ADHD Entrepreneur Accelerator

As Founders, we dream of building a rocket ship business that takes off, makes a huge impact and creates tremendous financial abundance. 

It’s a wonderful dream.

The reality, of course, is it’s really hard to do.

We can’t flip a magic switch and suddenly have our business 10x.

But what if we can find places in our business where we can accelerate 2x?

Because before there’s a sale, there’s an offer, a prospect, a pitch, a proposal and a close.

What if you could systematically identify and create 2x acceleration opportunities in your business. How much knows how much you could increase your business’s velocity?

2x Acceleration is the topic of this week’s episode of the Rocket Ship Business Academy Podcast

Topics I cover:

2x Accelerator is also the name of a new program I am piloting in November. I’m really excited by the potential for this program to create wins and build momentum for your business.  It’s specifically targeted for B2B  Founders with a product in market who want to rapidly create product-market fit and sales breakthroughs.

Hit me up at [email protected] and I’ll give you the details.

Founders who work with me know hear something over and over. They hear it so much, they probably get annoyed with me.

But it’s the essence of my work. And it’s critical to their success.

Here’s how it goes. Client or prospect comes with a laundry list of updates and challenges.

Then I dig in with questions and together we figure out “THE problem to solve.”

Because usually there’s one underlying problem to solve - and everything else is just a symptom of that problem.

You have ONE job:  identify and solve that problem.

I talk about:

1. How to find THE Problem to solve

2. How to differentiate between THE Problem and symptoms

3. The core problems to solve at each phase of your business...

4. ...the key question to ask that will help you start solving them

This month is all about troubleshooting sales, the most common pressing challenge selected by the 2000+ founders who have taken my Founder Type Quiz.

One of the biggest challenges for any Founder or business is Product-Market fit. Often product-market fit is seen as a distinct challenge than sales. But in my experience, looking at product-market fit as a specific type of sales challenge is really helpful.

In this episode, I talk through:

1.  Breaking down sales into three core components: traffic, conversion and economics.

And remember: you can’t scale the hard sale!

This month is all about troubleshooting sales, the most common pressing challenge selected by the 2000+ founders who have taken my Founder Type Quiz.

Today I was talking with one of my clients and he mentioned that they decided not to renew their social media agency, since they weren’t getting any ROI (something that’s all too common). He was going to turn his attention to their website and update it.

I told him that’s fine, but it won’t fix your sales.

It’s not that they don’t need a web site.

It’s not that social media can’t be an effective channel.

In fact it’s not any one thing  - web site, social, ads, etc - that will crack the sales challenge and give you the fast growth you are looking for.

But here’s what will.

There are 3 things that need to be in place:

Another way to think of it is what Perry Marshall calls the Tactical Triangle: Traffic-Conversion-Economics

Of course this sounds simple in theory, but is much more challenging in practice.

In this week’s Rocket Ship Business Academy Podcast episode, I talk about how to put these in place and what’s required to make it happen:

Key topics I’ll hit:

Are you a Founder who feels alone in your journey? I've been there! Reach out to [email protected]

This month is all about troubleshooting sales, the most common pressing challenge selected by the 2000+ founders who have taken my Founder Type Quiz.  Recently, when I asked the question, when it comes to sales, what’s your single biggest challenge, one subscribers responded:

“Our sales is complex AND is highly affected by timing.”

I have personal experience with this as my first startup, the market research software company Revelation had a complex sale that was very highly affected by timing. This made it extremely hard to scale the business!

I can’t tell you all the frustrating ways I tried to solve that issue. I tried different marketing systems, different sales methodologies, different team members. I looked for a lot of silver bullets (spoiler alert: there are no silver bullets!).

I have to confess I never truly cracked it - until my company achieved its exit and I saw how the people who bought us operated.

It was all about making the complex sale simple. In this week’s Rocket Ship Business Academy Podcast episode, I talk about how to think through your complex sale and make it simple and less dependent on timing.

Key topics I’ll hit:

As typical of many Founders, I was always looking for the silver bullet: that one thing that would enable us to bust through and get that rocket ship momentum. 

This week’s podcast episode comes in response to yet another question from my list - and it’s one that’s sure to resonate with many Founders. When asked what their single biggest challenge is, this founder answered:

”Scaling to increase revenue and expand services.”

Scaling sales is a big topic. There’s a ton of information out there on positioning, building funnels, doing cold email outreach, content marketing, consultative selling. In other words, lots of specific tactics.

But just jumping into tactics skips perhaps the MOST important step:  defining your ideal customer.

Without this step, all of your strategies and tactics may go to waste.

In this episode, I give you a simple, yet incredibly powerful framework for identifying your ideal customer.  I cover:

There is a surprise twist to this exercise, that takes it to an even more powerful place. I’m not going to give away in the podcast episode. However, anybody who listens to the episode and does the exercise can write me at [email protected] and I’ll give you the twist that will create a next level unlock for you!

This week’s episode of Rocket Ship Academy Podcast comes directly from a question from my list:

Should Founders be equally going about building up a personal brand at the same time we are building up our non-personal companies? For instance, my company is a software and digital publishing company. Should I be actively promoting myself (e.g. puff pieces about me in magazines, 40 under 40 list etc), or can I quietly build massive success with no media attention focused on me? So far, I have spoken at tech conferences and I have a speech therapist. But I wonder, should I be doing more to build a personal image as a founder, or does that not matter? Thanks.

This is a great question!

And one that actually brings up one of the most important concepts in building a Rocket Ship business: P&L thinking versus balance sheet thinking.

In this episode, I cover:

Have a question or challenge you'd like support on? Send to [email protected] and I will do an episode for you!

”I don't know if it's covid related but prospects that expressed interest are very slow or don't get back to me. How can I get them to respond to my follow ups without feeling like I'm pestering them?”

This week’s Rocket Ship Business Academy Podcast episode comes from a question I got in response to my recent question to my  list, “What’s your biggest current challenge?”

When prospects show initial interest but then don’t get back to you, or ghost you, it’s really frustrating. But it’s always giving you some important feedback about something that isn’t working in your sales process.

If you are experiencing this, you are not alone. Growing sales is the single biggest challenge selected by Founders in my Founder Type Quiz.

In this episode, I break down why your prospects are closing - and what you can do to improve your win rate. I’ll cover:

I was in the process of writing my weekly Sunday Steve email for my coaching clients, when I saw an email from one of my clients pop into my inbox, "Are you available today for a quick call today? I need some support in planning our next moves before Monday kicks in."

At one point the conversation turned to "bad decisions" made in the past. It's a natural part of the process when you are facing tough decisions to look back and judge the decision path that got you to this point as "bad."