We recently saw the following list of items on one of our peer’s news feed and could instantly relate to it – just as many others in the business world probably did.

According to the list, which included 9 points, these are the criteria according to which you can tell if someone really knows what they’re talking about (obviously we couldn’t resist adding a 10th):

1.    If they know how to explain it to a 6-year-old child, they probably understand it.

2.    If they know how to draw it, they probably understand it.

3.    If they know how to measure it.

4.    If they know to demonstrate what it’s like in real life.

5.    If they know how to describe it as a process.

6.    If they know what to do even if there’s something missing in it.

7.    If they don’t need a presentation in order to talk about it.

8.    If they know how to divide it into 3 parts.

9.    If they know how to start talking about it from the end.

10. If they know what 3 things they like about it, and what 3 things they would like to improve.

Professionals who have been involved in their field for a while (let’s say more than 10 years), will probably answer all of these questions with a resounding “yes.” Experience and consistency are certainly priceless as far as it concerns reaching an undeniable level of professional expertise. Furthermore, if you’re also mindful of your story, your experiences, lessons, and prices paid along the way – that enriches your expertise with an even broader and deeper understanding.

However, when you’re a startup leader, it’s fair to say you’ve got a bit less than 12-15 years to reach a high level of ‘knowing your thing.’ Startups, being the newest organizational form of the 21st century, challenge us in many new unique ways. One of which is the need to demonstrate a great deal of research-based knowledge and experience-based wisdom in a very short amount of time.

As startup analysts who have long been involved with startups assessments in pre-investment stages, here at 3P Model, we’ve developed our own expertise in identifying ‘if someone really knows what they’re talking about.’ (That, by the way, is almost always the most significant positive indicator for startups’ potential to succeed).

One of our core missions is to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses in a way which makes them knowledgeable, finely-tuned to their business environment, and mindful of their growth. We help leaders of startups develop all of those perquisites for success and more, in a blisteringly short period of time.  

We’re continually guiding startup leaders in creating a strong entrepreneurial identity while crystallizing their message and unique voice. We don’t stop until entrepreneurs reach the point where they’re naturally able to stand in front of others and talk about their subject as if they’re an industry expert. In fact, with our guidance, they do indeed become worthy of such a title.

At 3P Model, we bring the frameworks, body of knowledge and tools needed for startups to accomplish these purposes. Whether you’re a founder, investor, or educational innovator, contact us to hear about the numerous possibilities you have available with us in your corner.

It may well open your eyes to a whole new world of possibilities. 

Have you already downloaded your copy of the 3P Canvas for startup business development? Get your copy here

---

Would you like to have a professional real-time assessment of your business? Many of us are stuck at home at the moment, entrepreneurs and small business owners included. But isn't this the perfect opportunity for some self-care? We've created a 5-day business development exercise especially for you, so you can use this forced stop to give some love to yourself as an entrepreneur and to your business.

By the end of the exercise you’ll get:

1. A complete status of your product (or service).

2. A personal overview of your team.

3. Market insights.

4. Introduction to the most updated, balanced, holistic and simple tool for startups assessment and business development.

Whereas now isn’t the best time for marketing campaigns (your customers aren’t very attentive right now) nor for long-term strategic plans (are you sensing the market’s uncertainty too?) - It is a perfect time for some ‘internal’ work, with the purpose of self-diagnosing your business, strengthening its core and fine-tuning your message.

In our experience, the best business development (and marketing) plans are those which are based on a proper business diagnosis, and when we invest time in looking at our business as a whole, further development plans almost create themselves. That means that if you put some effort now, it will pay off tomorrow, once it’s all over and things are back on track. The #stayhome exercise will guide you through the important steps of a professional business diagnosis process and will help you with that.  

We developed the 3P Model in 2014 as a tool to analyse startups and other small-to-medium 21st-century businesses. It has already been implemented in many startups and entrepreneurial education programmes across Europe and is proving itself as an easy-to-use yet highly efficient framework for startups, investors and educators. The DIY #stayhome business development exercise is our giveaway to our community and it’s free.

Interested?

Get your access here:

by Keren Beit Cohen

4 min read

We’re currently living in challenging COVID-19 times. People, companies, governments and international institutions are still figuring out how to cope, and in the meantime, like many others, we entrepreneurs are caught unprepared.

‘Regular’ uncertainty has changed. Although as entrepreneurs, we’re built to handle some ambiguity in our professional lives, these times are bringing real turbulence. Many of us are experiencing a sharp decrease in workflow as well as health-related concerns for ourselves and vulnerable loved ones. Societal worries, too, such as how everything will look once this is all over, are an integral part of our conversations and thoughts.

The good news, bizarrely, is that there is nothing much that we can do about it.

Except for staying at home as much as possible, cooperating with the general instructions and hoping for the best, we’ve done everything we need to do. After having spent some time organising our household, perhaps supervising some kids’ activities, buying food (and toilet paper?) supplies, it’s time to go back to work - only this time in a different mode.

