WHAT YOU FEEL:in response to every question, you can’t help but spout every detail of every detail of the business
PERSPECTIVE: We’ve all been at a birthday party when one of the guests barely touches a balloon and it pops. It’s because the balloon is full. That is the way we entrepreneurs feel all the time.
Entrepreneurs are “full balloons.” The pressures and activities of early stage ventures constantly add air to the balloon. What also inflates the balloon is that we live and breathe every issue of every aspect of the business. Each day we face the pressure and the details of every aspect of the business. I used to say to my dear assistant, “I come into the day with due to the limited grey matter of my gender, but also the overwhelming number of things on my plate. I told her that unless something was the information would bounce off my skull.
When your balloon is full, we need a place for the air to go or the balloon will pop. When given an opportunity to do so, we will use any chance to let air out of the balloon. Ask an entrepreneur how the business is going, and you are lucky if you escape with only thirty minutes of details about the business. Ask us about the price of our product and you are likely to get theories of products, philosophies of products, and the long sordid history of our product.
Have you seen an entrepreneur participate in a ten minute investor demo day or “Shark Tank” and take questions after they present. See how many entrepreneurs can wait until the judge finishes asking the questions before they answer? Ask an entrepreneur “what’s the weather for the weekend?” To your surprise, the answer doesn’t speak about Doppler radar or the chance of rain, but rather the latest jewelry design and the details of why the rhinestones aren’t fitting properly.
Try asking a simple question like “what is the price for the product? The answer, which should be something like $25,000 per year, sounds something like this:
“We considered several pricing models and bounced back and forth between an advertising model and a subscription model. One of our investors was a big proponent of a subscription model because of the valuation implications. When we ran our financial model, which still needs a lot of work, our assumptions were based on customer growth of twenty percent and customer attrition of five percent over the first two years. Keep in mind that we have not done a cost of goods sold on the product so we are making educated guesses. We won’t be able to do that until we get our finance team set which we hope to do as part of our Series A raise.”
Questioner: I’m sorry, what was the price of the product?
Full balloons make us give silly answers to simple questions:
Questioner: “Do you prefer Michael or Mike?”
Entrepreneur: “When I was growing up no one called me Mike or Michael – I always had a nickname. It eventually landed on “Derm” but along the way it was dermatologist, which is interesting because I thought nicknames were supposed to be shorter than the actual name. Anyway, Derm was a win because other nicknames were words that rhymed with “Derm” – use your imagination. Anyway, Mike never worked because there was a commercial when I was a kid when they were trying to get a family to try a new cereal and they had a son – Mikey – that would eat anything. The commercial said “give it to Mikey. Mikey likes everything.” I think if people called me Mike it would be too much like being a kid. After all Michael is one of the most popular names in the nation every year. It is always in the top ten. Truth be told, my Jewish name is “Moshe” which is Moses. I guess Michael or Mike is better than Moses.
Questioner: I’m sorry, which do you prefer Michael or Mike?
When your balloon is full, the air needs somewhere to go or it will pop. If we do not recognize that this, the implications can be serious and widespread.
First, we create confusion by not giving simple answers. Creating clarity and simplicity in an otherwise chaotic and unstructured environment, as we discuss later in the book, is critical. When we give simple responses, we make things easy. Unfortunately, simple answers do not release air from the balloon.
Second, it drains our teams and others with whom we do business. When we answer questions with a brain dump of the history of the issue, the people we do business with, and especially your team, gets drained. When we are in the middle of our brain dump, they roll their eyes. During the early days of my company when my parents, board members, or friends asked me a question, I’m sure they dreaded the complex, nuanced and boring answer. I am sure that when my three-year old niece asked “How are you Muck (what she used to call me)? I responded by explaining why biometric screening partners would be a good strategic fit for incentives. This behavior weighs on our resources. Over time, when interacting with us becomes like running in quicksand, day-to-day interactions become strained.
Third, when the balloon is full, it is hard to react appropriately to issues. Touch a full balloon the wrong way and it pops. When our balloon is full, we tend to react quickly, emotionally, haphazardly, aggressively or inappropriately. For example, we had spent long hours building a financial model for our health rewards business. The model was based on the total number of lives on our platform, which would interact with assumptions to drive five-year income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements. It was all based on the number of lives. We asked our Board and advisors for feedback on the model by a certain date. One of our Board members provided feedback a week later. He commented he thought that lives as the driving premise would not be understood by our investors. My reaction should have been “this is a perspective we need to consider.” My reaction was to let air out of the balloon with a long and somewhat nasty explanation of our process and that while we appreciated the feedback, we asked for feedback on the model a week ago. The response I gave was more a reflection of the air in my balloon than anything else.
A full balloon also causes us to mismanage time. Issues that come across our desks that don’t need attention are tended to. This distracts us from our priorities. We tend to jump in and out of email, text messages and other communications throughout the day to help release air from the balloon. Needless to say this is counterproductive.
Next, the pressure from the balloon makes it hard to be deliberate in decision-making. When the air pressure is high, we often aren’t thoughtful in our decision process. Thinking, getting multiple opinions, and balancing risk often don’t get the attention they deserve in making decisions.
One situation in which the air comes out of the balloon is in investor presentations. It is not uncommon for an investor to ask a question and be met with two responses. First, the air is putting so much pressure on the balloon that we don’t even let the investor finish the question. Second, when we do respond, we do so with one of those long-winded answers that might be mistaken for a clear disdain for brevity but are actually a form of air relief.
Finally, is the impact that the full balloon has on your team’s view of us as leaders. When team members see calm, thoughtful, reasoned and deliberate action, they feel secure and reassured. When they see reactive, rambling, and unclear decision-making and conversations, they feel that the ship could sink at any time.
Recognizing that our balloon is full almost all of the time is key. Once you understand that, you can police yourself and take the time to be more thoughtful and deliberate. Don’t get me wrong, when your balloon is always full, this is hard to do. Recognizing this steady state will help be more measured and deliberate in your day-to-day activities.
I recently got this phone call from an entrepreneur. I said “what’s up?” and she said
