You Ask, I Answer: The Most Important Business Decision? (TD Q&A)

Probably the most impactful decision I've ever had to make uh is the founding of Trust Insights. Uh my business partner and I, Katie, uh, we worked together at a PR agency. Um, Katie was actually my direct report at the time, and we saw that the agency we worked at at the time was going in a different direction than we wanted to. Um it was focused on objectives we didn't agree with. Um we found ourselves taking on clients that we had moral objections to.

Uh we thought that some of those clients, their businesses fundamentally made the world a worse place rather than a better place. Um and so a combination of data points that suggested that the business was going in the wrong direction. Plus um emotional points of view told us it was time to take the big leap. One of the big considerations to that, well, there were several. Um was did we have something viable to offer the world that would be worth paying for?

And the fact that the team that we ran was the most profitable team in the agency, had three of the five largest clients and represented uh probably you know 20-ish percent of the entire company's revenue told us, yeah, there's a way to build our business so that we could take the things we'd learned at the agency, but recast them to be our our central focus, focus on management consulting, data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, analytics, and leave behind the awkward sort of juxtaposition of a profession that fundamentally is not data-driven, trying to make that mesh with data-driven processes. So that was the decision itself. Some of the considerations that went into it were things like did we have an audience? Now, for the last uh at the time it was 10 years when we were when we were starting to make these decisions, I had been building uh my personal brand, my personal audience of people who vent went to my website, signed up for my newsletter and stuff. And at the time we launched, um, I had about like 50,000 subscribers to my newsletter, and we felt like, okay, that's uh enough of a pool that when we make the announcement, um, there'll be enough people interested in our products and services that we could survive.

Uh we looked at our personal savings, our personal finances, uh, we looked at uh potential projected revenues and things and decided, yeah, it would be tough for a couple of years for sure. It'd be tight for a couple of years, but there was enough there, enough momentum already in place that it wouldn't be starting from ground zero. It wouldn't be starting with nothing. It would be starting with the ability to to bootstrap. One of the things that went that happened early on was uh as we were forming the ideas of the company, we were trying to figure out how to do our funding.

And we actually pitched investors um early on for the company and found that the investment community itself was very reticent to invest in a services-focused business. They were looking for product-focused businesses uh because it'd be easier to invest and see returns faster, flip them faster. Uh, and two of the nine investors we uh pitched were uh absolutely morally reprehensible people, it turns out. Um they told us to our faces, which credit to them for being honest, I suppose, that they would not invest in a uh business with a CEO who's female, which was just offensive. Um and so that changed how we ran the business and and how we were going to fund it to basically being a bootstrapped business where we would not accept outside funding.

Um Katie and I would retain um full ownership of the business, and you know uh that would be how we would approach uh things like the finances. And so in March of 2018, we took the leap. And we uh we left the old company, we started, we hung out our shingle, and the first year was definitely tough, but after that we got some momentum, we got some focus. Um we really dug into what we were good at, and now four years later, uh we are a thriving, successful business. We are uh we closed our first million dollars of revenue not too long ago.

Uh we are looking to make our uh first uh annual million dollar revenue uh very very soon, uh which is not bad for you know uh a business with two owners and and uh one contract salesperson. And the business model that we have now is part software part consulting, and so we expect to be able to scale the the software side of things um along with uh some training uh courses and things that we're putting together to really grow the business uh substantially in the next couple of years. And again, because it it's funny um those investors that declined to invest were a blessing in disguise because as we grow the business to being you know first a seven figure business then an eight figure business hopefully a nine figure business we didn't have to give up any ownership we didn't have to to give away uh any decision making capability uh to other to third parties we are accountable only to ourselves uh and we get to keep the the the profits which is also really nice so in some ways those those investors who said no um really were a blessing in disguise they really were and so the key takeaways for a big decision is you've got to do an inventory what do you have what what data do you need to make a decision uh use your Eisenhower matrix or your Franklin index uh whatever methodology uh take into account the emotions you know uh as I said one of the big challenges early on was uh dealing with uh taking on clients that you know at the old at the old company that we f found morally objectionable um when you start a new business uh we codified it's funny we we codified all the things that we didn't like in the old company uh we said we don't like this we don't like this we don't like this and then we took the reverse and said here's what we do like is what we do want to do, and made that part of our corporate core values to say these are the things we stand for and the things that we won't put up with because otherwise, why bother? Right? Build a business that you want to work at because there's a good chance, uh, especially if you're going to be making a decision like this, that you will be working at it for a very long time.

Um, you know, the idea of building a business and flipping it in 18 months, not realistic for most people, nor um, you know, for nor for someone like me would that be personally very satisfying. Um, your personality may differ, of course. But that's those are kind of the the the way the story unfolded. And it's it it's still being written, um, but wouldn't change a thing. Wouldn't change a thing.