It Was The Best Of Times. It Was The Worst Of Times

What Charles Dickens wrote to open a Tale of Two Cities. It is something I have been thinking about a lot over the last few months as the Theodora Project navigates a major inflection point in its evolution. There is this combination of incredible excitement combined with ever present terror. 

I am going to go in inverse order and start with the Terror.

Money

We aren't making enough. Each month is an adventure as to whether we are going to have enough to cover our payroll. Every time I think we've made a breakthrough, something comes up to offset it. And yet, each month something also happens that allows us to get through. This has been going on for so many months now and we have made it through so many crises that I've gotten some what philosophical about it.

Why Aren't My Kids Acting Like Adults?

This is my lament about the work behavior patterns of my team...my group of women mostly just around 30 years old with a maximum of 3 years work experience each and little meaningful formal education past high school to speak of. You might catch the irony in that statement. Intellectually, I know they are doing fantastic. Emotionally, my inability to get their attention to detail to match a 10 to 15 year experience American college graduate in a top professional environment drives me a bit nuts. (BTW, I do know that the average American professional worker actual sucks at attention to detail in general).

How Do We Move Forward When We Can't Pay the Rent

This is a real likelihood in February. Fortunately, we are a virtual business and we work a lot from people's homes. But, it is difficult to build the kind of teamwork and new competency development we are working on (see below), when we are physically separated.

And now the Excitement

Honestly, there is way more that I am excited about than terrorized about. Seriously, some of the opportunities that are coming to us are so far beyond anything I would have imagined a year ago, I need to pinch myself and ask if it is real.

Joint Venture with CRM Business

For you who may not be involved with business and the tech applications for sales development, CRM, Client Relationship Management, applications that help businesses control and manage their sales processes, have been a big deal for over a decade. Yet despite this, there are still huge swaths of the business landscape that have not been using them, especially smaller businesses like the ones Theodora serves. We at Theodora have just started applying them ourselves and are already seeing the benefits. 

I met through my networking a new CRM company that is launching using only self-financing (very rare in this space). Their product has a lot of features that make it ideal for Theodora's target market. And they are very social impact oriented, don't want to develop their own client service team, and would love if we could become that resource! WHAT! You mean you want us to be essentially your outsourced resource to train and onboard all your clients. Um, let me think. How much business could that be? How much work will it take us to get that ability? Both...a lot. But it is not impossible. On the other hand, running a marathon is not impossible. Just difficult. 

Can You Provide Me With My Entire Staff?

We are also working with an ambitious cyber security business that wants to ramp up their sales substantially. The entrepreneur has mapped out a detailed plan for executing his business development plan. He says he could use three full-time people to execute this. But there is no way he can afford three full-time U.S. wage people. Did I mention, this entrepreneur has a deep feeling about helping and giving back? He has approached us asking if we can provide what he needs. The work is work we do. But we've not worked with a person who demands the response time and attention to detail he demands. And we don't have three extra people lying around. So we are working to develop a test where we give him the equivalent of one FTE (full-time equivalent) and see if we can deliver the quality and speed he needs. Did I mention that he would be willing to pay in advance for this one year cost of an FTE? More than enough for me to pay our rent?

🤯

Joint Venture with an AI Avatar Producer

Another of our clients has been developing AI based training systems. These are essentially AI powered training tools that allow the one learning to ask questions as one would a live teacher. They want us to fulfill the same function of client support and training as the CRM folks want us to. Not only would we be helping this client, and developing another line of business for us, we'd be developing training tools to help us with our own growth. Crazy!

And on top of this, I am out raising another $125 thousand to give us the management and financial strength to really pursue these opportunities. 

I mentioned in a recent post how I don't feel like I've been working (think toiling) for 50 years. I more think "How the hell do I have such an incredible challenge and opportunity at this time of life." 

It's amazing.