Lead a vivid life that does good

Category: Strategy

What’s the most important phrase for making things happen?

Running with Jay over Tower BridgeSo often our choice of words lets us down. We use strange phrases to express some action we may do in the future.

I think … I’ll start exercising.

I should … apologise.

I need … to lose weight.

I want … to read more.

When you hear someone (or even yourself) use ‘think’, ‘should’, ‘need’, ‘want’ maybe you could gently ask, “When are you going to?”

I’m going to … go for a run with my son.

I’m going to … track kilojoules to lose weight.

I’m going to …

I’m going to, means I’m serious. I’m going to, means I’ve made a decision, and while I may not make it everyday, I’m on the right track.

We all know the words we choose are important. One of the most important things we can do, is question ourselves when we use the words like ‘should’, ‘think’, ‘want’ and ‘need’.

Are we just trying to make ourselves feel like something might happen sometime in the future, or is it that …

I’m going to … !

4 key lessons after attending the Entrepreneur Development Program (EDP) at MIT in Boston.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Moments earlier we had been given five minutes to prepare our business idea and now I found myself pitching, to one of the 126 entrepreneurs gathered from around the world. They’d pitch their idea, I’d pitch mine and we would agree how we would split 7 points. You take 2, I’ll take 5 (not that easy with A type personalities).

After 7 pitches to complete randoms, we had a score out of 49. Bill Aulet, Managing Director in the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, humorously states that higher scores (I was 6th highest) meant you either had a really good idea (mine was created in 5 mins on my flight to the US), or you were really pushy (StrengthsFinder calls it “competitive”).

The top 26 of us pitch to the remaining 100 and then they walked up and choose a team, leaving only 16 ideas. Through this ad hoc process team reCollect was formed.

They say that attending MIT is like drinking from a fire hydrant, and over the next week we were saturated with ideas, discussion, teams sessions and coaching. So much so that it is only now I am narrowing down key lessons.

#1 Team is everything. The team that chose the reCollect idea was smart and diverse. Neil and Mark from Scotland, Rafael from Spain, Saeed from UAB, with Tanmay, Jax and myself from NZ. We all had radically different backgrounds and skills, which meant we ended up working incredibly effectively as a team.

I was reminded at MIT that having a cross functional team with a complimentary skill set is critically important when starting anything new. Startups with co-founders are more likely to succeed, however founding with friends you have never worked with before is more likely to fail.

Build a great team with a common vision, but different skills and networks.

#2 Narrow your focus. Many startups spend huge portions of their precious resources on trying to be all things to everyone. Successful startups spend a lot of time talking with a narrow market of customers before they even build a product to make sure it is something they will actually use, and more importantly pay for. Test an idea and pivot constantly.

Narrow your target market right down and talk constantly to you potential customers.

#3 GSD: Get S(tuff) Done: Just make stuff happen. You can talk about it, have meetings, create really great plans and strategies, but if you don’t GSD and get a product delivered then it is worthless. Herb Kelleher of Southwest said “We have a strategy plan. It’s call doing things!”

everyone needs to GSD, and add real value to the customer. Everything else is worthless.

#4 Cash: Capitalism in America is NOT dead. To be honest if a Kiwi has a great idea and someone in the States has the same idea. They will be funded about 10x more than you. Thats the reality. It doesn’t mean you can’t win, just that you need more resolve around the first 3 points. The downside risk to not having cash, is we fail to rapidly build Innovation Based Enterprises at a speed quick enough to compete.

Charge your customers as soon as possible, export and seek funding. Run out of cash and all your hard work means nothing.


Attending MIT was a fantastic learning experience, which I liken to reading 12 books in a week. Thanks to MSI / MBIE,  now Callaghan Innovation for the incredible opportunity.

Watch this space for a new business to spin out of Agoge this year.

Creating a personal strategy to help you achieve your dream and goals.

GoalsOne of the funny things about returning from annual leave is that I often have this utopic desire to live a more purposeful life. I guess the relaxation, uninterrupted time with family and the space to think, lead me to want to create more of those spaces in my normal life.

Recently after returning from leave I realised that in our business we have strategies to move us towards our vision and these strategies help us choose the right actions.

In my personal life however, I had never put strategies in place and this needed to change.

Understanding the difference between vision and strategy and actions can be difficult so here is a personal example.

  • Vision is your dream or long-term goals. One of my visions is to “be a person of influence” (hopefully a positive one).
  • Strategy is a high level way of getting to your vision. My current strategies for increasing influence are “connecting with 4 people each week” and “writing weekly”.
  • Actions are the things you do each week to get that align to your strategy. My actions are appointments I have with people and time I actually spend writing.

The truth is I haven’t written each week and I haven’t met with 4 people each week. But, I have written more and connected with more people each week. I also track how I am going in my personal weekly check list which I review in my weekly review (this is the key to not forgetting it).

And even though I don’t achieve it each week, my influence is growing, and I am meeting and connecting with more people, which is energizing me and making me a better person.

Most importantly each week is deliberately better than it would be without them.

So what will your strategies be?

If you would like to see my current strategies, I have posted them at outward.me.