Free Money

STRATEGY:

For my strategy, I wanted to choose a location that gave me many opportunities of people walking by- so, I chose the Boca Town Center Shopping Mall. 

I thought people in an older demographic would have abundant time and the patience to listen to me, so I chose to target them. 

I thought the best way to initiate the conversation would be to ask if I could have just a few seconds of their time and I would give them a dollar. 

SUMMARY OF ENCOUNTERS:

I was humbled again in this class.  The exercise proved to be very challenging and I was not successful at giving even one dollar away.   People were annoyed and did not want to fully engage with me.  I even tried to have my attractive wife give it a try.  She was in a suit and people gave her the same resistance I experienced. 

The exercise was definitely harder than I imagined. Not only was it super uncomfortable for both of us as introverts, we were not able to close the sale- if you will.   My initial assumptions were that I would get the time and attention of at least a couple of people, but that did not work out.  They were pressed for time and thought I was a typical salesman wasting their time.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Video 5

Video 6

28A – Your Exit Strategy

My exit strategy is to sell the business 3-5 years after the software goes live.  I expect that initial research and development will take about a year and will focus solely on a single practice area in law.  In the first 6-9 months after the software is introduced to the market, the company will actively solicit customer feedback and focus on improvement, as well as growth.  The following few years will be focused on research and development of the software to make it specific to areas of law other than the first one.  In 3-5 years the company should be very profitable and have demonstrated its ability to grow and develop into new markets.

I have selected this particular exit strategy for a few reasons.  First of all, this company will be a project for me, not a career.  Secondly, I believe that while engaged in this project, I will inevitably discover new opportunities and come up with new ideas.  Selling the business will provide the resources necessary to invest into a new venture.  Third of all, I suspect that after years on working on the same type of project cycle, it will become repetitive and not challenging, and it will be a good time to make a change.  Lastly, feedback that I received from some of my previous posts showed me the potential that my idea has beyond law firms, and that it can be applied to other types of businesses.  I believe this, along with profits, will make the company easier to market and sell.

My exit strategy has influenced my growth intentions.  My goal is to have between five and ten software variations, each specific to its own area of law practiced by solo and small law firms.  After reaching my goal, there will be enough stability in the company and sill enough opportunities for a new owner to expand into new practice areas and new types of businesses with the software, making my company a safe, yet an exciting investment for an entrepreneurial and business-minded buyer. 

27A – Reading Reflection No. 3

1)        What was the general theme or argument of the book?

The book’s main point is that there are two systems functioning inside our brains.  System one is impulsive and is based on intuition.  System two is analytical and rational. 

2)        How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

I do not relate with many of the ideas and concepts presented in this book because my mind is more rational and analytical than the “typical person” portrayed in the book’s various examples and explanations.  The way this book was relevant, is that it provoked self-reflection, which is something we are asked to do often in this class.  The concepts in this book also made me think about marketing strategies.  The author talked about that repetition of a message promotes trust, based on nothing but the fact that the message was received repeatedly and without a negative experience.

3)        If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

I would design an exercise to illustrate the power of priming.  Priming is explained as the process in which exposure to words, concepts or events subconsciously influences our perceptions, and not always correctly.

I would poll the class asking everyone to estimate percentages of certain commonly over or underestimated occurrences in our society, and later on illustrate how our culture influences our perceptions to be incorrect. For example, Americans estimate that about a quarter of the population is gay.  That number is in reality under 4%.  Americans likewise overestimate the percentage of gun-owners in the US to be 43%, whereas that number falls somewhere between 10% and 20%.  We underestimate income in equality in this country.

I think this would be an eye-opening exercise and though-provoking how marketing companies use priming to influence our buying behaviors.   

4)        What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?

A big “aha” moment for me was realizing how my children are influenced by their environment and our culture.  Thoughts, ideas and concerns that they bring home frequently vary vastly from thoughts, ideas and concerns I had as a child.  This provoked thought in me to try to better understand the changes that have occurred in our society since I was a young child and the way they influence and shape who my children are as people.  

26A – Celebrating Failure

Failure:

Failures have been more abundant in this class than I anticipated!  First, was the attention to detail.  I was one of the students who learned about this the hard way when submitting the first round of assignments.  I did all of them, but got no credit due to oversight in of the detailed instructions. 

Learnings:

I learned that this class would require very close attention.  I also learned that it’s almost the essence of Entrepreneurship- failing and learning from failures.  By getting better each time, you may actually succeed as an entrepreneur. If everyone succeeded the first time, we would all be running some mediocre to poor business.  It’s the relentless pursuit of success that makes an entrepreneur successful.  Companies can often provide a sense of security and complacency reducing that fire in the belly that some have to succeed.  They know its not necessary.  In your business, it’s necessary every day, and every time.

