When Colin Griffin, CEO of Krumware, came to Pendleton Street Business Advisors he was looking for a sounding board and some guidance on the business of business.
“It seems like there is more and more and more to do every day, I wish I had time to go get a PHD on this stuff.”
Like most entrepreneurs, Colin was caught in between wanting to expand and grow his business but was bottlenecked by being in the position of a pivotal team player at the center of his operation. One of the ways Founder Planning helped Colin was to assist in identifying concrete ways for him check things off his list and prioritize the list.
“It turned the question marks into real tangible things that needed to get done. That’s always the hardest part is not knowing where to navigate. How are you going to know how to get there if you don’t even know where you’re going?”
The weekly Founder Planning meetings began to not only answer the questions Colin started with but evolved along with his business to take on new tasks, new opportunities, and new projects.
“Founder planning reduced the floundering, is how I would put it. Everyone says ‘get focused’ - this answered ‘what are you focusing on?’ Having that source of knowledge provides clarity there and we’ve gotten a lot out of that…”
In addition to offering some broader strategies PSBA was also able to dig in to the specific needs of Colin and his business.
“We even learned how we can change our go to market strategy just from testing some assumptions just de-risking… but HOW do we do that? And being able to bounce ideas off the guys, we were able to answer that… Now, changing the way we do things has had a lot of implications on the way we price to customers. It is just interesting to learn how evaluating risk can help your sales.”
By helping Colin arrive at the conclusion that his business is his largest investment PSBA was able to share fundamental knowledge and tools to help him safeguard that asset.
“The 3 months was more than enough for us to figure out our identity as business people and just figure out how we do business and defining that a little better. So, it has changed me in a good way, where I feel now we’re starting to think more about company growth and company as a whole and not just “hey we happen to be a part of this thing that is making some money”
Utilizing decades of experience provided us with the opportunity to help Colin in a meaningful way that will help him continue to grow a strong foundation he can continue to build from.