Build

In the last Build episode, we talked shared two ground rules you need to set for yourself to get through a software project successfully. But we know that managing our own anxieties is only half the battle to keeping the project on course, the other is navigating new ideas or unanticipated challenges.

 

Many of our teammates have ideas and solutions that can help. They are eager to have their ideas heard, so they speak up. While others are shy and worried about speaking up. But their insights and ideas can save the project!

 

As the project lead you know it’s important to hear your teammates out to uncover challenges early on and prevent them from derailing your progress. But how do you encourage and instill confidence in the introverted ones, and is there ever a point where you can stop entertaining new ideas and start building?

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

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##Project Management: How to Respond to New Ideas in the Middle of a Software Project Transcript                

 

Poornima: In the last episode, we addressed a number of anxieties that come up when you're managing your first high-stakes project. If you missed the episode, the link to it is below this video.

                                                 

Today we're gonna tackle how do you handle getting blindsided by your teammates when there are new ideas or challenges on a project you're working on. So stay tuned to find out more.

                                                 

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, I host innovators, and together we debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech.

                                                 

We'll continue our conversation about managing your first high-stakes project with Jen Leech, who is the VP of Engineering at Truss, which is a software consultancy. Thanks again for joining us, Jen.

 

Jen Leech: Sure, absolutely.

 

How to respond to brand new ideas that may cause you to miss your software project’s deadline

 

Poornima: So, Jen, based on our conversation last week, I know you're awesome at listening to people, incorporating their feedback, and putting a plan into action, but there comes that time usually in the middle or towards the end of the project where somebody's got a brand-new idea and you are worried about the deadline and making progress. Do you have any rules or mantras for how to handle this situation?

 

Jen Leech: Yeah. In general, I love it when people bring new ideas to the table. That's what I want. That means that they're engaged, they're thinking creatively, that they feel some investment in the project. I wanna encourage that as much as possible.

                                                 

If the idea that they're bringing to the table is a simple one, it's great. It's pretty easy to think about, pretty easy to reason about, and you can go with it or not go with it and move forward. The complexity comes in when the idea they're bringing to the table is something that is a much larger idea, or it has implications beyond the implementation of that idea itself. In those cases, I don't always know what the results would be of implementing that idea. As someone who's experienced leading projects, I may have an intuition for it. I may be wrong, following along from my last episode.

 

How to teach teammates to think through their ideas and the impact it will have on a software project

                                                 

But the thing that I do in that situation is I ask the person who's presenting the idea to take their idea and follow it through to its ultimate conclusion. So that means asking them to say, "OK, so..." Using the example from our last episode, of a microservices architecture, I say, "Well, we have problems A, B, and C, and D in the system. And I think that a microservices architecture is gonna solve it." And then, as a project lead, I can say to them, "OK, well so let's say that we move forward with that. What are the implications for the project? Does it mean that we're gonna have more service support? Does it mean that we are going to have to have a different team structure? Does it mean that we are going to have new work in our backlog that wasn't there already? What is that work?"

                                                 

And then ask them to think through their problem. In the case of microservices architecture, that might go something like, "Well, that means that we have to make sure that these units that we're turning into microservices are independently deployable, they're independently testable, that they have a well-defined interface, that that interface is versioned, that we have someone who is keeping track of what all of the requirements are from consumers of the interface." So you might need to have a product manager. The list of potential implication gets bigger and bigger, and then all of a sudden you need an entire team to manage this one component.

                                                 

And then, we can look at that and say, "If this does solve the things that you're saying it solves, it's the cost of potentially increasing our headcount by x. Justify that benefit. Or are there other ways we can get the same benefit?"

                                                 

Essentially asking the person to walk through all of the implications from the leadership perspective.

 

When it makes sense to adopt a new idea in the middle of a software project

 

Poornima: From their idea that they're putting out there.

 

Jen Leech: Correct. Think about what that really means for the company as a whole. Then it facilitates them realizing assumptions that they have made or costs that they have envisaged, and when you get to the end of it, either you're on the same page and you say, "That was a great idea, we should totally do that." Or you're on the same page and you say, "We should not do this." And you've gotten there together. So that means that the person who's brought these ideas to the table both feels like their idea has really been heard, and if it was an idea that you should not move forward with, they've convinced themselves. Then you can both move forward with whatever you agree is the right course of action.

 

How to instill confidence in teammates who are shy or reluctant to share their ideas

 

Poornima: I think some people would be up to that challenge, they may even think through their idea, but you've got a lot of people who are, just say, eager beavers. They may be new to the team, maybe they don't know this whole process or policies and just kind of blurt out in a meeting, like, "I've got an idea." Is that an appropriate time to say, "That's fantastic you have an idea, here's how we operate. We do X, Y, and Z. So let's have you walk through the implications, etc.?"

 

Jen Leech: That's a really good question. Sometimes a meeting is the right time to walk through that—depends on the meeting.

 

Poornima: Sure.

 

Jen Leech: A lot of times it's not. And in those cases then I'll usually say, "Oh, Kimmy, let's take that offline. Can we talk about that later?" And talk about it independently. However, through failure I have discovered that when bringing new people onto the team, they often need a little bit of intro. In this particular project that I was describing from last year, there were some new people that came into the team, stepped into these processes, started presenting new ideas, and then all of a sudden were blindsided when people started really probing into their ideas, and they weren't expecting it.

                                                 

So then I had to take a step back and then I realized that I haven't given them the appropriate context. And I sat them down and I said, "Hey, I realize I didn't explain this, but in this team you should expect that we're gonna really thoroughly look at new ideas that are brought to the table, and we're gonna investigate them."

 

Poornima: I'd imagine it takes a lot of confidence even to just put an idea out there, so having it be shot down is going to impact people.

 

Jen Leech: Yeah, absolutely. What I started doing is I started having onboarding conversations, essentially, with new people who came onto the team to explain that we investigate ideas that are brought to the table really thoroughly, and that we do that with everyone. And it's not any particular person, there's not good, there's no bad, we just wanna understand what this idea means.

                                                 

The particular person who I was talking to in this case hadn't yet seen somebody else go through the same process. Later on as we went through the process of exploring new ideas then it became more normalized. But I began having onboarding conversations with new people on the team to help them understand that we really investigate ideas really deeply, and that that's normal, and it's not to be taken personally.

 

When do you stop entertaining new ideas, building a consensus, and get to work on your software project

 

Poornima: So it's great that people are proposing ideas and that you're investigating them, but you remember from last time, we told our audience we would tackle this question. There's gotta be a point where you stop investigating, you've gotta stop consensus building or talking about the ideas, start making decisions and put a plan in place. So let's pick up that question.

 

Jen Leech: It depends on the problem but there are a few different approaches that you can use. One approach that I enjoy using is that of framing whatever question that we're looking at in terms of a hypothesis. And saying, "Well, right now we think we're trying to solve problem X." And then when you really target the problem you're trying to solve, it's easier to hone in on the specifics of does this solve that problem. Then, either it does or doesn't, then you can move on to the next thing.

                                                 

When you're dealing with something more complex, let's say you're dealing with a system that is sufficiently complex such that you can't really say for sure what the result is gonna be, and furthermore, maybe you're trying to solve problems A, B, C, D, E, and F. Then there are a couple approaches I use in that circumstance. One is to say, "Let's build a quick and dirty prototype. Let's try it. Give it a limited amount of time, and see what happens." So you build out something very quickly. Ideally, you could do it in under a day, but it depends on what it is. And hopefully you've got your tools in place so you can do that. Maybe a week, but time box it.

                                                 

At the end of it you then bring it back to the table and say, "Does it look to us like it's gonna be solving these problems? And what did we learn from the process?"

 

Poornima: So constraining the problem will hopefully constrain the conversation, and then creating a time box around when something is due will also create those constraints so that you stop that consensus building and get down to work.

 

Jen Leech: Yeah. And finding every piece of work you do, in terms of here are the problems we think we're trying to solve, here are the solutions we think might work, and make everything an experiment, a discovery of new information. And the discovery, at the end of the day, might be does this work for our customers.

                                                 

As you frame it in terms of exploration and discovery, then it becomes natural to not have to have 100% solution. Because what you're doing is finding out.

 

Poornima: It's fantastic that you're making this a discovery and that you wanna get out there and explore more, but there's always that time where we think we've done a lot and still something comes up. Maybe even a customer says, "You didn't think through this enough." Or somebody on your team brings it up. What do you do in those moments?

 

Why it’s OK to constrain the problem space in your software project

 

Jen Leech: Right. I think of this as the curve ball question. You think that you have the right hypothesis, you think you have a good solution, and then all of a sudden something comes up that you didn't expect and you find that maybe what you've put together does not satisfy a certain circumstance or certain constraints.

                                                 

In that circumstance, I think of it as having a new problem to solve. And when you have a new problem to solve the first question that I ask is, "How can I learn more about this problem? Who is on the team that knows about this? Who is in the organization that knows about this?" Maybe there's somebody in the finance department that can answer a question that we have. Who in the community can we talk to about this?

                                                 

It's interesting because I find that taking a problem and expanding it beyond the scope of the team is something that I don't see nearly as often as I would expect, considering the fact that you have, clearly, a limited amount of information within the team.

 

Poornima: Limited brains.

 

Jen Leech: Limited brains, limited experience. And so it would seem completely natural to open questions up to a larger audience. And yet, it's easy for people to stay in their own little group and not necessarily bring in outside opinions.

                                                 

This tactic is all about seeking new information. One example of this is when building this system that I was building last year. Some of the people who are gonna be using the system were data scientists. Some of them were experts on the data that we were processing.

                                                 

Whenever a new component or a new feature came to the table as something that we needed to come up with a new design for, the first thing we would do is have kind of like a brainstorming session, but really more like an information gathering session where we would bring in everyone from the company, who might potentially have a real interest in the result or be a potential user of the product, and say all of the problems that they've ever had in this area that they want solutions to.

                                                 

As an example, we were designing validations on data and we needed to understand a validation system existed before at this company. What did we like about that? What did we not like about it? And we had people who were not engineers, but who had to understand the correct use of the data, come to the room and tell us what their problems were.

                                                 

This is a lot like user research. And then that led to a collection of problems that we eventually may have realized existed, but hadn't really framed as the problem that we were trying to solve here. And it dramatically impacted the design that we came up with.

 

Poornima: Let's do another example for our audience kind of playing that out.

 

Jen Leech: Another really, really good example is that we were using a tool for building the system that wasn't an open-source tool that had been built by Airbnb. It turned out that we had some questions about the right usage pattern, the right deployment pattern, some questions about how they manage the flow of data between nodes. And, coincidentally, it turns out that Airbnb was in the next building over.

 

Poornima: Oh, great. That's a great building by the way.

 

Jen Leech: Yeah, lucky. We contacted the maintainer of the co-depository and asked him if he would be willing to come and talk with us. And he said sure. So he came over and had an hour long conversation about how Airbnb uses the tool and various critiques and pluses and minuses of using it one way or another. And at the end of the conversation we had a much better idea of what things we were doing with it were good and we should keep on doing, and which things we needed to change. And it was about an hour of time for a huge improvement.

 

Poornima: I feel like this also helps you from causing more bugs because you know how to use the tool, or going through that drama of, "I don't know how this works."

 

Jen Leech: It saves you an immense amount of time to just ask the right questions to people who know things.

 

Poornima: That's fantastic. Thank you again for sharing these rules with us, Jen.

 

Jen Leech: Absolutely.

 

So you got tasked with managing your first high-stakes software project? Like handling tech debt, breaking up a monolithic code base into a microservices architecture, or something else?

 

Congratulations!

 

Are you excited?

 

Maybe a little nervous?

 

Or maybe you’re really nervous because you need to deliver on a tight deadline, and there is a lot on the line like your relationship with customers, revenue, and most importantly your job!

 

Fear not because all this month on *Build*, we’re going to be tackling the topic of how to manage your first high-stakes software project.

 

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Jen Leech who is a VP of Engineering at Truss. Jen and I dig into some valuable strategies that will address and alleviate your anxieties around managing your first high-stakes software project.

 

Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:

 

• Two valuable rules that will save you from concocting stories and creating unnecessary drama around a project.
• How to prevent ideas from being shot down instantly, and instead share them in a way that will pique your teammate’s curiosity and foster an effective dialogue around them.

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

 

Project Management: The Ground Rules You Need to Set to Get Through a Software Project Successfully Transcript

 

Poornima: You got tasked with your first high-stakes project. Are you excited? Maybe a little nervous? Or maybe really nervous because you're worried about the tight deadlines, the revenue, and your job? Fear not, because we're going to cover a number of ways to address and alleviate your anxieties in today's episode of *Build*, so stick around.

                                                 

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. One misconception I had early on in my career, when I was managing my first project, was that I was the only one who was a nervous wreck. I worried about meeting deadlines, budget, and shipping it. I thought everyone else had their act together and it was just me. Well, it turns out it was all a façade and some people were just better at hiding it than I was.

                                                 

In today's episode, we're going to be addressing a number of anxieties that come up when you're managing your first high-stakes project. In future episodes, we'll talk about how to keep your team motivated to stay on course and successfully ship. To help us out, I've invited Jen Leech, who is the VP of Engineering at Truss. Thanks for joining us today Jen.