Reflections:

I think failure is a good thing.  It means we are pushing ourselves beyond our comfort zone and growing.  It is hard, but you can gain a sense of comfort that it will happen and focus on being swift to recover.  Typically, I don’t handle failure well.  I like to get things right and am very risk adverse on big decisions.  On simple matters, I am not afraid to fail- so long as the stakes are low.  Now, I’ve realized there’s more value to failure and my consider not avoiding it as much.

25A – What’s Next?

Existing Market. 

My next move would be expansion into larger firms greater than four attorneys and multiple areas of practice.  The software will be more robust and powerful to handle more transactions and multiple profiles for many attorneys/users.  

Customer 1	She believes there is opportunity to version solutions based on practice areas and form partnerships with some of the independent solution providers.  For instance, there are solutions for standard forms that should be incorporated into my software solution.  She also felt we should be thinking about marketing and how we plan to get attorneys to buy our software.
Customer 2	He found our solution to be more comprehensive than he imagined and found it challenging to think of a next option for us and could not come up with any suggestions.  He thought we should be thinking about data security and encryption given the risk of client’s private information.
Customer 3	He believed there was an opportunity to integrate within a firm’s website.  When we talked about our idea for a client portal, he said he would like his entire web and software presence to be managed by one provider.  Thought we should be thinking about web design capabilities so we can provide an entire we package.

Given the feedback from customers in our existing market, I feel confident we are on the right track with our solution.  Some feedback suggests we should think about more integration/functionality, but I am certain that will add complexity and slow us down initially.  

I believe we should keep our current offering but enhance it to better suit the needs of a larger firm with many attorneys.  Our feedback has been limited to conceptual conversations and we need to develop a beta version to really accelerate development into this new segment.

  New Market.

My new market will be focused on larger firms beyond solo practitioners with more than four attorneys.   

  

Customer 1	Felt there was a need for consolidation of software and believes ours would be useful for them, especially if there was benchmarking across the firm.  Thought we should focus more on automation and social media plug-ins that allow them to focus more on lawyering and less on relationship maintenance.
Customer 2	Was hesitant about one software package doing everything and thought that caused significant risk.  If we were to become unavailable, her entire operation would stall.  She instead thought we should focus solely on case management and social.

What surprised me the most was the customer who was against one software solution handling everything.  I never thought of this point, and really felt that it had merit and is worth figuring out.  I was pleased to hear that our approach to consolidating customer/case management, accounting and marketing/social efforts were needed.  

This new market does not seem to value consolidation as much as the smaller firms.  They have paralegals and office staff to handle more of the administrative, marketing and financial tasks.  It does not seem to favor the consolidation.

24A – Venture Concept No. 1

The product that I am offering is a comprehensive software solution for solo and small law offices that manages the firms’ marketing efforts, client intake, case management, document management, calendaring and finances.   

While there are many products on the market that address and manage one or more of the activities involved in running a law practice, none of them are comprehensive and none of them include all the aspects that my software will. 

Forces in the environment include increased customer capabilities to research, identify and valuate quality of lawyers in market place.  The market can be defined by business type and # of employees. Customers are satisfying this need today in a very fragmented and costly way, through multiple software applications that do not interface with one another.

The opportunity size is significant, there are over 60,000 practicing attorneys just in the state of Florida and twenty percent of those attorneys are the addressable market for my solution.  That is 12,000 attorneys that I can reach initially in Broward, Dade and Palm Beach counties.   If I could convert just 5% of them to my software solution, that would generate $4.8 million a year in perpetuity. 

Given the sizeable opportunity and rapid development of software solutions being developed, I don’t expect this opportunity to be open for long.  There are new entrants into the market every year, but none are the total solution that I am offering.  It may be for good reason that I will later find out during initial testing of the software.   

I am selling software as a service to attorneys focused on efficiently managing the firms’ marketing efforts, client intake, case management, document management, calendaring and finances.  Today attorneys use several independent applications to manage their portfolio of clients, billing, appointment scheduling and marketing.  Even though their needs can be met by alternatives, it comes with a lot of extra effort.  The stand-alone applications do not talk to one another and they constantly have to copy or transfer data to multiple programs- and this is the pain point I will leverage.  My solution will consolidate these applications and efficiently allow them to manage the lifecycle of each client and effectively maintain and grow their relationship with them.  

