

Quick Crash Course On Initial Things to Do

Most import thing for a Tech Guy to start doing is…Networking! Start meeting people and getting out there. Meet more people than just other Tech Types. Grow your network.

Bounce your ideas off the new folks you meet and get feedback right away.

Find out if what you are working on inspires others, that will be critical to build a team.

Ask yourself: “Can you go beyond the tech?” If all you want to do is code; you’ll need a partner immediately or you are better off joining someone who is looking for a Tech Guy.

A couple of weeks ago I had a ‘SOB moment’. It came the morning after TECH Cocktail DC 2 at the Hangover Breakfast hosted by Micah Baldwin of Lijit.

A few of us were sitting around shooting the breeze talking business, business models and investment options. One of the guys sitting in the crowd was Eric Olson…and the fact that he delivered my ‘SOB moment’ is unbeknownst to him. Eric is an associate at DFJ Portage. He ran through a few scenarios of the entrepreneurs they see at DFJ Portage and the type of investments they make and why.

As he kept talking the main theme about the people they invest in was very clear: “They invest in the most knowledgeable and qualified people within their fields in relation to the startup they aim to start.”

They invest in the most qualified of the people/teams; I obviously knew that and had heard it many times before but it hadn’t really sunk in the way it did that morning. The way Eric explained things, clearly parted the clouds for me to have my ‘SOB moment’. It made me think about what we’ve been working to establish and what our qualifications were to pull it off. I realized as I walked away…”Fuck – We’re not quite there yet.”

In our case, the qualifications have nothing to do with how well I can lead a team and be the CEO, how awesome our tech is or how sharp our sales team is – the qualifications have everything to do with the market…our contacts, knowledge, and background of our market.

Forgetting About Our Target Market

When I started WhyGoSolo – I knew that I needed to establish a foundation by having a strong presence on the web, the startup community and within the social media circles for when WhyGoSolo would be ready to launch. I did that and I did it well.

I just happened to overlook a major key foundation over time – Our Market. Granted, our market has shifted, but I hadn’t caught just how much of a disadvantage we were getting ourselves into, until that morning.

Going To Skin that Damn Cat

It’s a crappy time to realize you’re on first base when you’re suppose to be on third base and you’ve got a lot of skin in the game.

Side story…

This kinda reminded me of The Basic School. “What now Lieutenant? We’ve lost communication with second squad, first squad took two causalities and they need a medical evacuation for two others; we’re low on ammo and completely surrounded. What now Lieutenant? What are your orders?”

The Situation

What now boss?? We’re exposed to the market, the competition is moving in our space and we don’t have the contacts, knowledge or background needed to address our target market…

It took me a few days…but than I gathered the team and said “Gents, here is what we’re going to do” (Sorry – not going to divulge the specifics just yet).

We’re going to skin this damn cat – we might not have had the best foundation in place when it comes to our current target market, but we’re building it now in a strategic fashion off of the foundation that has been put into place.

Hello, McFly!!

I can’t go back in time but I can ask myself “WTF, Hello McFly…how did you miss that?” (My internal dialogue has more cursing than my external dialogue) I missed it because this is my first go-round and I’ve had to learn on the go; it’s painful to learn things first hand. I did however, try to avoid that.

Advisor/Mentor

For the past year I’ve been looking for a good advisor/mentor but haven’t found him/her. That’s a huge part of establishing your foundation. Find someone who has been there before, so they can help to guide and direct you in order to avoid making mistakes as much as possible. (Will do a blog post on what to look for in an advisior)

Do Keep Reading This Blog

I will continue to pass on what I’ve learned and know. Hopefully you’ll listen to it and avoid some setbacks…particularly if you’re not strong at thinking on your feet when bombs are coming your way.

Client/Investor: Hmmm…good stuff. We like it. But who the heck are you? Why should we buy (or invest) in you?

This is the point where you think – I’m the guy who brought you the idea. But then they go on and say…

Client/Investor: We had two other guys in here before you that pitched us the same thing – so why are you different and why should we do business with you?

Ouch! Yep, that hurts…particularly if you haven’t properly established a strong foundation. If you have you’ll be ready to list off the reasons why you are the guy to make this happen – if you haven’t, you’ll walk out of that meeting with your tail between your legs.

Establishing your Foundation

We’re going to cover this in multiple posts but here are some of the highlights of areas you need to beef up before going into a meeting like the one above:

Background/Area of Expertise: What is your background and therefore, your area of expertise? Your background will directly help justify your qualifications or completely throw them off. If you are a male with no kids who has been in the meat packaging business for the last 10 years and you want to get into running a kid’s social network with an entirely new spin – your background is of no help to you and you are obviously not leveraging your area of expertise…so this actually hurts you. (Thinking it actually throws a few red flags in the air…but I digress) You’ll need to work on establishing a relevant background.

Knowledge: Much like your background – your proven knowledge base is critical. By proven, I mean you’ve had active involvement that has demonstrated success base on applying your knowledge.

Contacts and Network: This is extremely important – you better build up one heck of an armory of powerful contacts – the old saying that “it’s not what you know but who you know” will eventually come into play!

Familiarity with Market: This goes beyond having knowledge about your market or being part of your market’s background – this is embedding your presence in your market and making allies within your target market. This is becoming a go-to person to folks in your market.

Like I said – we’ll thoroughly discuss building a foundation because you might find out that before you even get into starting your startup, you have to first ensure you’re qualified to do so!