 

Jen: Absolutely. A pleasure to be here.

 

Poornima: You and I met a few months back when we were both speaking and I remember you talking about your first high-stakes project last year, but before we dive into, that let's start with your career. What got you interested in tech and eventually inspired you to start your own company?

 

Jen Leech: I wouldn't say that I ever got into tech; I would say I started there. I have always really, really loved math and science. I started coding when I was 10 and it was the natural place for me to be, that's where I was. However, I found that in industry I didn't always find the things that I wanted in my work environment, so I started Truss to create the work environment that I wanted to be in.

 

Poornima: What kind of environment where you looking to create?

 

Jen Leech: I wanted an environment that would enable me to ride for the leadership positions that I felt that I wanted to be in. I also wanted it to be an environment that was really empowering to all employees to arrive to their greatest potential, to bring to bear the greatest contributions that they could to the business, rather than necessarily trying to constrain or confine them to some limited pigeonhole of what the business thinks is best for it, which often limits the business potential itself.

 

Poornima: Nice. Tell us what Truss does.

 

Jen Leech: Truss is a consultancy. We do various software projects; our capabilities range from infrastructure and dev ops through to application development, to architecture, and we also do some management consulting. Really what that is, is a representation of the fact that our staff have a really broad skill set and we rotate roles on any project that we are on up and down the stack and across the stack. We feel as though that's one version of dogfooding that enables us to provide better service for anything we build.

 

Poornima: Maybe some of our viewers out there don't know what dogfooding is—what's that all about?

 

Jen Leech: Dogfooding is an industry term for if you are building a product you had damn well better try it yourself. Let's say that you put out a bowl of food for someone and you've never tasted it; it might actually be completely awful but if you make yourself eat it, then you have a sense of, "Oh, I should make that better," and the customer gets the benefit.

 

A day in the life of a VP of Engineering

 

Poornima: What do you do on a day-to-day basis as a VP of Engineering?

 

Jen Leech: As part of the dogfooding principle, I do the same work that our engineers do on a day-to-day basis insofar as I do client work. About three to four days a week I work onsite with clients. Then, what I do with the rest of my time is really the VP of Engineering kind of work. I define processes that dictate how the engineering organization operates, including things like our leveling process for how we help engineers move forward with their career, how we do peer reviews. We implemented a salary transparency policy at our company, and rolled that out in association with doing market analysis, and making sure that we had equal pay across our organization. I do all of those things as well as institute client engagement processes for making sure that we set expectations properly, making sure that we learn from our experiences with clients, etc.

 

Poornima: Last year, you got tasked with managing your first high-stakes project. Let's dive into that. I know you were initially pretty excited about it, right?

 

Jen Leech: Sure. I love a challenge.

 

Poornima: Who was on your team with you?

 

Jen Leech: This is where a client project, the project had been attempted a couple of times. It was for a V architecture of a big data-processing pipeline. The pipeline that they had, that they were already using at the company, was an MVP version of the pipeline and it had proved to be very difficult to change. It was very monolithic and it was slow to test any changes, slow to make any changes, very difficult to understand the code.

 

Poornima: Let's break that down. MVP is?

 

Jen Leech: Minimum viable product.

 

Poornima: Like a prototype?

 

Jen Leech: That's correct.

 

Poornima: Then, you mentioned that it was monolithic. What does that mean?

 

Jen Leech: Monolithic, that means that the code base that was used to process the pipeline was, in this case, two very large code bases that had become highly interconnected and so large in number of lines of code and the amount of time that it took to test any changes that it became very difficult to make any changes at all for fear of breaking the system.

 

Poornima: Probably like a lot of interdependencies?

 

Jen Leech: Correct.

 

Poornima: You fix one thing something else breaks and so on.

 

Jen Leech: Right and you would have things like a part of the code base had several-thousand-line-long python scripts essentially that you make one change in the middle and it wasn't really clear what would happen further down.

 

Poornima: Got it. What was the suggested course of action to fix that?

 

Jen Leech: When we came in—I didn't answer your earlier question—

 

Poornima: Go ahead.

 

Jen Leech: I should do that. The team that they pulled together, they asked me to lead the team and the people on the team included the company CTO, a director of engineering, a senior engineer, a data scientist, and one other Truss engineer, so a relatively small team, but a crack team. Our early discussions were attended by the COO and the VP of Engineering, so you can tell this is something they cared about.

 

Poornima: Very nice. How did you corral all of them and give them a sense of, “Here's what our prescription is to fixing this monolithic code base?”

 

How team dynamics impact the quality of the solutions

 

Jen Leech: I've read a lot of research on collaboration. I care a lot about building the best product that you can with the team that you have. The research that I have read talks a lot about the dynamic in the team, and how conversation occurs between people on the team, and how that impacts the solutions that the team comes up with. One really interesting result from that research is that if you have a team of, let's say, five people, one person on the team has a really high IQ, they're a genius, that team does not do as well as a team of five people who all have average IQs but who all listen to each other really well.

 

Poornima: Interesting. Why is that?

 

Jen Leech: Good question. The research did not necessarily try to explain why that was the result. However, what it did was they said repeatedly if you take a team and you measure how well they take turns in conversation, how well they integrate in all the ideas from everyone who's participating, that those metrics will predict the quality of the solution much more strongly than average IQ, as an example.

 

Poornima: Now, I'm not a mind reader but I assumed you were excited but also maybe a little bit nervous because you said there were a lot of C-level executives there, a lot of senior folks on the team that had a vested stake in it. How did you get over that initial hurdle? Did you set any ground rules or a framework?

 

Jen Leech: We had a really tight timeline and I wanted to try to get the best I could from the team, and we actually had to have a working prototype within four weeks. We're talking about working prototype, which was deployed and running real data, and on a big data processing pipeline.

 

Poornima: Why such a tight timeline, by the way?

 

Jen Leech: That was because for two reasons. One business needs, the company needed to increase the number of clients they had per, essentially, deployed resource. There we have a cost, scale at cost-scaling issue here. Then also, they had tried to do this project a couple of times already. They had given themselves, let's say, maybe six months to do it but burned away five of those months so this was last—

 

Poornima: Got it, they came to you. How did you take on this project or why did you take on this project? It's pretty tight.

 

Jen Leech: I didn't have a choice insofar as I showed up in a meeting room and they said, "Hey Jen, you're leading this project," which to be honest I don't mind. I think that's fun. That's part of why I do what I do. It became clear that I needed to make sure that the team was going to be extremely productive and simultaneously come up with a really good solution to the problem. I came up with some little tricks that I did internally to make sure that the team stayed on the right track and that I was facilitating the collaboration process toward the most effective result.

 

Poornima: Now, did you share these tricks with the other people on the team or are these just for yourself?

 

Jen Leech:  I did not, actually. I didn't even fully coalesce them into a collection of things until hindsight 20/20, then I flipped back and I said, "Oh, I did these things. That was effective, that worked."

 

Poornima: How are you consistent about enforcing them? That's another thing, right? We make these rules, these tricks for ourselves, but sometimes we don't ever hold ourselves accountable.

 

Jen Leech: I found that whenever I deployed them, the conversation was more effective and so in a way it was really easy—

 

Poornima: The feedback to you.

 

Jen Leech: To enforce them because everyone in the room felt the effect and I found that people would come up to me after the discussions and say, "Wow, that was such an effective discussion. Like, that was great. I don't know what you did but ...," that kind of thing. It was self-reinforcing. When stress levels increased or when people were tired then sometimes I would forget and things would degrade a little bit. Then I'd step back and be like, "Oh yeah, I should do that thing again." It was easy to try to keep doing it because it was better.

 

Poornima: Let's tackle the first rule that you had for yourself.

 

Rule #1: State facts not opinions

 

Jen Leech: The first rule that I came up with was, for me, personally one of the biggest changes in how I participated in these discussions it was to say, "State facts not opinions."

 

Poornima: That's a great one. Can you give us an example of what that looks like in practice?

 

Jen Leech: Sure. Really this is about separating your ego from the ideas that you're putting forth. It's a mechanic that allows you to shed light on an idea without becoming so attached to it that if it's a bad idea, you have difficulty letting go. As an example, let's say that you want to suggest to a team that maybe a micro services architecture is the right solution for a problem that you have. You could walk into the room and say, "Hey, a microservices architecture, that's going to solve problems A, B, C, and D for us. We should do it. I think it's totally going to work. What's the next step?" You're excited, that's great. Being excited is great; however, you've immediately just jumped into that idea with your full heart and soul in a way at the get go. If for some reason your idea isn't necessarily the best idea, then if someone comes back to you and says, "Ah, maybe that's not the best idea," then all of a sudden your hopes are dashed, that's not so great.

                                                 

You could take the same idea and you can walk into a room and you could say, "I think that a microservice architecture could be interesting to look at. My understanding is that it should give us A, B, C, or D, or maybe all four. Does that sound right? Do you think that we would actually get those things from microservice architecture in this situation? And would there be any problems introduced by pursuing a microservices solution to this problem?" Then, in that situation you are saying, "Here's some information. This is something we should examine. Let's examine it together." Then, when someone comes into the room and says, "Well, you know? I think that maybe it won't do C for us because in this situation that condition doesn't apply." Then you have a dialogue and when you investigate that problem, it's no longer your idea or their idea, you're trying to find the truth.

 

Poornima: I know our audience out there is going to be really curious to know how do you go from that conversation to making a final decision so that you're not stuck consensus building. We're going to cover that in the next episode, so stay tuned for that, but let's move on. What's another rule that you gave for yourself as you were managing this project?

 

Rule #2: Say to yourself, “Maybe they’re right”

 

Jen Leech: Another rule that I created was...that first rule was for your bringing an idea to the table, that perspective. The second one was the same thing...similar idea but from a listener's perspective of saying—it was a mantra I used and it was, "Maybe they're right."

 

Poornima: I love this one because it does a lot of good for you in that you're not concocting stories and a lot of drama, I think, around a project also gets dispelled because you're giving people the benefit of the doubt but it's so hard to do in practice.

 

Jen Leech: That's why it's a mantra.

 

Poornima: Let's talk about some examples that you had to use it in or that our viewers would have to use it.

 

Jen Leech: In this microservices architecture example, so someone comes to you and says, "Hey, you know? I think that a microservices architecture might solve our problem." Let's say, you as a listener have built microservices, you've transitioned from a monolithic code bases to microservices 20 times and you have a lot of context. You could say, "Hmm, nah. No, I don't think so." You could just say, "Based on my experience, I think you're wrong."

                                                 

This tactic is about putting that on its head and saying to yourself, "Maybe they're right," puts yourself into their shoes. Once you're in their shoes and saying, "Well, maybe they're right," then you can say, "OK, well why do you think that a microservices architecture is the right solution to this problem? What specific problems does it solve for us?" Then it leads you in a path of thinking through their suggestion and as you do that it may reveal things that maybe you didn't realize they were trying to solve. Maybe they have a different problem in mind to solve than what you do. When you realize that they're trying to solve a different problem you're like, "Maybe it does solve that problem in a way I hadn't thought about. Maybe if we use it in this one particular instance it will solve a different problem that I thought we had."

 

Poornima: That's great. It helps you get over the assumptions of the problem that you thought or it gives you more context to see how deep of a problem it is.

 

Jen Leech: It reveals your assumptions, it reveals the other person's assumptions, and it opens you up to be a much better listener, and simultaneously also validates the other person's ideas, which may be one of the more importance of that interaction, in fact.

 

Poornima: I feel like both these mantras, rules, whatever you like to call them are great for like 99% of the situations we have when we're managing that high-stakes project, so thank you so much, Jen, for sharing them.

 

Jen Leech: Absolutely.

 

As if preparing and delivering a presentation to your peers isn’t nerve-wracking enough… you also have to worry about the Q&A period at the end of your talk!

 

You’re worried about people asking not one but TWO questions! Having to decipher those questions that are really just comments. Then there is THE dreaded question: the question you don’t know the answer to.

 

You don’t want to appear stupid in front of your audience!

 

Truth is that the Q&A period can leave many first-time public speakers feeling like they need to know everything before they give a talk!

 

But you don’t, and we’re going to debunk this myth and more in today’s Build Tip.

 

I’m joined by Lara Hogan who is the VP of Engineering at Kickstarter and Author of Demystifying Public Speaking. Together we’ll be sharing a number of strategies to help you get ready for ANY question you receive during your next Q&A session after a presentation or team meeting. You’ll also learn some techniques to calm your nerves, engage your audience, and keep them wanting more!

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

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Episode Transcript

Poornima:  Whether you're new to public speaking or you've been doing it for a very long time, there's gonna come a point at the end of your talk, and right before that Q&A, where your nerves are gonna flare up.

                               

You're gonna be thinking, "What questions are people asking?" Or, "How do you respond to a question that you don't know the answer to?"

                               

Well in today's *Build* Tip, I'm gonna cover answers to these questions and more. Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. And today I'm joined by Lara Hogan, who is the author of *Demystifying Public Speaking*, and a lover of donuts.

 

Lara: Absolutely.

 

Poornima: Yeah. So Lara, you and I have given a lot of technical talks through our careers, and gotten to this point where maybe we're not as nervous giving the talk. But at the end, there's that Q&A period. Right?

