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By Elyse Ball  This past month has been a series of weird watershed moments for me. For the first time in 15 months, I went out to eat at a restaurant, attended a large group gathering, spent time indoors with people who aren’t immediate family members, and stayed overnight at a hotel.
Two years ago, it would have been inconceivable that we would spend so much of our lives maintaining physical distance from other human beings. Today, it has become commonplace. For me, I-Corps has been a fascinating case study in how we can build community and customer relationships even in remote settings. I-Corps is all about customer discovery: the practice of interacting directly with prospective customers to answer important questions about a business, product or technology idea.
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By Darius Sharpless  In my previous career as a DJ and MC, I traveled to dance halls, bars, and private clubs. Often, I hired dancers and other entertainers to spice up events. Not one time during my two years as a sole proprietor, did I realize how much jeopardy I was in or the liabilities to which I was exposed. Luckily, I remained unscathed as the business faded into memory. Here, I have compiled a list of the six primary business entities. Knowing the pros and cons of each will help you decide which entity is best for you. With this knowledge, you can avoid the great risks I took when I started my first business.
By Faye Nicholson  So what? Who cares? Why does it matter? These are all great questions you should ask yourself when explaining or describing your new technology or innovation. Whether a 90-second pitch, a 30-minute presentation or trying to get media attention, remember creating understanding matters.
If you want to make your message clear and understandable to the non-scientist and non-engineer, here are a few tips I recommend: By Shannon Marshburn  Which one have you heard? There is the 5 a.m. warrior. - Rise and Grind. - The early bird gets the worm, or better yet, the even earlier bird gets the gummy worm.During the first three years of my time at college, my art studio was open 24/7. Pulling all-nighters were encouraged and even expected by faculty. It was even written in our syllabi. When a new president took over the arts college in my senior year and changed the studio hours to close at midnight during the week, and even earlier on the weekends, you would have thought we were going to start a riot. The battle scars of shaky, caffeinated hands and sleep deprived twitchy eyes were a right of passage in our minds. If we slept then did we really work that hard or could we have gotten a 2 a.mm-coffee and plowed through the night and morning?
Lack of sleep is such a societal norm, but lack of sleep is really a flirt with death. It’s not new to hear that sleep is important, but really just how important is sleep? By Anna Radachy  What can you do in 27 seconds? Tie your shoes, sneeze a couple of times, maybe write a text? How about making a good impression? According to new research, it takes an average of 27 seconds for someone to form an opinion about you, and 69% of Americans report that they form their opinion before the person even speaks. It is incredible to think that such a small amount of time can make or break how someone thinks of you, and these opinions can potentially affect your business. So how can you make sure that those 27 seconds work for you?
By Nick Glavan  For me, rewards aren’t always a consciously labeled treat. In times past, I would reward myself for a week’s job well done by setting up a social gathering with friends or planning to attend a musical over the weekend. Sometimes it was something small like watching a YouTube video or snagging a Reese’s peanut butter cup from the freezer (a life-changing hack). However, amidst the hustle to assimilate to pandemic work and life procedures, I recently realized I had put on hold this vital reward-granting process. I know myself to be susceptible to the psychological principles of reinforcement. Most of us can recall the famous experiment of Pavlov’s dog. In the experiment, Pavlov uses classical conditioning to make the dog automatically salivate at the sound of bell. To train the dog to do this, Pavlov would ring the bell anytime the dog was fed. After enough conditioning, the dog no longer needed to be fed to salivate, and would salivate just by hearing the bell. Possibly inspired by the prank Jim Halpert pulls on Dwight in the classic The Office scene, I figured I could trick myself into more useful behaviors beyond salivation. In reality, what I ended up doing was closer to operant conditioning. The main difference was that I wanted to train myself by linking special treats with voluntary behavior, rather than instinctual ones like salivating. It’s the same principle that my parents used in potty training and my teachers used reinforcing classroom rules. Just now, I am applying it to adult life.
Here are a few things I learned about reinforcing my own productivity: By Elyse Ball Whether you’re a leader of a small business who wants to drive organizational growth or an individual who wants to live a more healthy and fulfilling life (or both), setting effective goals can be a daunting task. Luckily, I dug deep into goal setting best practices and can share some useful key takeaways. First of all, why are we discussing goal setting in May, instead of right after New Year’s Day? Some really smart psychologists have found that setting goals in the spring is more effective than setting goals in January. This is because people often come into the new year feeling exhausted and spring’s warmer temperatures and longer days give people a greater sense of optimism. So if you’re ready to dive in on some spring goal setting, we’ll look at a few overarching features of “good goals” and the pros and cons of some specific goal setting systems.  Interview By Elyse Ball  Shortly after graduating I-Corps, Matt Crowley and Bill Wichert were accepted to the prestigious Techstars Accelerator. Then, they made the bold move to pivot their startup, Signal Cortex, which is now an operations management platform for building and field service companies. Matt and Bill recently spoke with UARF's Elyse Ball about the high and lows of entrepreneurship, solving real customer problems, and the importance of having a group of entrepreneurs as friends.