Imagine you send out marketing to attract a client with a discounted offer, package like a living will and health care surrogate bundle.  This client calls or goes online requesting an appointment.  Then you meet with them and you come to agreement to provide a service.  You need to collect their information and facilitate discovering their needs and wants- like where their assets will be distributed.  You send them an invoice to pay and you then complete the service.  You want to know how satisfied they were and want to collect a review to attract new clients.  Finally, you want to stay in touch and provide them with more solutions and stay top of mind, so they refer when others in their circle of influence have needs.  Our software solution takes all the inputs and outputs of what I just described and automates and shares data across functions- marketing, client intake, questionnaire to collect needs/wants, billing to collect payment, legal form templates to produce documents and surveys to collect satisfaction.  All in a single location!

Given all of this exists in separate applications today, we plan to undercut the cumulative market price by 30% and offer this software as a service for just $500/month.  This pricing model of monthly payments is consistent with the market and once we successfully have a firm up and running, the switch over costs would be high and we will have longtime loyalty.

Venture Concept:

To attract new customers, we have undercut the cumulative costs of applications solving this need today.  We also provide free implementation given the lifetime value of our customers.  We estimate this will take two weeks of conversion and testing per customer. 

Given this comprehensive solution does not exist in the market today, there are no direct competitors.  However, Lexicata, Rocket Matter, Clio, Calendly, QuickBooks, Survey Monkey, Soci, and Zoho are all playing in a portion of this space today. 

Customer experience and support are the two biggest satisfaction drivers that we are focused on.  Business location, distribution and packaging are not important to our target customer.  As we grow in number of subscribers, we would maintain a variable model that uses offshore support to maximize our profits.  We would focus on our sales force and product development as our permanent staff and estimate having 10 employees to start.   

• (1) Client Relationship Director
• (3) full-time sales hunters
• (1) sales closer 
• (3) developers
• (1) Office Manager 
• (1) President

Our most valuable resource will be customer focus.  Given my strengths and experience, I believe I am uniquely positioned to provide the best possible solution for our customers.  Having grown up in retail, I have learned the value of satisfaction and loyalty.  I also know how to distill and stay focused on critical drivers of both satisfaction and efficiency through process excellence. 

Next for our venture, I’d like to expand into larger firms and create multiple profiles for our software to accommodate different roles.  I think larger firms have a different set of needs and more resources than the sole proprietor running the business on her own.  

Ultimately, I’d like to see our solution commercialized.  It would be great to have most law offices using our software solution.  I would also like to establish a community of users that can share expertise and services across our platform.  I believe the power is in the community of users sharing expertise and coverage across the court systems. 

23A – Your Venture’s Unfair Advantage

Resource	Relevance	Valuable	Rare	Inimitable	Non-substitutable
1.         Husband and Father of Five Children	Significant responsibility of large family and proven leadership	Very valuable given the unanticipated challenges and wisdom to influence and relate to people in different generations	It is rare to have more than two children	Someone could duplicate this over a long period of time.	Yes. There is no substitute to being responsible for your offspring’s wellbeing and success
2.         Analytical horsepower	Ability to analyze and access risks and rewards	Very valuable given the experience and track record I have developed	Combination of analytical capacity and experience to predict, measure and control business results rare	The capability could be duplicated with training and experience in application	In some cases, this can be substituted with similar experience or by machine learning and artificial intelligence
3.         Process Improvement	Ability to improve and iterate with efficiency	Eliminates waste and maximizes efficiencies	Not rare	The capability could be duplicated with training and experience in application	No. Alternatives are abundant.
4.         Strategic Thinker	Ability to define and plan pathway to success	Unites resources and establishes vision	Not rare	Cannot be copied exactly but can be learned	no
5.         Project Management	Ability to define, resource, measure and plan work	Improves likelihood of idea coming to life	Not rare	The capability could be duplicated with training and experience in application	no
6.         Executive Management	Ability to hold large amount of responsibility and influence across large number of people	Able to lead and influence	Not usually.  Individual experience can be	Can be copied over time	yes
7.         Over 300 connections in linked in	Access to over 300 professionals across multiple industries	Connection to resources that can help solve problems	Overall not rare, but individual contacts can be	Can be copied over time	yes
8.         UF Alumni	Access millions of UF Alumni with various professions and expertise	Community that can help solve problems	Given 38% acceptance rate, could consider rare	Can be copied by other institutions	yes
9.         Six Sigma Blackbelt	Expertise to design, predict and measure business processes	Eliminates waste and increases efficiencies	Few people have this expertise in Process Improvement and Lean operations	The capability could be duplicated with training and experience in application	yes
10.      Change Management	Ability to effective plan and influence change	Improved adoption of strategies, concepts and ideas	Success/effectiveness can be rare	The capability could be duplicated with training and experience in application	no

Given its great value and non-substitutability, I believe Husband and father of five is my greatest resource.  The experience as a husband and father has taught me more in life than anything else I have ever done and brought me the most joy.  You learn to make sacrifices and lead in many circumstances.