Advisory Email – October 2019

In the view of transparency, below is an excerpt from an advisory email I sent this month:

October has been busy with work at Spring and preparation for travels. Although unrelated to VH, we’ve been working on some rather interesting projects at Spring that I’ll share at the bottom:

UPDATES 🎉

• Travelling in Vietnam + Malaysia from Nov 3 – Feb 15th. It’ll be a good test to see how I can work remotely.
• Selected as one of the finalists for the Futurpreneur Vivian Prokop Mirchandani Mentorship Award. Voting is open till Nov 8th, appreciate your vote if I’ve added meaningful value to your entrepreneurship journey!
• Decided to shut down the Vancouver Purpose Talent Meetup group with my shift to consulting work. Let me know if you’d like to take over as an organizer.
• Updates on email outreach campaign:
  • Sent 98 emails, 68% open rate, 12% response rate
  • 1 new discovery call – not a fit
  • I’ll be closing this experiment. Looks like the B-corp list is not the best place to start. Companies I’m reaching out to already feel like they have it figured out for value-based recruitment and culture.

GRATITUDE WALL 🤝

• Rafa Achondo for exploring if he could support one of my prospects in Latin America, although the opportunity did not come to fruition.
• Maxine and Joel for having me speak about Sales at the Good Work Society

NEXT STEPS 👣

• I won’t be working on VH for November with my delivery work in Vietnam. I’ll be taking the time to reflect on new sales channels to find prospective clients, current ideas include:
  • HR-related podcast.
  • Running workshops
  • Revisiting LinkedIn outreach automation with a different target profile.
  • Offering pro-bono service to a small group of pilot companies in exchange for testimonials and a comprehensive case-study.
• Reflection: I’m not moving as fast as I could be, but moving fast isn’t what I’m aiming for as I work on balancing Family, Spring, VH, and personal well being.
  • I don’t subscribe to the hustle culture nor am I trying to grow a hyper-scale company with VH.
  • Patience and conviction will be my guidepost on this journey.

SPRING 🌱

• Worked with Vancity to redevelop and launch Impact Money Finder – a tool to connect entrepreneurs with financing and support organizations.
• Launched ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) Incubator to support entrepreneurs with ASD. This is a free program for them and is supported by Discovery Foundation, do share the word if you know people in your network who might benefit from this.
• Moved to run 2 (instead of 1) cohorts of our Impact Startup Visa Program next year. If you know someone looking to immigrate to Canada as an entrepreneur, have them apply before Nov 30th.
• I’ll be in Vietnam from Nov 9th – Dec 9th to support FIIS as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) and running a workshop at TechFest Vietnam to support fellow incubators & accelerators with improving. Welcome any intros to people I should meet while I’m in Hanoi 🙂

Next: January 2020 Advisory Newsletter