Walk Like A Man, Talk Like A Man

Maybe I should just start a series of blogs about "thinking like a man". It is interesting that I associate actions of deception or mean thoughts with the male species - but I am jealous of their ability to act and think about feelings later. Along those lines, I did a "man act" today - and I am proud of myself. I found out that our competitor sold itself to another competitor. Now our direct competitor holds a significant customer share that we want and this "sale" has not been publicized yet (and the intention may be to never publicize it). My business partner and I determined that if we had the client share that our recently sold competitor has, it would significantly increase our revenue without taxing our resources - which is always a good thing. So, I did the man thing: I called up our client and let them know that their service provider is disappearing and their designated customer service representatives have also disappeared (read: let go). I also emphasized the fact that OUR tool provides the protection against liability that they need and going to any other competitor puts them at risk. So basically, I CAPITALIZED on the situation. I will continue to utilize this approach until we increase our share and I thank you, competitor, for jumping ship. The woman in me, though, can't help but say, "good luck on your other endeavors". Sigh....

Don't You Hate Looking At The Others?

We have to do a competitive analysis for the business plan, and I admit that I hate the exercise. I want to believe that we are the first and only ones with the ideas, but we have to recognize that what we are doing is not new. What we do recognize is that we are approaching credential verifications in a different manner that will wonderfully differentiate our service / product (still don't know which to call it). Still, that doesn't take away the "I wish you didn't exist" feeling I have whenever I discover that there is another guy offering similar services. I KNOW that ours is better and more innovative, but I am sure that is how Ray Kroc felt when Wendy's popped up next door. A business associate gave me a great outlook. He said that we should welcome competitors because it justifies our existence. If no one wanted to get in our market, then investors would have a very hard time seeing the benefit. Now that is what I call a positive view! On another note, we need to change the name. My business partner hates Verify-crED. I thought that it was great because it continued the self-explanatory naming convention (it stands for "Verify Credentials"), but she thinks that is sounds like "crud". So, we decided to use our difference of opinion to our advantage by having another naming campaign. The great thing about this campaign is that we will invite our voters to use the service to better understand the great service we are providing. We are hoping that this approach will begin a PR campaign of sorts for us by others wanting to get in on the fun. We had a campaign to name Verify-ID and it was fun, so we are looking to repeat that success. If you would like to participate in the campaign to rename Verify-crED, shoot me a quick email message (jware@verify-ed.com) and I will add you to the list!

Verify-crED Business Plan

Today I worked on the Verify-crED business plan - in the strangest place. I took my daughter to a birthday party and hunkered down in the waiting room with my laptop. I have this laptop going everywhere. On Saturday mornings while my eldest daughter is at her fencing class, I sit in the car and drain the battery (actually, I have only done this once and I bought a jumper after that horrendous experience).

I anticipate that one of the requirements any interested investor will seek is a business plan - makes sense. It just feels like I am putting this together when I have the least amount of time.

As an aside, I attended a focus group at the NJ Star Ledger last week that was quite informative. The Star Ledger wants to revamp the business section to provide more for the small business. Interestingly (and wonderfully) there were not many small business owners there; rather there were quite a few representatives from organizations that support small businesses. At the meeting, I heard about all these seemingly wonderful resources that are available to me - but I know that muddling through the mounds of information is PAINFUL. That is why I think many small businesses eschew the help offered. The number of hoops through which you are expected to jump don't feel worth the effort. I am going to reach out to some of the other attendees to see if my perceptions are true. I just feel that at this time in our business cycle, I don't have time to waste. Everything I do has to positively impact the business and the return has to be as immediate as possible. So, when I go to the gym, conduct personal training sessions or coach Level 2 gymnastics - I look at those activities as helping me focus. I ran about 5 miles this morning and I felt so good. I appreciate the time to sort through my task list. I am always impressed by the people who can work out at midday. I need to start my day with activity, and I cannot break in the middle of it.

I wanted to also talk about Verify-ID (as promised). Verify-ID is our feature that allows our clients to submit search requests without the required social security numbers and dates of birth. Our clients can have our system send an email message to the search subjects that contains a direct link. This link takes search subjects securely into our system so that they can enter their own sensitive data. Neat, huh? It came out of my experience when I worked at an executive recruiting firm. There was a concern that candidates' sensitive data would accidentally end up in the search management database, so this feature was created to solve that issue.

We really try to make sure that we listen to our clients, because they are from where we will get the next great idea.