 

Lara: Right.

 

Poornima: Where we can't anticipate all the questions. Those wonderful two-parters. People who do comments instead of questions.

 

Lara: Absolutely.

 

Poornima: Or you just don't know what the answer's gonna be.

 

Lara: Totally.

 

Poornima: So, let's kinda walk through each of these. Let’s start with the first where you just don't have a sense of what the questions are gonna be.

 

Lara: Yeah.

 

How To Prepare For A Q&A Session

 

Poornima: Do you have a technique that you use?

 

Lara: Absolutely. So I like to just in general have a feedback crew of three to five people. And hopefully they're people who you know well enough to make sure they're gonna

give you good critical feedback.

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Lara: 'Cause it's not worth it to just get feedback from people who you're not sure are gonna help you actually get better.

                               

So at the end of your practice run, maybe with that feedback crew, maybe they've helped give you some feedback about your body language, about your words that you used, etc. Ask them to help you do a practice Q&A.

 

Poornima: OK.

 

Lara: Yeah.

 

Poornima: That's great.

 

Lara: I love to make sure I have a mix of people, maybe people who are new to the topic, maybe people who are really familiar with it, or know the audience really well.

 

Poornima: Mm-hmm.

 

Lara: 'Cause they can help you level up your game, and get some practice to reduce those nerves.

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Lara: That when you're finally on stage you're like, "I've done this before."

 

Poornima: Sure. And do you feel like the questions that they ask are usually indicative of what the audience is gonna ask?

 

Lara: I try to ask for two different kinds of questions. One's just like a stereotypical, “If you were in the audience for real, what might you ask”?

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Lara: But if they're your friends, they're gonna be nice, normal questions.

 

Poornima: Right.

 

Lara: I also like to add a version two, which is like, “Let's get weird.”

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Lara: Give me that statement that's not actually a question. Or like totally intentionally

misunderstand the point that I'm trying to make, and ask me that question.

 

Poornima: Mm-hmm.

 

Lara: That way I have some practice in knowing how to handle those really sticky moments.

 

Poornima: So doing this in a practice session and dealing with peers, you're probably gonna feel

pretty good.

 

Lara: Yeah.

 

How To Respond To A Question That Is Really Just A Comment

 

Poornima: But what do you do in that moment where you may get that comment that's a question? How do you respond?

 

Lara: Totally. I think it depends on the situation. I want to remind everybody, your audience is rooting for you. Whenever you get that, "This is more of a statement than a question." I promise it's not just you feeling the weirdness of that, it's the whole of the audience, too. And you're still in a position of power. You still have control over the room.

 

Poornima: Mm-hmm.

 

Lara: And your whole goal is to teach people something new. And make sure that they are leveling them up in whatever the topic is that you're talking about.

                               

You have completely, a complete opportunity to be like, "Thanks for that. Here is how I would either reframe it, turn it into a better question, or answer the question, that you think you really wanted." Provide the information to the audience, too.

 

Poornima: Mm-hmm.

 

Lara: Yeah.

 

What To Do If You Get Asked A Question From Someone Who Is Online

 

Poornima: That's good. Now I also know a lot of times there are questions that come up where the audience isn't present, they might come up from audio, video, somebody might have written one in, Twitter, whatever. How do you facilitate those kind of questions?

 

Lara: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think—I hope—it helps to have a good moderator.

 

Poornima: Uh-huh.

 

Lara: To make sure that someone can actually help you navigate especially as multiple different sources of information giving you those questions.

 

Poornima: Yep.

 

Lara: But by and large, I just try to scan them, and kind of see which ones are the most relevant to my topic.

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Lara: Or which ones are gonna help me give an answer that will actually level up the entire audience who's listening in.

 

Poornima: Nice. I like what you said. So you're gonna filtering, but in a way that's gonna benefit the audience.

 

Lara: Yeah.

 

Poornima: Not just filtering for the sake of filtering.

 

Lara: Absolutely. Yeah.

 

What To  Do When You Don’t Know The Answer To A Question

 

Poornima: So let's talk about the last, the dreaded question, that you don't know the answer to.

 

Lara: Oh, those are my favorite. Yeah.

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Lara: I found that just in general in my career, not just in conference settings, but as for standing up in front of my team, or my boss.

 

Poornima: Sure, meetings.

 

Lara: Yeah. You have to be able to say, "I don't know."

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Lara: And you can do it gracefully. Just saying, "I don't know," doesn't mean that you're bad at your job. It doesn't mean that you didn't do all the—no one human can possibly know all there is to know about the topic on which you're speaking. So I like to practice also with that feedback crew saying, "I don't know." And in a really graceful and helpful way.

 

Poornima: Mm-hmm.

 

Lara: So maybe like "I don't know. I'll follow up later." And like respond on Twitter when I finally do the research on their answer.

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Lara: I might just be like, "I don't know. That's a great question. Come find me at the break and we can talk more about it." And my absolute favorite one is to be like, "You know, I don't know the answer to that question, but does anybody else in the audience know the answer to that question could you raise your hand? You should go talk to that person."

 

Poornima: Yeah. That's great.

 

Lara: Just totally punt on it.

 

Poornima: Yeah. No, that's fair. Awesome. Well thank you so much, Lara, for joining us.

 

Lara: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

 

Poornima: Yeah. And thanks all of you for tuning in today. And special thanks to our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker, for their help in producing this episode.

                               

If you've enjoyed this episode, then please subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you have friends out there who are nervous about Q&A, be sure to share this episode with them. Bye for now.

 

Lara: Thanks so much.

 

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

All this month we’ve been focused on the theme of pitching. We started out by talking about why many creative problem solvers shy away from pitching, leaving it up to CEOs, founders, and sales people. But, pitching is a really valuable skill that all of us need to hone in order for people hear us out, adopt our ideas, and believe in our solutions.

 

To help you embrace pitching, we shared the most common mistakes people make when pitching and how to overcome them. Then mentioned that the most effective and authentic pitches boil down to a powerful technique many of already do every day, storytelling. We covered why storytelling is powerful, how to condense a story down, and weave in our credibility.

 

By now you hopefully understand the importance of pitching, but you might be worried about having to pitch different audiences, and what to do in a setting where you only have 5 minutes or as much as 50 minutes to pitch.

 

Don’t worry Marie Perruchet and I have you covered! In this final segment on pitching, we’re  going to share the various types of pitches you need to prepare.

 

You’ll learn:

 

- What to include in a long pitch

- How to condense a long pitch into a pitch that is five minutes or less

- How to modify your pitch to address different audiences

- How to practice your pitch, so you deliver it effectively

Need more help with your pitch? Reach out to Marie on Twitter or on her website.

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer ((http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/).

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Episode Transcript

 

Poornima: Hey guys, we've been talking about pitching. I previously talked about the common mistakes people make when it comes to pitching, as well as some techniques to help you pitch in a way that resonates with your personality. If you missed either of those segments, check out the links to them below. In today's final segment, I'm gonna dive into the various types of pitches you need to prepare.

                                                 

Welcome back to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker, I'm your host Poornima Vijayashanker. Each episode of *Build* consists of a series of conversations I host with innovators, and together we debunk myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech.

                                                 

I'm joined again by Marie Perruchet, who is the author of the latest book, *One Perfect Pitch*, and in today's final segment we're gonna dive into the various types of pitches you need to prepare. Now Marie, we are all pretty familiar with the elevator pitch, right? It's 30 to 90 seconds, and everyone obsesses about it. But in your book, you actually talk about having a lot of different types of pitches, or different lengths, right? Having even a longer pitch, and then whittling it down to that elevator pitch. So let's start by talking about why you should have a longer pitch, and what to put in it.

 

What to include in a long pitch

 

Marie Perruchet: Yes Poornima, people get fixed on the idea that they should have just one pitch, but actually you need many pitches, because they should be tailored to people you're talking to. If you're pitching a bid to see a company, or a bid to be company, it's gonna be a different pitch you know. If your software is addressing different industries, your story should start with a different character.

                                                 

And the reason why I say that you should have a longer pitch, is that you should accommodate it, and make it flexible depending on the situation, and that over time, depending on the data points that you get, you rearrange your pitch. Also, why it's important to have a longer pitch, is that you can actually break it down and share the parts that you want to share, depending on the time you have, types of setting, the timing, the location; so many components that you have to include when you're presenting.

 

Poornima: Got it. So in a longer pitch, let's say we wanted to build our longest pitch, and it was what? Would it be like 15 minutes, or 10 minutes?

 

Marie Perruchet: It can be an hour, it can be two hours.

 

Poornima: OK, yeah.

 

Marie Perruchet: It can be five minutes. But definitely a great pitch would include a hook, a great hook, how you catch attention from people. It should talk about the problem, all the momentum, the achievement, or the breaking news, you know, what's new about your product. Talk about the solution, telling why you're the best at doing what you do. You know, great team, great founder's experience, you've had those awards in design, you learned to build the Siri technology.

                                                 

Talk about your key differentiators, because so many other companies, all building the same product, or as advanced as you are, or you are belonging to a group and everybody's competing for funding. So you should be able to tell what makes you different and better than the others, and then you end talking, maybe about the market, or talking about the go-to market strategies, and finishing with an ask. You know, how do you want people to help you to build, and share, and keep working at your product.

 

Poornima: Got it. So your longest pitch has every single element that you talk about in your book, and all those various pieces.

 

Marie Perruchet: Yes.

 

How to condense a long pitch into a pitch that is five minutes or less

 

Poornima: So now, taking things away, that feels scary, 'cause it's like, "Well, yeah, the award was important." Or, having this one key player on the team was really important, so how do you know what to take away for those shorter pitches?

 

Marie Perruchet: As the minimal available product, you have to test your pitch. And what's important here, and people usually don't pay attention, you should listen. You should listen how people reformulate their pitch, and that was one of my early techniques. You know, when I came to Silicon Valley eight years ago I had no pitch. And what I would do is that, at the time, helping founders, helping them, talking to them, explaining what I was trying to do, and telling them, "Hey, what do you think? What did you hear? Could you articulate what I've just said? What makes sense, is it simple enough? Does it make you think of something else?" So trying to have those open questions.

                                                

And then, as you take down notes, if you're quick enough or used to that, or you can actually record with your phone, you know, videotape or just taking your voice recording, and then you replay it to yourself later on. And you see which words people are using. And you know, politicians, they do the same. They test it, and they see what the press picks up. And so, then you have to pick it up again, and then replay it, and practice it again, until, you know, the one day your pitch will be perfectly tailored to the person you're pitching to.

 

Poornima: Got it. OK, so see how people reformulate your pitch, and what are the highlights that they talk about when they do, and then that will help you kind of condense it down.

 

Marie Perruchet: Yes.

 

Poornima: Nice. Do you have an example from any of your readers, or companies that you've coached, where they went from a long pitch to a shorter one?

 

Marie Perruchet: Yes. So I worked with a company called Autodesk, and we worked with their marketers, and they would send me their pitch and I would review those pitches. And most of the pitches, they're very long, and include information that is not relevant to their audience, or they don't have a very specific call to action. So, I would go over and actually shorten the pieces that were not relevant, and then have them rewrite their pitch so that it would be a little bit more focused.

                                                 

We start with founders, but also engineers and designers. What we do is that, if they have a 50-slide, or even 25-slide presentation, I'd listen to them, so that's kind of a first run. And then I tell them, "OK, this is what I think is important to highlight, depending on the time we have, and your target audience." And then I have them reformulate it and reframe it, and it gets much easier after we have them practice as well.

 

Poornima: What are some of the common things that you ask people to take out?

 

Marie Perruchet: Usually when I work with founders, but also engineers and designers, I like to focus on the story, you know, what makes them passionate about what they're doing, what drew them to work on developing that product or that project, because what I like is that understanding people perspective. They see things that I don't see, and this is from a more technical perspective, and what they do can actually change your situation. So I wanna know what drives them, and what are the problems that they've identified. And then they can share it with others. But you have to be able to communicate it in a very short and concise way, 'cause you know, I've been in the room with investors, entrepreneurs, and after 20 seconds they're being interrupted. So you have to give it right away.

 

Poornima: Got it. And so what are those pieces that you've seen over and over again, that people might put in that bloat their pitch, that you like to remove?

 

Marie Perruchet: The pieces that I like to remove is repetition, is rambling, is talking too much about the 50 features and characteristics of their products. I just want to hear about three features, and really defining features. Engineers tend to overwhelm you with too many details, they think that you wanna know more, so you have to understand and tell as much as possible, but this choice, you have to make it for people. You cannot let people make their choice for yourself. You have to work ahead. So don't overwhelm people with too many details, too many features.

                                                 

Don't talk too much about yourself, but make it relevant how much your past experience is gonna be relevant to lead that team into building the next product. And also I would say, be very concise, and don't beat around the bush from the very first few seconds, or from the very first few lines of your pitch. Go straight away, dive into your pitch right away.

 

How to modify your pitch to address different audiences

 

Poornima: In your book you also talk about the importance of having pitches that are tailored to your audience. So question to you, how do you figure out who's in the audience, and then how do you go about doing that tailoring?

 

Marie Perruchet: You absolutely have no excuses for not knowing who's in your audience.