Elyse: Tell me a little about yourselves and your backgrounds. Matt: I was born and raised in Cleveland, went to Case Western for computer engineering, and worked at Microsoft as an engineer. Then, I discovered airports, which was awesome! I worked in the airport industry for six years. I was the CIO for Cleveland Hopkins and Philadelphia International Airports. Bill: I've lived in the Cleveland area my whole life. I went to Tri-C. Eventually, I figured out a good direction for myself, which was a cross between business and technology. After being at Case, I took on the role as a manager at the airport working for Matt, then took over as CIO when he left. When the opportunity presented itself, I went to Philadelphia International Airport to join up as the Innovation Program Manager. Elyse: How did the idea for Signal Cortex come about? Matt: When I joined the airport in Cleveland, I started to sense there was this big communication problem between managers and frontline employees. It wasn't because the frontline employees weren't good at their jobs. It wasn't because the managers didn't have big hearts and weren't trying to do it. It was this breakdown in communication between the customer, the manager and the frontline employee. One of the greatest examples: I was walking through the terminal and a dog pees on the floor. And I'm like, this is a spill hazard, it's in the middle of the walkway. So I ended up standing in front of this puddle of dog pee for two hours, because I made a phone call and it took that long for it to jump through the dispatcher to the shift manager to the frontline employee. I wouldn't say that was a breaking point, but it was very emblematic. It was one of those things where we said to ourselves, “We can improve this.” Elyse: You pivoted pretty significantly between the customer segment you started with in I-Corps and where you are today. Was that pivot a difficult decision to make, especially given your previous work experience at airports? Matt: I mention airports, because even going through I-Corps, we were focused on that. While we had all this great experience in airports, we decided to go learn about other markets and go on ride-alongs with people and figure out if there are other folks with similar problems. Bill: When we went through I-Corps, we used our interviews badly. We interviewed based on a structure of almost validating our own thoughts, not digging deep enough into the customer. So we got a lot of validation for what we had planned on doing and we thought, “Great. Look at all these people. They're saying we're right.” But when we went back to them and said, “Would you buy it?” They said, “Of course not.” So, we asked, “Wait, wait, wait. But you said this is the problem.” They responded with, “Yeah, but I'm not buying that. That won't fix my problem.” That was the start of the pivot. Once we got into Techstars, we started leaning into the Clayton Christensen “Jobs to be Done” model. You need to find the motivation for why a buyer is buying something and what their true internal processes are. As an example, one of the buying motivations of our first customer was that he was driving around at 2:00 o'clock in the morning, going to different states to address customer issues. He could no longer manage all the pieces of his business, and it was starting to eat into his family and personal time. When we figured that out, it was like we found the group that has the problem. And within three weeks we had our first customer. Elyse: One of the things that we frequently hear from new founders is that it’s challenging to transition from a customer discovery mode to a sales mode. How have you achieved that? By: Shannon Marshburn When I was around eight years old I was building a crafty project with my dad. He said, “measure twice, cut once”, and ofcourse my 8 year old patience level said cut and don't measure! You can imagine how that project turned out in the end. Even though that phrase floated around in my somewhat empty head for years, it never really set in until my university days and when those mistakes turned into expensive mistakes. The importance of building a strong foundation as an entrepreneur is crucial in avoiding burnout, expensive and avoidable mistakes and saves you in every other aspect of a business. When you make your first purchase for your business, and you get your new lab space, it is all very exciting and you just want to jump right into it like my 8 year old self wanted to do with my crafts. It’s not much fun, but taking that time in the beginning to work out the kinks will help your business stay built. Are you ready to build a business that will stand through the storm? If so, read on!  By Anna Radachy  How much free time do you have this week? There are 168 hours in a week, but once you factor out work, school, eating, sleeping, errands, housework, commute, and maybe a hundred other things it seems like you have no time at all. Perhaps you, like me, are trying to find some extra time in the day, but there always seems to be something more important that has to be done.
It can be easy in today’s “hustle” culture to fall into the habit of always being busy, with many, many things. Today’s America moves fast, and you are expected to move faster in your job and life, so how do you find time to do what you want? |
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