 

Poornima: OK, good.

 

Marie Perruchet: There's so many ways today, on the internet, to get information, and pull information about people, their taste, their location, what they're doing. If you're working in a company, you have to ask your workmates, you know, what a person likes, or is it a great timing for you to pitch to them, getting as much information internally. And also, for example, if you're speaking at a conference, you have to know beforehand, you know, the profession, the level of expectations. When I run a workshop, usually I send a survey before, through Google Docs, and ask people, you know, your expectations, how much they're knowledgeable, so it's great, kind of a quiz to engage people, and making them feel that what you're gonna say is going to be for them.

 

Poornima: Yeah, I think that's really important, tailoring it to the audience, and doing your homework ahead of time, to knowing what that audience is. Now, I do know a lot of times people get overwhelmed because they think, "OK, my audience is going to be a bunch of engineers, and there's a lot of different levels of engineers. How do I whittle it down to, maybe the beginner, versus the advanced, etc." So walk us through how you would whittle it down, once you have an idea of who's gonna be in the audience.

 

Marie Perruchet: So you cannot address everyone in the room, but who are the people, the target audience, who's gonna be the most relevant to grow your product or your business. So maybe you would pick a couple, or maybe three examples, you know, three case stories that is going to appeal and help the audience think that you're trying to relate to their own problems.

                                                 

So let's say, today when you pitched the interview to me, Poornima, you know we are both women, both interested into public speaking, we love video and talking about skills that can be relevant to specific audience. So already you had me there, 'cause I knew you knew me, I can see you did your homework and research, and took the time and effort to make it relevant. Because we are all busy, we have less, and less time, we have very short attention span. So right away you have to be extremely precise, and be relevant, to engage, and actually instigate people to listen and keep listening to what you have to say.

 

Poornima: I really like what you said about, you can't address everyone in the room, 'cause I know a lot of people try to please everyone, and they're just...it's not gonna happen. So yeah, definitely tailoring it, making sure it's relevant, to even a handful of people, can be really valuable. I know the last thing that you talk about when it comes to preparing, is actually doing the preparation practice. Walk us through what you recommend when it comes to practicing your pitch.

 

Marie Perruchet: Many founders and entrepreneurs, engineers, designers, they wait for the last minute to practice their pitch. I've worked with this head of a Google Glass competitor, Japanese CEO. We practice, and I say, "OK, you have to practice at least 20 times." He said, "No, I will practice 200 times."

 

Poornima: Oh, wow.

 

Marie Perruchet: And I was quite impressed, because the reason why you have to practice, and it's one of my signature exercise that I do during the corporate trainings, is that I have people line up, like speed dating, but they have to pitch for a minute, and then they switch and then they do it again. And I can tell you, the first few minutes, people are bored, and then the pitch ends after 20 seconds. But then, after they do it like four of five times, I have to yell and tell them you have to stop. 'Cause first, you know, they get inspiration, they get idea, and they go straight to the point. They cut to the chase, and they don't give information that's not relevant anymore, because they see that effect that they have on the face of their audience. So practice is very important. Also, practicing in a room, meaning that every time that I go and speak to a conference I arrive an hour before, to do the recognition of the room, knowing where I'm gonna walk, where I'm gonna get closer to my audience so that I don't ostracize part of the room, because otherwise that part will leave the room, and as a speaker, you don't want that.

                                                 

And I would say the third advice that I would give, is practicing using the technology. So you can use your tablet, you can use your phone; so you record it, and that's OK, to look at yourself. I know we are all the worst judges of ourselves, but then you play it with the sound and no image, without the sound with the image, and you can see and correct all your filler words, your repetitions, the “ehm, uhm,” but also if you're flapping your arms, if you keep touching your nose, or playing with your rings. And then, over time, maybe you're not gonna change overnight, but you learn how to be aware, what are the mistakes, where you can improve, and then manage it over time, and manage that anxiety of public speaking, but also knowing that your story cannot be perfect from the very first day. It takes time and it needs adjustment, you need to tailor it, and also understanding that it's for your audience, it's not for yourself.

 

How to practice your pitch, so you deliver it effectively

 

Poornima: That's great Marie. So how do you know when it's ready to go?

 

Marie Perruchet: How do you know if your pitch is ready to go? Don't wait. You have to do it right now, and start practicing with your friends, with a colleague. Great way to say is, "I have an idea, I have to present it to the management, to a partner, I'd love to get your feedback." Make sure that the person is qualified to give your feedback, not everybody is able to do that. But, "Hey, can I have a few minutes of your time? I'd like to run a few ideas." And then, take notes, or videotape or record with your phone what they've just told you. You have to be able to listen. Integrate that feedback, and then replace it in your next pitch. But don't wait, you know, the previous night before your presentation, to pitch. You have to practice beforehand, because also what's important, is that you will see the journey, and it will give you a lot of confidence.

 

Poornima: Yeah, I think that's valuable. And as you record yourself, you do see that progression. So, I know for a lot of people that I coach, they then realize they have made a lot of progress, because it's been captured.

 

Marie Perruchet: Absolutely.

 

Poornima: Well thank you so much Marie, for joining us, and I know our audience out there is gonna get a lot out of these segments. And be sure, audience, to check out Marie's book, *One Perfect Pitch*. And for people who wanna get in touch with you, what's the best way?

 

Marie Perruchet: To me what's important, is impact. I'd love to hear from you guys, you know, check the book, dive into the exercises, learn how to work around a method, and get back to me, tell me how it impacted your work. Whether it helped you refresh your ideas, your communication, pushed you to pitch more. I'd love to hear you, so you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Marie Perruchet. You can follow me on Twitter, send me messages through Instagram as well. You know, I love text messages, so please get in touch, I'd love to hear from you.

 

Poornima: That's it for our episode on pitching. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next *Build* episode, and special thanks to our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker, for their help in producing this episode. Ciao for now.                                                 

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

 

One of the reasons people don’t like pitching is because they feel like they have to be someone else. They have to abandon their personality, get into character, and speak in a way they normally wouldn’t in order to impress a colleague, customer, or investor.

 

However, people on the receiving end of the pitch are going to see through and disengage quickly. A sales-y pitch is one that isn’t rehearsed and the person pitching hasn’t taken the time to figure out how to engage their audience.

 

What we don’t realize is that we don’t need to change who we are or how we speak to engage audiences. Many of us are already practicing a powerful pitching technique in our everyday lives, storytelling. And when we deliver stories in a conversational approach we come off as clear and authentic.

 

But we may still be opposed to starting a pitch with a story. We worry about it being too long or short, and the theme and details resonating with the audience.

 

Well in today’s Build episode, Marie Perruchet author of One Perfect Pitch: How to Sell Your Idea, Your Product, Your Business or Yourself is back.

 

You’ll learn the following from Marie:

 

- Why storytelling is a powerful technique for pitching

- How you can tell a great story in a business setting

- How to condense a long story so that it is short and to the point

- How to weave your credibility into a story

- Why most demos fail – hint: it’s because they fail to walk an audience through a story

- How to incorporate an ASK into your pitch

--

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

 

Episode Transcript

Poornima: Hey, guys. I'm back today talking about pitching. In the last segment, I covered a lot of the mistakes that people make when pitching. If you missed out, I highly recommend you check it out. The link to the video is below this one. Today I'm gonna dive into how to pitch in a way that resonates with your personality.

                                                 

Welcome back to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. Each *Build* episode consists of a series of conversations I host with innovators, and together we debunk myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. Today we're gonna continue the conversation around pitching, and I'm joined by Marie Perruchet, who is the author of the latest book, *One Perfect Pitch*. Thanks again for joining us today, Marie.

 

Marie: Great to be here.

 

Why storytelling is a powerful technique for pitching

 

Poornima: Last week we were talking about a number of mistakes people make when it comes to pitching. Now I want to shift gears and talk about how we can pitch in a way that resonates with our personality so that we feel effective as people who are pitching. I know one of the techniques that you talk about in your book is storytelling. But a lot of people have an aversion to starting a pitch with a story, because they're not sure how to craft one. They worry about whether it's too long or too short, and they want to make sure that it really resonates with the audience. So let's just start by talking about why storytelling is an effective technique to start your pitch with.

 

Marie Perruchet: I love storytelling. You're born and then your parents, your family, reads you stories. I grew up with stories from Charles Perrault, from Brothers Grimm. You know Cinderella...the first story of Cinderella was found in the fifth century in China. And since then you have more than 1,400 versions of Cinderella. Take Japan, the Japanese telling stories using animation. Think about in China there was this guy who would hang around and sell candies and actually would tell stories to sell more candies. And so if you're thinking about the story of immigration in the U.S., the show and tell that kids learn how to do at school, the kids would talk about their fluffy toy. That was a great way to have kids from immigrants who wouldn't speak the same language unite around a story. And when you think of what storytelling is today for technology companies, which is the main industry here in Silicon Valley but also blossoming in other countries, storytelling talks about transformation, and that's what technology companies are doing, transforming a certain industry.

 

How you can tell a great story in a business setting

                                                 

So storytelling is a very powerful technique because it's something that people know already, they grew up with that. Every weekend you're telling your friends stories, how you got away from a parking ticket, or how, in my case, I have lost my passports, or how the toast you did for your friend's wedding didn't go so well. So we all know how to tell stories, except in a business perspective, in a business setting, it has to be very short because we can not spend hours telling stories.

                                                 

So how do you tell a great story? First, think of the pitch meet being a mini story that creates emotion. So stories are a way to start and that's the method I describe in my book. You start with the problem, talk about the solution, and then finish with an ask that is the transformation.

                                                 

A great image to remember is the image of the rainbow. There's the rainbow, there's the storm, that's the problem. The rainbow, talk about the solution, and then supposedly there's a pot of gold, which is the transformation. So whenever you want to tell a story, there should be a beginning, a middle, and an end. And you know the James Bond movies, they all start with something that grips you to your seat. Think about the Cinderella story, at the end there's a transformation. That's what storytelling is about. There's a problem, there's tension in the beginning, there's a resolution. That's what we want to hear because it creates a tension, it creates an emotion, and we want to follow up.

 

Poornima: OK, so for our audience out there, start with the problem, and that will present a good tension point to hook the audience right from the beginning.

 

Marie Perruchet: Absolutely.

 

Poornima: Now, I know another concern is having the story be too long or too short. How do you recommend it being just the right length for the pitch that you're doing?

 

Marie Perruchet: People shouldn't worry so much because a story takes time to craft and to refine. Anyone is able to tell a story for an hour, for two hours, but it takes a lot of practice to chop it to maybe a minute. And there's so much you can tell in a minute. The radio pieces I used to tell would be a minute long, and there's so much you can tell in structure. So people shouldn't be worried about that because the story changes over time and you should practice it.

 

How to condense a long story so that it is short and to the point

 

Poornima: So how do you condense that hour-long story down to a minute? Do you have an example?

 

Marie Perruchet: I advise founders, engineers, and designers to take a page, write their story, look at it, and then eliminate two thirds. And those two thirds should be anything that's not relevant or that's not gonna interest their audience. Anything that's not precise, that doesn't have data or numbers, you should get rid of it. Any personal opinions shouldn't be there. That's the first step.

                                                 

The second step, when you want to know about your story you should focus on different parts like they're LEGO parts, because each part should be breakable. Imagine yourself at a cocktail party, you start pitching and somebody comes and interrupts you. So you should be able to tell those parts very separately and if you put them together they work very well. So think about what's your hook, how do you start your story? How do you differentiate yourself? How do you bring up the solution? Talk about your team.

                                                 

So each segment should be a minute long. And it's very easy. If you're taking your Word document, there's a word count. It should be between, I believe, 150 words per minute. You can use your calculator in the toolkit for the Word document to calculate it. And then you practice it and you should be very slow, very articulate, especially if, like me, you're non-native English speakers, so that people can get used to your accent.

 

How to weave your credibility into a story

 

Poornima: Nice. Now, I know another thing you talk about is credibility and leading with it. How do you recommend people lead with that credibility?

 

Marie Perruchet: I'm gonna give you an example. When I meet people and they don't know me or they want to question my expertise, I tell them that I'm an award-winning journalist, worked for the BBC in three countries. I've also written a book at McGraw-Hill on the art of writing your pitch called *One Perfect Pitch*. You are establishing credibility giving examples or giving awards or giving achievements to people about what you've been doing in the past so that you can create trust.

 

Poornima: Right. Now, I meet a lot of people who often will tell me their credibility and they'll mention things that maybe happened 5 or 10 years ago that may not be relevant to the work that they're doing now. So how do you create credibility when you're just getting something off the ground?

 

Marie Perruchet: I worked with engineers, with founders and designers to create credibility from the ground, and when you think that nothing happened in the past 10 years, yes, something did happen. But you need to really look into it and work and find out, what you're doing today, you didn't get up in the morning and start it. It comes from somewhere and I want to know that. I want to know why you and why not somebody else. One great way to do it is ask your friends, "Why do you think I'm so passionate? Why do you think I'm working every day for 12 hours a day and building and developing my product or my startup?" Ask people you've met with or you've worked with, "This is what I'm doing right now, but I'm unsure, I have doubts. What would be the reason why I should pursue it? Could you help me and shed some light?" Understanding what is your path, your passion, for me, writing a book has been very transformative because I could find out why I was so passionate about storytelling and that storytelling has been with me my entire life.

 

Why most product demos given during pitches fail

 

Poornima: Now, I know another technique is the proof is in the product. Especially for those of us who are engineers and designers, we like to have something tangible to show. Can you talk about demoing a product? I'll admit, I've done a lot of terrible demos in my past. How would you recommend people have an effective demo of their product?

 

Marie Perruchet: Yes, people tend to overlook their demo. They work on their questions, they work at telling what they're good at, sometimes telling about the problem if it's great, but they think, "OK, I'm just gonna do the demo on the fly." But the demo should be extremely prepared because if you need Wi-Fi, you don't know any technical issues. I lived in India, I know about electricity cuts happening all the time. So you never know and you want to be prepared. So don't depend first on your demo to explain your product.

                                                 

The second thing would be have somebody else handling all the technicalities so that you don't have to worry about that. And the third thing would be, of course, practicing your demo. We worked with a client who was presenting a product to Samsung, and what we did is that we took it from...it's like a journey or taking a trip from A to Z. From the moment you have to click on the button to get into the software to the moment you have to scroll down the menu, you have to show all that. Maybe you have to spend 20 minutes or 30 minutes, keep it maybe under 10 minutes. A couple of minutes is great, but you have to go step by step so that the person understands from their user's perspective what they have to do to get to the product.

 

Poornima: Yeah, I like what you said about the user's perspective, and I know in your book you talk about even presenting a scenario. Not just like, "Oh, let me show you my product, and here's how you sign up, and here's how you get started," but having a very directed workflow maybe based on a specific use case.

 

Marie Perruchet: Yes, so you can also do that. If you can show the product, people always like to see something tangible. When you're bargaining in certain countries, you want to show the dollars, the euros, the money that you have. What you can do if you don't have the product with you, you can pick a name. This is Kate, this is Andrew, this is Jane. Jane starts her morning that way. This is what her journey looks like. This is her problem, this is the problem she faced, and this is how our solution helps her transform her day.

 

Poornima: Nice, so yeah, that's very relatable and that comes back to incorporating storytelling into your demo.

 

Marie Perruchet: Yes, because behind every product there's a team, there's a leader, and we want to know the struggles your team are going through to give birth to that product.

 

How to incorporate an ASK into your pitch

 

Poornima: And finally, there's the ask, which you talk about incorporating into your pitch. But again, depending on backgrounds, you both feel like that can be really sales-y or sleazy. So walk us through why it's important to have an ask at the end of your pitch and how to craft one.

 

Marie Perruchet: To me, a sales-y pitch is a pitch where people have it rehearsed, and they don't really connect and they only talk about themselves. So an ask at the end of the pitch is another great way to reconnect with the person if by any chance you've lost her or him during your presentation.

                                                 

So why finishing by an ask? Because every story has an end. And you're telling this story, imagine you've created a tension, you've got people very excited about the problem because they felt, "Oh, they're relating to my own problem, they brought us a solution." But then, nothing happens at the end of your story. You leave them in a state of anxiety. So people, if they've been seduced and excited by your idea, they want to help. So you have to give them clear directions.

                                                 

For example, "Hey, I'd like to have an intro to that person to support my project. I need more resources. What can you do to help me fund that project?" Be extremely clear, and I know in American English it's much easier. In certain countries, you don't want to be so direct, but find a way to have your team or the person or your subject act on something. Just don't leave it like this because people want to help. They want you to be successful, so what can you give them so that they can help you?

 

Poornima: That's fantastic. Thank you, Marie. This has been really helpful.

                                                 

Now Marie and I want to learn from you. What additional techniques have you tried that have worked as you've been pitching your ideas? Let us know in the comments below and the first three people to respond are gonna receive an autographed copy of *One Perfect Pitch* from Marie.

                                                 

That's it for this segment. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next and final segment on this topic of pitching, where we'll talk about the various types of pitches you need to prepare. Ciao for now!

                                                 

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

Have you ever had an idea for something, like a process or product that you wanted to improve? But instead of sharing your idea with others like your friends or co-workers, you just kept it to yourself because the thought of having to “pitch it” felt icky and salesy?

Many of us who are creative problem solvers feel this way.

Since pitching doesn’t come naturally to us, we just leave it up to CEOs, founders, and sales people.

However, pitching is a really valuable skill that all of us need to hone, because only if we pitch our ideas will people hear us out, adopt them, and believe in our solutions.

In today’s episode of Build, we’re going to tackle a number of misconceptions people have about pitching as well as the common mistakes people make while delivering them.

In future episodes, we’ll talk about how you can pitch in a way that resonates with your personality and the various types of pitches you need to prepare because it turns out that an elevator pitch isn’t enough!

To help us out, I've invited Marie Perruchet (http://www.oneperfectpitch.com/about-us), who is the author of the latest book, One Perfect Pitch: How to Sell Your Idea, Your Product, Your Business or Yourself (https://www.amazon.com/One-Perfect-Pitch-Business-Yourself/dp/0071837590).

Even if you don’t plan on pitching anything in the near future, chances are someone is going to pitch something to you: a project or a product, and you need to be able to filter the best from the worst!

So I highly recommend you watch this episode to learn:

- Why no one is a natural when it comes to pitching
- How to get over the discomfort of pitching
- Why you can’t stop at the first NO

You’ll also learn the 3 most common mistakes people make while pitching and how to avoid them such as:

- Not taking the time to make people care enough about your idea.
- Not realizing that most pitches are shared.
- Overwhelming people with data.

--

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer ((http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/).

Episode Transcript

Poornima: Pitching an idea feels icky and salesy and for those of us who are creative problem solvers; it doesn't come naturally to us. So, we just end up not doing it all together, leaving it up instead to founders, CEOs, and sales people. However, pitching is a really valuable skill that all of us need to hone, because only if we pitch our ideas will people hear us out, adopt them, and believe in our solutions. Today, we're going to tackle a number of misconceptions and mistakes that people make when it comes to pitching and in future segments, we're going to talk about how you can pitch in a way that resonates with your personality and the various types of pitches you need to have prepared.

                                                 

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. Each *Build* episode consists of a series of conversations I host with innovators and together we debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. Today we're going to be diving into the misconceptions around pitching and to help us out, I've invited Marie Perruchet, who is the author of the latest book, *One Perfect Pitch: How to Sell Your Idea, Your Product, Your Business or Yourself*. Thanks for joining us, Marie.

 

Marie Perruchet: Thanks for having me, Poornima.

 

Poornima: We met at a conference earlier this year, and as I recall it, your background is not in tech. So, walk us through your background and what lured you into tech.

 

Marie Perruchet: My name's Marie. I grew up in Normandy, originally from South Korea, born there and was adopted to French parents. Because I always loved traveling, my first career was actually being a journalist.

 

Poornima: OK.

 

Marie Perruchet: I was a radio journalist and I started out from Brussels, then I decided to move further and I worked for the French National Radio from New Delhi in India covering politics, earthquake, and two years later I thought it would be great to also work from one of larger clients in Asia, so I moved to Shanghai where I worked for the BBC. And then after, that was my big turning point, because I moved to Silicon Valley. In the beginning, I was covering some tech, but mainly it was for the Presidential elections for former President Obama, end of 2008. You know, when you arrive here, you realize that first you don't have to use VPN to get access to information coming from China. But also that everybody is embracing entrepreneurship and that means that you have a laptop, you have a Wifi connection, and you have an idea, and you want to see if you can put it through and then push it to the market.

                                                 

I thought it was very exciting, so I thought, "OK, what's going on here? What can I do?" I always loved helping people tell their own story through the media, but at the time, it was a big explosion about the platforms. How do you communicate your company's story, how you can communicate about yourself, how do you go for funding? And I started helping entrepreneurs and startup founders communicate that story to the world and also to investors here, but also users and partners. I mentored at different incubators, including 500 startups, mentored at Japanese, Korean, Chinese incubators here and then starting having my own clients helping them communicate their idea for funding, but also on their website, on social media. And I'm going to corporate training where I brought these large companies here, because you know internally you also need to be able to present your ideas effectively in very short formats, because people they have very short attention spans.

 

Poornima: Yeah. That's a lot of great work that you've done around pitching. What then inspired you to go from doing that work to writing the book, *One Perfect Pitch*?

 

Marie Perruchet: So, you know when you're a journalist, you think that down the road you're going to write a book at some point.

 

Poornima: OK.

 

Marie Perruchet: But I was not a journalist anymore. And what happened is that I was featured in the *Wall Street Journal* for my work and McGraw-Hill they actually pitched the book idea to me.

 

Poornima: Oh, that's great.

 

Marie Perruchet: Yes. And I said yes, even without knowing what it means to write a book.

 

Why People Find Pitching Uncomfortable

 

Poornima: So, I know a lot of people don't enjoy pitching, they don't feel like they're good at it, they're not a natural, they might be shy or introverted. How do you help people get over those situations?

 

Marie Perruchet: First of all, people should think about why they're so uncomfortable pitching. And it has to do with...you know, think about your business ahead. So, it takes a lot of time to think about it and it takes a lot of preparation knowing your user, what your business does, your brand identity, your identity. So, that's why it's very important to think ahead about what you're trying to convey. And then when you're confident about your idea, it makes it much easier to be able to pitch your idea. The second thing is also practice. Don't wait for the last minute for people to feed you questions to pitch, because here it's very competitive. People are coming from all over the world to go for funding, look for funding, but also trying to get and acquire users and customers. And I would say the sort of thing that I tell people who feel shy, “OK, maybe you're doing this presentation, maybe you're pitching, maybe it doesn't go so well as you think, but you have to keep going back to the stage in the room and keep pitching until your idea goes through.” So, you can't stop at the first “no.” You have to keep doing it.

 

Poornima: Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point.

 

Marie Perruchet: Of course, if you're looking on the internet, if you're looking at great speakers, think about in 1988 at the Democratic Convention, there was the Arkansas governor called Bill Clinton. He was a very, very bad presenter at the time, but you know how much money he makes today while speaking. So, nobody's ever a natural. There are techniques and you need to acquire those techniques to feel more comfortable and manage your anxiety.

 

Pitching Mistake #1: Not taking the time to make people care about your idea.

 

Poornima: There's also a number of mistakes that people make when they are pitching and you cover some of them in your book. The first one is not taking the time to make people care about what it is you're talking about. So, what exactly does that mean, and how do you make people care?

 

Marie Perruchet: How do you make people care when you're trying to convey an idea? You have to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. So it means that you have to have empathy because maybe you got that idea from the closet of your room or from your garage or from your basement if you're living on the East Coast or in any other countries, but you know you have to understand how your product, your service is solving a problem for the person who may buy that product from you. And that's why when you're a founder because you're so entrenched in the work, you need to take some perspective and really put yourself in the shoes of your audience.

 

Pitching Mistake #2: Not realizing that pitches are shared.

 

Poornima: We also have people in our audience who are very technical, and a lot of times when they are presenting an idea, the get really bogged down in that jargon, which may not be comprehendible by somebody who is not technical or on the business side or has some other expertise. So, how would you explain to them how to manage that?

 

Marie Perruchet: So, they should think about how to make their pitch simple, because whoever they're going to pitch it to, that person is going to pitch the idea to somebody else. So that's why they have to make it simple. For many founders, their biggest problem is knowing where to start their pitch. And in my book, I describe three ways to start your pitch. The first one is telling how you're solving your tech problem. No, the first one is telling about the problem that you're trying to solve. So putting yourself in the shoes of the person. Another way to start your technical pitch is talking about the breaking news. What's the latest about your product or your idea? Maybe you've just debugged something in your software or you've just released a new product. Something that makes it exciting for people. And the third way to start your pitch, when it's a technical pitch as well, is talking about all the achievements that your team has achieved in the past week or in the past month, so that's a great way to grab the attention of your audience.

 

Poornima: Yeah. Now, I know another thing you mention in the book is having a universal story, right? And this is something you can start your pitch with. So, walk us through, what exactly is a universal story?

 

Marie Perruchet: I recommend founders to start with a universal story, because that's how they find something that they can have related to what they're doing, meaning that founders think that what they are doing is very unique and very special, but if you're looking around, you realize that maybe 10 companies are doing the same thing as you're doing.

 

Poornima: Sure. Yep.

 

Marie Perruchet: And when you're thinking about the people who are going to buy your product or your service, they cannot just be your family or your close friends. You have to understand that hey, this product could be used in that country in that segment, in that market and make it relevant for everyone.

 

Poornima: Do you have an example of a reader or somebody that you coached to come up with a universal story that you could share with us?

 

Marie Perruchet: Yes. I've coached a company that were developing sensors and those sensors were actually bees and those bees were able to detect some substance, illegal substances for example, and what we found out is that the founder, his grandpa was actually the largest exporter of honey from Turkey. And so everybody understand honey, everybody understand bees, so that's where universal, because it's a common in plain English in English language that people can use to convey their ideas.

 

Poornima: Got it. So you started with that, and then talked about the sensors rather than starting with sensors, which people may or may not understand anyway.

 

Marie Perruchet: Exactly. Because you always have to think that people are going to pitch for you, as I'm pitching about himself today. I need to be able to understand and the more simple you make it, the easier it travels.

 

Pitching Mistake #3: Overwhelming people with data.

 

Poornima: Yep. So simplicity's important, but I know a lot of us in tech love information and data. One of the things that you talk about in your book is sometimes we don't present enough information or the data that we share isn't the most relevant or can be confusing. How do you recommend people decide on how much information is enough and how to present data that's valuable?

 

Marie Perruchet: Well, I love data. Most of the time, people they tend to overwhelm people with data, so you have to maybe—for example, if you're thinking about a slide presentation—just maybe one data per slide, that's enough. Not 50 data per slide.

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Marie Perruchet: And also, when they're saying, "Oh, not enough data," what they mean is that they're not precise enough. Sounds like high level or it's too much jargon, but we don't really picture in our mind what it means, so the more precise you are with your data, the better it is. For example, in a span of three weeks, our traffic increased by 50%. So that's very precise, instead of saying that, "We've got great traction in developing our product." That doesn't mean anything.

 

Poornima: Got it. And so showing kind of the growth trend could be one way of representing it. Are there other techniques that you talk about?

 

Marie Perruchet: To talk about traction?

 

Poornima: Mm-hmm.

 

Marie Perruchet: You can say traction in a short amount of time, saying like in a month, required X number of users. That could be another way to show it, so growth, but also, “Our application has been number one for six consecutive weeks or six consecutive months at the Apple Store in three countries.” And you're not bragging but you're just stating the facts and it gives context to people because imagine what you're pitching, other companies are also pitching. So how do we get the right context to make a decision about should we have the next meeting?

 

Poornima: Got it. Well, thank you so much Marie. This has been fantastic. Now Marie and I want to know, are there mistakes that we haven't covered in this segment, that you're worried about making? Let us know what they are in the comments below and we'll be sure to address them.

                                                 

OK, that's it for this segment. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next segment where we'll continue the conversation and dive into how to create a pitch that resonates with your personality. Ciao for now.

 

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

Every product release our goals are the same: we want to show customers we care about meeting their needs and we want to stay ahead of our competition! So how do we get it all done? We cram as many features and bugs as we can think of. Cutting back is for complainers!

 

Is it really?

 

Or… is it hard to estimate how long a feature is going to take to build and a bug to fix? And by not cutting back are we jeopardizing the quality of the product we release and sacrificing the sanity of the team?

 

We get that this is an age old struggle. It’s hard to challenge business goals, and start a conversation within your team about why you aren’t going to do something without being seen as a slacker.

 

If you or your team has struggled to figure out what will produce quick wins, what to ignore because there is no value, and what may be too complex to pursue in a single release then you’ll want to watch today’s episode! In today’s Build Tip you’ll learn:

 

• Why people choose to cram versus cut back
• Why it’s hard to estimate how long it will take to build a feature or fix a bug
• Why it’s important to cut back on features and bugs for each release
• What happens when you and your team commit to building and fixing everything
• How to evaluate what to work on and commit to using a simple 2x2 matrix
• Why it’s OK to have a debate around the product’s strategy and roadmap

 

Be sure to share the episode with your teammates to help them understand the importance of cutting back!

 

 

 

Transcript

 

Poornima: What's the matter? What are you doing?

 

Ronan: I'm getting ready for the next release.

 

Poornima: And this is how you get ready?

 

Ronan: Do you know how many features and bugs we have to get into it? I'm to sure we're going to be able to make the release in time.

 

Poornima: Have you thought about cutting back?

 

Ronan: No way. Have you spoken to the customer recently?

 

Poornima: I think we're going to need to cover how to cut back in today's *Build* tip.

                               

Why People Choose To Cram Versus Cut Back

 

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host Poornima Vijayshanker, and today I've got a new *Build* tip for you. I'm joined by Jay Hum, who is a project manager at Pivotal. Now Jay, we run into this issue over and over again where we commit to a lot of features, a lot of bugs, because we want to meet business goals and we want to make our customers happy. But we can't cram it all in. And I know time and time again we tell people to pare back, but they don't, right?

                               

So let's start by talking about why people don't pare back.

 

Why It’s Hard To Estimate How Long It Will Take To Build A Feature Or Resolve A Bug

 

Jay Hum: So before I answer that question, I think it's important to bring out that software development's always notoriously difficult. And estimating the amount of effort that goes into any type of release feature or functionality, is even more difficult, right?

                               

So, for example, if a developer comes to me and says, "This is going to take two days," then I multiply that two and then add two days to it, so it's actually going to take six days instead of two days.

 

Why It’s Important To Cut Back On Features And Bugs For Each Release

 

Poornima: So why is it even important to pare down a release?

 

Jay Hum: So customers always ask for a lot of features and functionality, and then even the development teams, the product manager, the designers and developers, they always have their own ideas of what should go into a release or feature. But at the end of the day, until that product is out in the market, you're actually never going to know what features or functionality the customers are actually going to use.

                               

There's lots of evidence out there that when you're dealing with customers, they'll say one thing but you go look at the analytics and they're actually doing something else, right? So the danger in creating this big release that has tons of features and functionality, is that you can sort of create something that's sort of an analysis paralysis in terms of what the user's experiencing, right?

                               

So if they get a new release and there's so many new features and functionality they don't know what to do, so what they end up doing is not doing anything and just going back to what they were doing originally. The second part is that you always want to sort of relate it back to web business goals or metrics that you are trying to achieve, right?

                               

Again, you want to focus on some of the top priority task features that will drive the most business value or move a KPI, whether that is to increase engagement or move people further down the funnel.

 

What Happens When You And Your Team Commit To Building And Fixing Everything

 

Poornima: What happens if we commit to everything?

 

Jay Hum: Well, in Ronan's case where he's all stressed out and it's a big release, I mean I've heard this story before, and essentially the short answer is disaster, right? But let me unpack that a little bit.

                               

So, first of all, you've already seen that Ronan's very stressed, right? So if you don't pare down the release you are effectively going to burn out the team. Not just the developers but the product manager, the stakeholders even, the quality engineers, and the designers.

 

Poornima: Is there anyone besides the team they're going to upset?

 

Jay Hum: Yeah, obviously you're going to upset the customer. So generally when the team is overstressed or burned out and really pushing hard and cranking through the night, effectively, they're not going to write good-quality code and they're going to accrue technical debt and it's going to be messy and they're going to cut corners, right? So that means that the product that eventually is going to be shipped is going to be subpar, it's not going to be up to the expectations of the client or customer, and again, they're just going to get turned off and very disappointed.

 

How To Evaluate What To Work On And Commit To Using A Simple 2x2 Matrix

 

Poornima: I know there's been a lot of conversation and debate on how to pare down features, what bugs to include or not include. Do you have a simpler solution you can share with the audience?

 

Jay Hum: Yeah, my go-to solution is a two-by-two matrix. That works very well in helping us prioritize which features should go into a release and which features should fall out. So it's a two-by-two that allows us to rank any features in terms of value to the customer as well as complexity to implement.

                               

And it's great because it actually gives you information on four different things. So it'll give you information on which of the features you should actually be doing or working on, as well as which would we call sort of the quick wins that you can do very quickly and looks like you're making good progress. It'll show you which features that you should ignore because they don't have any value or they're too complex, and other ones that you should debate around in terms of product strategy and roadmap.

 

Poornima: Now Jay and I want to know do you guys have a go-to method for paring down features at your company. Let us know in the comments below.                               

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

--

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

All this month, Joy Dixon and I have been digging into the theme of working on side projects that you’re passionate about. We started out by talking about how to keep your day job and pursue your passion project on the side, and last week we talked about how to keep your passion project moving along when you physically can’t.

 

In today’s final episode, on side projects for this month, we’re going to talk about how to keep your passion project growing despite challenges.

 

When we’re just getting started all the passion we have for our side project makes us feel like we can tackle small challenges that come up every day. But over time we start to uncover bigger challenges like funding, dealing with regulations, lacking experience, and missing self-imposed deadlines and milestones.

 

When we hit one of these challenges we feel stuck. Our side project stops growing, and again we’re tempted to quit.

 

Instead of giving up, it might be time to re-evaluate the direction and purpose of our side project.

 

In today’s episode Joy is going to share how she responded to all the challenges she ran into while setting up and growing her side project Mosaic Presence. You’ll learn:

 

• How to embrace not being ready
• Why you need to build a support system for your side project
• Why Keep Your Side Project Alive Even If It’s Not Growing
• Why Our Self-Imposed Deadlines Slip And Having A Day Job Helps When They Do
• How to re-evaluate the direction and purpose of our side project instead of giving up on it

 

Know someone who is starting a side project? Please share this episode with them!

 

 

Transcript

 

Poornima: Previously, Joy and I dug into why it's totally OK to keep your day job and pursue a side project. We also talked about how to manage your time and your energy. If you missed either of those segments, I highly recommend you check them out. I've included the links to both of them below this video.

                               

In today's segment, we're gonna tackle the final topic: how to continue growing your side project, despite the bumps.

                               

Welcome back to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. Each *Build* episode consists of conversations I have with innovators. Together we debunk myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. Thank you, Joy, for joining us again.

 

Joy Dixon: Hey, great to be here.

 

Poornima: It's been two, two and a half years since you started Mosaic Presence. Surely you've hit some bumps along the way.

 

Joy Dixon: Yes.

 

Poornima: In those bumps, as you were experiencing them, how did you respond to them?

 

Joy Dixon: I took them all as learning opportunities. There was a lot I didn't know. I was very clear about being in the classroom. Very clear about teaching code. But a lot of the other parts of it—like creating my business, incorporating all those different I's and T's—I did not know about those. I really just took it in stride. I was like, "OK, cool. Now let me jot it down and I can share this with the next person."

 

Poornima: That's awesome. That kind of answers my next question, which is, what did you learn from that? It sounds like you learned a lot.

 

Joy Dixon: Totally. I learned a lot, how to actually set your business up, how to establish it, how many, where the offices are in the city of Oakland who are like, "Go and file this paperwork." So I really just took it all as a big learning opportunity and it's just really great. It was really great.

 

How To Embrace Not Being Ready

 

Poornima: One of the things we talked early on about was being ready. Since you didn't know all this stuff, it didn't make you feel like you weren't ready to do it?

 

Joy Dixon: No. That thing called Google has really instilled a lot of confidence in me. I would really just go Google. So many people put out so much great material, like yourself.

 

Poornima: Thank you.

 

Joy Dixon: Right?

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Joy Dixon: So you can just follow along, learn some things. It's really easy to just keep moving forward.

 

Why You Need To Build A Support System For Your Side Project

 

Poornima: Nice. When you did hit those bumps, in hindsight we're like, "Oh yeah, it was a learning opportunity." But they sting in that moment, right? It's like, this is really difficult. Yeah, I'm sure I'm gonna look back and learn on this. How did you manage that moment when the bump hits you?

 

Joy Dixon: When the bump hit me, I leaned on my loved ones. Honestly. My best friend, my inner circle. Because the bump hit, and it was a really big bump. Yes, without a doubt, on this side of it, it's a learning opportunity. But in the midst of, and I remember the exact moment when there was so many things coming at me, but the exact moment is when my MacBook Pro just went blank. And I was like, "Oh my goodness, this is it right?" That was the moment that I pretty much lost it. 'Cause I was like, everything was rolling and even I hit bumps I could still manage. But I was like, "Everything is on this machine." Thank goodness for the people in my life, really.

 

Poornima: Building a support.

 

Joy Dixon: I would tell people, have that support system. They don't have to be in the same field you are, they just have to support you. That's really so important.

 

Poornima: Nice. Again, because we're in that moment, we think, "OK, we can get through this." But there comes a time where we keep hitting those tough bumps. And it can kind of phase us, right?

 

Joy Dixon: Yes.

 

Why Keep Your Side Project Alive Even If It’s Not Growing

 

Poornima: Why did you decide to keep going in spite of?

 

Joy Dixon: Really what I did, was I stopped and I looked at what was really causing a lot of the pain for me. It was really my timeline. It was my timeline. 'Cause I had said, I wanted this completed by this. When I initially opened up Mosaic Presence and started doing it, I was like, "Oh. Four months. I'll be done. It'll be up and running. I'll have 30 students two weeks after that." Right?

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Joy Dixon: None of that came to fruition. It was really, "Wow." Sad to learn how to let go and just keep moving forward. Have a direction, but not be attached to the outcome. That was really what made it easier to go through the process, 'cause it was really my struggle and my holding on tight and wanting things to go my way that was really causing all of my extra pain.

 

Poornima: I like what you said about the timeline, 'cause this is something I talk to a lot of founders about. Those who are both technical and nontechnical. It's just, “We anticipate it taking three months, six months,” it ends up taking—heaven forbid—a year.

 

Joy Dixon: Yes.

 

Why Our Self-Imposed Deadlines Slip And Having A Day Job Helps When They Do

 

Poornima: Sometimes 18 months. I think going back to the overall theme, that's kind of why it's nice to have that day job, to have a little bit of a footing and continue that side, because you don't know how tumultuous it's going to be. I think that's hard for people to wrap their head around, "Why would it take double the time? Why wouldn't it be done tomorrow? Why can't I just fix this thing with one pixel? Why is this not a five-minute fix? Why is this a five-day or a five-month sort of thing?"

 

Joy Dixon: It really is so true. And that's so good to put that out there for everybody to really understand that. Having a day job made it easier for me to get through those times. Because one of the things I really was concerned about with Mosaic Presence and actually starting it was the energy that I brought to it. I wanted everything to have a certain level of peace and calm. Just to create a great learning environment.

                               

I wanted my students to be my number one. I wanted to serve my students. I didn't want to all of a sudden see them walk through the door, "OK, you're the rent." You know, I didn't want to look at them like that. I really wanted to look at them as, "Well, I'm really trying to expand your opportunities. I really want to be in community with you. That's how I want to see you, and that's how I want you to feel in this classroom." I wanted to talk all that extra pressure off of them and off of myself. That's why I maintain the full-time job.

 

How To Re-evaluate The Direction And Purpose Of Your Side Project Instead Of Giving Up On It

 

Poornima: Let's talk about the learnings, 'cause there is that moment where you can look back and you can say, "I learned something." How has that caused you to change course?

 

Joy Dixon: Really, the timeline is the main thing. The timeline and allowing it to just unfold. Instead as opposed to being super directed about, "I want this to happen, this way, at this time.” Now it's more of an unfolding as I go through Mosaic presence. The amazing parts about this is all these opportunities are coming to me.

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Joy Dixon: I'm not out there actively seeking. I'm allowing things to just happen and transpire.

 

Poornima: Sure.

 

Joy Dixon: It definitely is challenging. It is really challenging. Like I said, I'm Type A.

 

Poornima: Yeah. I was just gonna say, as a, I shouldn't say recovering, as a present Type A, I think part of the challenge is, and also having been a software engineer, when you see something done and it's shipped, that's when you get this great sense of like, "I accomplished something." But when stuff isn't, then it causes you to, "Oh my God. I gotta do all these other things now to make this thing happen because this deadline has been pushed." There's this level of unease. When you said, learning to sit with it, I think that's the challenge. Learning to let go, that's the challenge. When it doesn't happen, we don't have that nice to-do list checked off. We don't have that thing to show, so we don't have that sense of accomplishment.

 

Joy Dixon: Yes. That was really it. It's about redefining success. Really. 'Cause is it the journey? Or is it the destination?

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Joy Dixon: I know people say it all the time, but it really is like, "Oh, with each step. Each step I have a success." Celebrate each and every single step towards your goal. 'Cause otherwise it's gonna be a painful journey. It really is. That has really been the thing that has helped me a lot. It is a big walk of faith.

 

Poornima: There are obviously times where you felt like you were banging your head against the wall. It wasn't working. You needed to change the timeline. You've kind of kept at it because you've been doing this now for two and a half years. Somewhere in that period of time, there must have come a moment where you felt like, "OK, what I'm doing, it's making an impact. It's actually bringing me joy." Right?

 

Joy Dixon: Yes.

 

Poornima: How did that feel for you? When was that?

 

Joy Dixon: That felt great. That felt really great. Really it was just encountering...It was actually when I started reaching out to former students for testimonials and to see that, "Oh, they're a director of this part. They're a senior software engineer over here." The words that they sent back about the impact that I had on their lives was like, "Oh my goodness." That was an amazing thing. That reminded me that this is why I do what I do. There is no better feeling in the world than being able to support somebody and assist them on their journey in moving forward.

 

Poornima: How do you continue to keep growing your presence?

 

Joy Dixon: Yeah. Ba-dump-bump. Actually even meeting young people. Young people are really great and they're super inspiring. People who are like me, who are like, let me transition and acquire some new skills and really kind of show them that, "Hey, I do this. You can do this." And when they see that and they get that light in their eye, then that makes all the difference in the world to me.

 

Poornima: Any final recommendations you have for our audience when it comes to growing their side project?

 

Joy Dixon: Yeah. Keep at it. I really do mean that. Keep at it. Every single step counts. Do what you need to do to take care of yourself. That is of the utmost importance. Your self care is number one. Always do something on your project every single day, even if it's some small thing. But just something every single day, that way you'll feel like, "Oh, you're nurturing yourself. You're being and you're nurturing yourself like your project and your baby.” That would be my recommendation.

 

Poornima: Those are wonderful words to end on. Thank you so much.

 

Joy Dixon: Awesome. Hey, thank you, this has been so great.

 

Poornima: For people that want more, how should they get in touch with you?

 

Joy Dixon: They can reach me at mosaicpresence.com and feel free to send me an email at [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you.                               

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

--

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

In last week’s episode of Build, we began exploring the theme of pursuing a side project while keeping your day job. Jox Dixon and I did some myth busting around the need to go all-in. If you missed the episode you can check it out here.

 

This week we’ve got a pretty meaty episode for you. We’re going to dive deeper into this theme, and talk about what to do when the inevitable happens: you can’t physically work on your side project.

 

We thought it was particularly important to tackle this topic because it’s happened to both Joy and myself more than once, and it’s probably already happened to you or you’re thinking about how to handle it when it does.

 

The common culprits that hold you back from physically working on your side project are burnout and stress. Each is often prompted by teammates at your day job needing you more, you feeling the need to do everything yourself, and not having enough help on your side project or feeling like you can’t ask for help!

 

People often think it’s the quality of the idea that determines the success or failure of a side project. But really it depends on how you respond each of these issues as they arise. Of course, it can be tempting to just give up and move on, because hey it’s a side project! But if you’re really passionate about your side project, it can be hard to let go, and you’ll want to continue to make progress.

 

So in today’s episode, you’ll learn the following:

 

• Why it’s OK to take periodic breaks from your side project
• Why it’s important to say NO to things to avoid burning out
• How to set boundaries with your teammates at your day job, when they want more of your time
• How to ask others for help
• How to find people who are interested and motivated to work on your side project
• Why it’s OK if you don’t have knowledge or experience in some areas and can delegate that work to those who do
• Why you don’t have to respond to every improvement request immediately

 

 

 

Transcript

 

Poornima: In today's segment, we're going to talk about how to manage your time and energy around a side project. I know there's been a lot of talk around time management and energy management, so I'm going to dive right into some of the tougher topics.

                                                 

Welcome back to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. Each episode of *Build* consists of conversations I have with innovators in tech. Together we debunk myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and advancing your career in tech.

 

Why It’s OK To Take Periodic Breaks From Your Side Project

                                                 

We're continuing our conversation with Joy Dixon, who is a visionary and entrepreneur with 20 years’ of industry experience. In addition to having a day job as a software engineer, she runs a technical training school called Mosaic Presence. I know for myself, Joy, I have recently gone through a tough month, where I had a lot of health issues, and I just couldn't physically be there to nurture all of my side projects. Let's start by talking about how do you keep these projects humming along when you maybe physically can't?

 

Joy Dixon: Yes, that is a great question. That is a really great question, because that actually happened to me a couple of times last year, major health issues. It was really an opportunity to take a break.

 

Poornima: Good.

 

Joy Dixon: I took it as an opportunity to take a break, so I slowed down a little bit. It gave me enough space to refocus and to prioritize. That was something. Instead of trying to do everything, let's actually set up that list where this is number one, this is number two, and if we get those two things done, that's good. We don't need the full 30 done today.

 

Poornima: Nice.

 

Joy Dixon: That was really it.

 

Why It’s Important To Say NO To Things To Avoid Burning Out

 

Poornima: I remember in last segment, you mentioned that lovely word, which we started this year talking about, that N word. Let's hear it. Saying “no” to things. Right?

 

Joy Dixon: Yes, yes.

 

Poornima: What's your magic way of saying “no” to things?

 

Joy Dixon: I do it graciously. Really. I have said “no” to more things in the past two years, and not just like, "Hey, let's go hang out," but no to weddings. No to graduations. No to major birthday milestone parties. Really just having to make a decision and having to...most people have been receptive, because it's you're like, "Oh, I'm doing X, Y, Z. I'm working on Mosaic Presence. It's really important to me. Can we get together at a different date?"

 

Poornima: Right.

 

Joy Dixon: Most people have been more than receptive for that and really super supportive. I think just the practice. It's about practicing and getting comfortable with putting yourself and your dreams and your desires first.

 

How To Ask Others For Help

 

Poornima: In addition to saying “no,” I also have to get comfortable asking for stuff. How have you gone about getting help from other people?

 

Joy Dixon: My network has been really super great. I have really just reached out to them, because I'm very clear about what I know, which means I'm super clear about what I don't know.

 

Poornima: Yeah, yeah.

 

Joy Dixon: With that, I just reach out to people. Most people I have found...people have been so super helpful and want to help. Maybe not on the timeline that I have, but they are—

 

Poornima: That's important.

 

Joy Dixon: That is very important.

 

Poornima: I think you should say it one more time. Yeah.

 

Joy Dixon: Yes, people are very receptive. Maybe not on working on my timeline, but they do come around, and they do help. So just really learning to accept the help when it's available has been really, really good for me.

 

Poornima: I'm sorry. I had you repeat that, because I think a lot of times, when we get so passionate about our idea, and we want to put in the effort, we think everyone else is like, "Yeah. I can do this, too. I can quit whatever I was doing," but they need a little bit more lead time, because they also have commitments that they want to keep up. We just have to be respectful about that.

 

Joy Dixon: Really, having my own passion and my own project, really, I have more understanding for people when they have theirs. I'm like, "Oh, OK. We'll do it in two weeks, then."

 

Poornima: There you go. Now, here's the thing. I think a lot of people...because you mentioned before being type A. We get really averse to asking for help, though...

 

Joy Dixon: Yes.

 

Poornima: ...because it's our baby. We just have to figure out a way to get over the hump. How have you gotten over the hump of asking for help?

 

Joy Dixon: Yeah. That one's a really great question. I love that question, because I still do that. I'm still in process and learning how to do that. Back to knowing what I know and knowing what I don't know and really everything is an opportunity for me to learn. The teaching, writing code, I know all of that. The accounting? Oh, no. I don't know that. It's really just allowing myself to learn. Another thing along with that is being super clear about what I'm doing. When I'm super clear, then it's easier for me to find people and for people to find me who also want to support my project.

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Joy Dixon: Yes.

 

Why It’s OK If You Don’t Have Knowledge Or Experience In Some Areas And Can Delegate That Work To Those Who Do

 

Poornima: You said a couple of things here that were interesting. The first is knowing what you know and knowing what you don't know. That's good. That's the first level. Then the second level you said is getting the help for the things that you don't know. One question I get asked a lot is, "Oh, should I just dive in and learn that accounting?" Especially people in our audience. They might think, "Well, I don't know coding. Should I do that as an entrepreneur instead of hiring somebody?" What's been your response, or how do you handle that? "This is a way for me to learn. Maybe I just want to hire somebody and get it over with?"

 

Joy Dixon: Yeah. That's really good. Disclaimer. Type A. I actually spend time in each of the areas that I don't know, at least so I can have a conversation, a more intelligent conversation with the people. I can also vet people.

 

Poornima: Bingo.

 

Joy Dixon: I don't have to know it all. I'm not looking for a master’s degree in accounting.

 

Poornima: Sure.

 

Joy Dixon: At the same time, what I am looking for is a certain sense of, "Oh." When I have a conversation with somebody, I know the questions to pose, and then when they give me a response, I'm like, ‘Oh, that sounds good.’”

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Joy Dixon: Yes.

 

Poornima: I like to call that the BS detector.

 

Joy Dixon: There we go.

 

Poornima: Yes.

 

Joy Dixon: There we go.

 

Poornima: You know just enough to be a little dangerous, but at the end of the day, you don't want to do the work.

 

Joy Dixon: No.

 

Poornima: Yeah. You want to get somebody else who has deeper subject matter expertise in it.

 

Joy Dixon: Exactly.

 

Poornima: Wonderful.

 

Joy Dixon: That's great. I like that.

 

How Find People Who Are Interested And Motivated To Work On Your Side Project

 

Poornima: Yeah. Of course, there are times where we hire people, and they, for whatever reason, let us down, either because they didn't meet our standards or just things happen. That can cause us to become dispassionate, because you think, "Oh, maybe my idea isn't that great. That's why other people don't want to work on it." How do you stay motivated through those moments where some people just let you down or drop the ball or don't execute quite to the same level?

 

Joy Dixon: You're the great questioner. OK? Really, that one is back to self. Everything comes back to self for me and self-awareness. Am I super excited and I'm super jazzed? It's really my thing. I really can't hold anybody or put them on a hook to have the same passion about my thing as I do.

 

Poornima: OK. That's important. Yeah. I think that's a good takeaway.

 

Joy Dixon: That's really important first and foremost. It's really about just getting super clear about what I'm doing. I call it the lighthouse effect, like shine my message even brighter. For those people who are really attracted to it, it will make them easier to find me. Those people who are kind of like on the fence, then they'll stay away. Then we really won't have too many of these interactions.

 

How To Set Boundaries With Your Teammates At Your Day Job When They Want More Of Your Time

 

Poornima: No, that's good. Yeah. I think another issue I've seen that arises a lot is people want more of your time. Let's say at your day job or your side project, and you've got to figure out how to set those boundaries. How have you done that?

 

Joy Dixon: Yeah, that one is a really challenging one. Really. Like I said before, if you have social events, you have family events, those are really challenging.

 

Poornima: But even within your existing day job or your existing side where they want more of your time.

 

Joy Dixon: Yeah. Really, for what I've done with the boundaries is, “this is the boundary,” because I know any overflow will affect everything else. It will have a ripple effect. You might think, "Oh, I'm just going to spend these extra few hours doing this," but it will really have a ripple effect and take away from the other part. It's super important to get very clear and to just maintain those boundaries.

 

Poornima: What does that look like for you? Let's say somebody at your day job is like, "Hey, Joy. Really could use your help. Could you stay another hour or two to help me out with this thing?"

 

Joy Dixon: Balance of an hour or two?

 

Poornima: Yeah.

 

Joy Dixon: Sometimes it would be “yes,” and then sometimes it would be “no.” Honestly, it's truly contextual. If I have to teach a class, then the answer is “no.” If I'm available, then I can do it. It really is situation.

 

Poornima: In that moment.

 

Joy Dixon: In that moment, exactly.

 

Poornima: OK, got it. Then same thing for your side project. If someone says, "Hey, Joy. I really need you to help us do X, Y, and Z."

 

Joy Dixon: Yes.

 

Poornima: The same thing.

 

Joy Dixon: Yes, because I'm beholden to both, so I have to keep both at the forefront of my mind.

 

Why You Don’t Have To Respond To Every Improvement Request Immediately

 

Poornima: Now, there's also times where we want to do more. Maybe that project at work, we want to go that extra mile, or in the side project, it's like, "Ooh, wouldn't it be really cool if I could add this and that? That's going to take another couple of days. It's going to take maybe another hour of staying awake or setting up another meeting. Do I have the room? Does it make sense to do that or not?" How do you manage those...I like to call them requests?

 

Joy Dixon: Those requests. Are they from...

 

Poornima: From yourself.

 

Joy Dixon: Did I initiate them?

 

Poornima: Yes, yes.

 

Joy Dixon: OK.

 

Poornima: Yeah, you just feel so compelled. Maybe it's external, like a customer saying or a student saying, "Hey, it would be really great if you guys also provided Y."

 

Joy Dixon: Yes. That would definitely have to go on the lovely big corkboard that I keep in my bedroom full of great ideas. It would be in the parking lot, and then I will revisit it in time. There are so many things I want to do. There's so many things. Every time I teach a class, I'm like, "Oh. Take notes on the curriculum. I want to teach it this way next time. I'll say it this way next time." Then I just have to wait for next time. There are just certain times you can't make those changes each and every time. Having that break. Once again, I know I speak about space a lot, because space has really allowed me to decide. Is it something I really need to do, or it's just something in the moment that just felt like a good idea?

 

Poornima: Ah, that's good. What's your barometer for that?

 

Joy Dixon: Time.

 

Poornima: OK. Letting it sit.

 

Joy Dixon: Time and emotion. Really. There is a part that's like jazzed and this is great, and making it that part, I would move forward with that. If it's like fear or like, "Oh, I need to hurry up and get this to market," then anything that comes from that place is something that I really just sit with for an extended period of time, because if it's supposed to be done, then it will be done.

 

Poornima: Thanks so much, Joy. This has been really helpful.

 

Joy Dixon: My pleasure.

 

Poornima: Yeah. For all of you out there, if you've had a side project that you've been working on for a while, I'm sure you have your go-to for managing your time and energy. Joy and I would love to hear what it is. Please share it with us in the comments below this video.                                                 

 

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

--

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

It’s a brand new month, and we’ve got a new theme we’ll be tackling on our show Build! We’re going to be talking about building, managing, and growing a side project you are passionate about while keeping your day job.

I’m sure you’re aware of all the benefits that come with a side project: you get the chance to explore and learn new skills. And if it’s 100% yours, you get full creative freedom.

However, you’ve probably heard that once your side project starts to grow you need to make a decision… You need to decide to go ALL-IN! You need to quit your day job and pursue that side project. Otherwise, you’re not really passionate about your idea, you’re not committed, and chances are you’ll appear less than focused!

But going all-in on a side project can be a real challenge for many of us that don’t have the means, really like our day jobs, and truly want to have something on the side.

Well, it turns out you don’t actually have to go all-in, and in today’s episode we’re going to tackle this myth. In future episodes we’ll talk about how to manage your time + energy when you physically can’t and what to do when your side project is facing a number of challenges.

To help us out I’ve invited Joy Dixon, who is a visionary and an entrepreneur with 20 years’ of industry experience. In addition to having a day job as a software engineer, Joy also runs a technical training school in Oakland, California called Mosaic Presence. So Joy is definitely someone who walks the talk!

In today’s episode you’ll learn:

• How to pursue a side project while holding down a full-time job, when you don’t have the means to go “all-in”
• How and why it’s important to share your side project with your current or future employer
• How to respond to people who think you aren’t “focused”

 

 

 

Transcript

Poornima: I'm sure you've heard that it's a wonderful idea to have a side project. After all, a side project will help you learn a new skill or explore something. But once that side project starts to grow, then you've got to quit your day job and go all in. If you don't, you're just not that passionate about your idea, you're not committed, and you could appear less than focused.

                                                 

Today we're going to tackle this myth, and in future segments we'll dive into how to manage your time and energy and grow your side project.

                                                 

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker, I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. Each episode of *Build* consists of conversations I have with innovators. Together we debunk myths and misconceptions that are relating to building products, companies, and your career in tact.

                                                 

I've invited Joy Dixon, who is a visionary and an entrepreneur with 20 years’ of industry experience. In addition to having a day job as a software engineer, Joy also runs a technical training school called Mosaic Presence.

                                                 

Thanks so much for joining us today, Joy.

 

Joy Dixon: Thank you for having me here, this is great.

 

Poornima: You and I met at a conference recently and I'd love to just get to know you a little bit more. Tell us how did you get introduced into tech?

 

Joy Dixon: Actually in the sixth grade. I actually had a teacher, who said, "Hey, let's do tech." She was doing computers, it was back in the day with dummy terminals. Learned Basic, line number 100, duh, duh, duh, line number 200 duh, duh, duh. That's actually how I started in tech.

 

Poornima: Wow, that's great that you got exposed to it so early and now it's brought you full circle where you're doing, you're teaching. Let's take it a step back, you have a day job right now. What's your day job?

 

Joy Dixon: I have a day job right now. My day job is writing code. I'm a senior software engineer and I write code by day and then I teach people to write code by night.

 

Poornima: That's awesome. Your side project is Mosaic Presence. Tell us a little bit about it.

 

Joy Dixon: Mosaic Presence is my thing. That is the one thing that I do. So there is, it is truly my bliss, it is a software development training school, we have a mobile focus and really it's about expanding opportunities and creating community. That is the main purpose of it all. We take brand new people, if you're a complete beginner, we'd love you there. Then we move on and we do mobile stuff, we teach people how to make SMS apps. As well as your standard apps, either iOS or Android, whatever one's your preferred flavor.

 

Poornima: Nice. What inspired you to start Mosaic Presence?

 

Joy Dixon: Actually I've been teaching for 10 years and I've taught at various companies professionally, as well as various universities, and I just really wanted to do my thing. I wanted to teach things in my way. And then also with, just when I went back to school to get my Master’s, I had to do that at night and on the weekends because I too had to keep my day job. I wanted to create a program that would allow people to also keep their day job as well acquire new skills.

 

Poornima: Nice. You've been doing this for how long now? Mosaic Presence.

 

Joy Dixon: Mosaic Presence? Two and half years. The first half year was a pilot program that I ran and that was really great, there were so many companies who allowed me to use their space. Then actually putting pen to paper and creating a business was in 2015.

 

When To Start A Side Project

 

Poornima: OK, great. How did you know you were ready to start this? I know a lot of people are like, "Oh I want to teach." Or, "I want to do this thing." Or, "I want, want, want." But it's hard to get over that hurdle and then start doing it. You mentioned you'd been teaching before, but when did you decide, “Now I want to make this into my side project and then a business?”

 

Joy Dixon: Into a business. This is actually really great. This is actually my second time at bat. 'Cause before I was just doing software consulting and I was building websites and doing consulting for people, and then that business went down because it did. I was working too much and not working on my business.

                                                 

Actually that was really good because it gave me a foothold this time to make sure, if you're doing Mosaic Presence, you're going to make sure you spend the time doing Mosaic Presence as well as maintaining your day job.

 

Poornima: So you had a little bit of a, let's call it failure.

 

Joy Dixon: Totally.

 

Poornima: It taught you how to do things the second time around.

 

Joy Dixon: I call them learning opportunities.

 

What It’s Like To Hold Down A Full Time Job And Pursue A Side Project

 

Poornima: I like that. Then let's talk about managing the business while you're doing your day job. What's that like?

 

Joy Dixon: A lot. It is really a lot. It is about time slicing, honestly. I pretty much sleep between 12 and 5, those are my hours. Before I go to work, I work on Mosaic Presence and then I teach at night. It's really time management, time management is key, there are a lot of nos to invitations to go places and to socialize because the weekends are really meant for me to spend on my business.

 

Poornima: I want you to hold that thought 'cause we're going to talk about that in the next segment. I want to skip ahead, why even do this on the side and keep your day job? Why not just save up a bunch of money and then say, "Peace." And go and just focus on your side?

 

Joy Dixon: That is a definitely a way to go if that works for some people. For me, this couldn't wait. Mosaic Presence couldn't wait and I wanted to fund it and then just make it happen. I was like, let's just do this. And the way I can do this and keep it in my control is to keep my day job.

 

Why You Should Tell Your Employer About Your Side Project

 

Poornima: The other issue that I know that a lot of our audience is probably thinking about is, what about your employer? How do they feel about it?

 

Joy Dixon: I told them. That was really, really, really important and key. Because when you start to kind of do stuff in the dark then you really don't do it. I was very open and honest with them that this is the thing that I'm doing. I just felt better about that, just being transparent. This is my love. I'm working here and I'm going to do my best and I'm gonna work in excellence as always do but this right here is my love.

 

Poornima: What was their reaction to it? Was there any, "Well, we need you here?"

 

Joy Dixon: They basically were like, "Hey, if you can do your job."

 

Poornima: OK, good.

 

Joy Dixon: So that worked out really well. I really appreciated that.

 

Poornima: So finding that fit.

 

Joy Dixon: Yeah.

 

Poornima: Yeah, I talk to a lot of people who when they know that they need to financially or intellectually have that day job, they negotiate up front with that future employer or the current employer. But they don't leave them in the dark because it gets them into deep water.

 

Joy Dixon: It really does.

 

Poornima: Later on.

 

Joy Dixon: It really does. I would definitely agree with that and recommend that to anybody's who's doing both. It could be a little scary especially if you're already in your current job. And they're like, "Oh, why are you doing this all of a sudden? Are you planning to leave?" At the same time I think it's just better just to have it out there. And it just makes you feel better in general and you put forth your effort.

 

How To Share Your Side Project With Your Employer

 

Poornima: Do you have some techniques you can share with the audience for even how to start that conversation with a current employer?

 

Joy Dixon: I would really find somebody who you feel safe with. If it's not your manger. Even if it's not, just like, "Hey." Have the dialogue and then at that point in time you do need to move it up the chain. But I would check all the lovely documents that they have for you to check. To see if this is even OK.

 

Poornima: That's true.

 

Joy Dixon: Before you even have a conversation. 'Cause that's really the challenge is the conflict piece.

 

Poornima: I do know some places there are very, very strict where you're not even allowed to do things like, "Oh, I took $100 for tutoring this kid on a one-off basis."

 

Joy Dixon: No really?

 

Poornima: Yeah. You're just not allowed to take money. To your point, check the documents first.

 

Joy Dixon: Check the documents first because there's a lot of times when people will think it's something but what's actually written on paper, 'cause that's really going to be what happens.

 

How To Respond To People Who Think You Aren’t “Focused”

 

Poornima: Aside from your employer, you probably told other people that you're working on this and on the side in addition to your day job. They were probably less than supportive. How do you manage those reactions where they're like, "Oh Joy, that's not very focused." Or, "How are you going to manage all of this? Seems like a lot."

 

Joy Dixon: It's really interesting 'cause part of me and the people in my life know I'm type A so they're just like, of course you are. But there are those people definitely who aren't as familiar with me or don't know me as well who do have that response. Really I just take it in and I'm like, “OK.” When you find that thing and Mosaic Presence is my thing, it actually energizes me. It energizes me and sets my energy in a space that makes me more creative, more full of life, more joyful, no pun intended. That's what I respond with that. And when people see that passion and they feel that energy then they're usually are like, "OK, keep going."

 

Poornima: They get it. That's good, wonderful.

                                                 

Well, thank you so much Joy for sharing.

 

Joy Dixon: It's my pleasure. Thank you.

 

Poornima: Now Joy and I want to know, are you worried about going all-in on an idea and would prefer to start something on the side? You've got some concerns? Share those concerns with us in the comments below this video and we'll be sure to take a look at them and respond shortly.

                                                 

That's it for this segment, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next segment where we'll talk about how to manage your time and your energy as it relates to your side project. Ciao for now.

                                                 

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.