Here’s what I do right now:

1. I try to keep things in proportion. If you’re reading this right now, you’re probably healthy - not a guaranteed thing in general, and especially not now. Also, we have to remind ourselves that this is a temporary situation which will eventually end, if only for the reason that nothing in life is permanent. We can trust humankind (and history) that it will all be back to normal pretty soon, even if that will be a new kind of normal.

2. I try to figure out in which ways this situation is here to help my business (and me). It’s very likely that you have a list of things you were planning on doing for your business for a long time now, but never really had the time for. You might find out that now is the right time. Any business development task which has an ‘internal’ nature, such as doing some research work in order to know more about what’s going on out there in your market, or strengthening your business identity and message, might turn out to be the best thing to do right now and an effort which will definitely pay off in the nearest future. I would recommend putting aside any direct marketing efforts at the moment; your clients are not very attentive right now and your market as whole is not quite being itself either. Long term strategic plans are, for obvious reasons, not the best thing to deal with now too.

   At 3P Model we are now sharing a DIY business development exercise specifically for the purpose of strengthening the core of your business, and it’s free. Check out our #stay_home exercise here.

3. I sharpen up my business identity. A strong business identity is crucial for success and growth. Unfortunately, it’s also something which many business owners neglect. Ask yourself a few questions and write down your answers:

   • What service or product am I offering?

   • Why me, or what qualities do I have as a professional which make me the right person to do this?      

   • What is it about my product which makes it worthy?

   • Do I have a message for my clients with regard to what’s going on now in the world?

   Begin with focusing on yourself, from the inside out. Only then continue with other questions which are related to your clients, your market and the larger business environment in order to create your complete business ID.

4. I work on my website. Your website is an elaboration of your business card and is a must-have in today’s market. Once you’ve gone through sharpening up your business identity on paper, you will find creating an online presence an easier task to accomplish, at least content-wise. If you don’t have a website, start working on it now, and yes, consider creating it yourself. The biggest advantage of going for the DIY option is the added value it brings you in sculpting your business identity and in adding another layer of precision in defining who you are and what you do. The clearer your message will be, the faster it will reach your potential clients.

   Several platforms are doing a great job in helping people out with building their own websites. From my own experience I can recommend Squarespace, and I hear that Wix are great too. A simple one-pager to begin with will do; later on you could always hire a professional to improve your website or add some more advanced features. Don’t forget to reach out to friends who can help you out with the mission: now is a good time for some mutual support (see no.5 below).

5. I consider exchanging small-scale services with other professionals in my network. Many people are reacting to the current crisis by feeling a need to act in solidarity and support each other. Despite the fact that some of us feel it’s not the right time to hire paid professional services, it doesn’t mean we can’t share our experience and knowledge in other ways. Your English teacher friend could help you with some copy editing for your website and you in exchange could offer her some private yoga lessons (if that’s what you do, of course). If you’re a marketing expert you could advise someone on how to improve their business and in return get some home-styling ideas. Many people find this time a good one for sharing, exchanging and helping each other out.

   So these are my ideas as a stay-home entrepreneur about what to do for my business right now. If you have more ideas, please share it with us; there will be more posts coming with more stay-home ideas. In the meantime I hope you all stay healthy and safe and make the best out of this situation.

   Good luck!

Keren Beit Cohen is the founder of the 3P Model (2014), Founder CEO of Free Founders (2020) and a business-and-personal development consultant for entrepreneurs.

by Keren Beit Cohen

5 min read

Capsule tag:

Good stories are based on good stories, and not on good storytelling skills.

Structure:

1) Storytelling is fine.

2) It’s bad if you get trapped in your own story.

3) It’s even worse if you don’t really have a story to tell.

4) Blindly adopting corporate concepts into the startups world is ridiculous.  

Capsule:

Storytelling is a wonderful thing. It connects sequences of events, adds reasoning and gives them a logical flow. If it’s a ‘good’ story, it also provides a layer of interest, amusement and something to remember. If we’re telling our own story, it makes us feel as if we’ve managed to ‘figure things out’, and our listeners will most likely accept that readily too. People, both evolutionarily and historically, like stories – and they also bring them closer to the characters and plot.

No wonder, then, that storytelling is very popular in the startup world. Within many programmes and accelerators you’ll find a ‘storytelling’ unit and a charismatic speaker who will talk about how every good story starts with a beginning, continues to an obstacles-and-problem-solving part, and ends up with a winning closure. He or she will also provide great tips on how to add some dramatic elements to your story in order to make it more inspiring, and will normally give examples of other companies’ stories. Most of these, unsurprisingly, are hardly startups anymore, but more established and mature companies (which, unlike the young founder listener, actually have a story to tell).

These storytelling workshops are also often the most fun ones on the programme, aren’t they? I for one find the high-quality speakers in this field very interesting and inspirational – to the extent that I almost get trapped in the story of the importance of storytelling too.

‘So what’s your problem then?’ a perceptive reader might justifiably ask. I have no problem with stories – in fact, I love them – but from what I’ve witnessed, storytelling brings with it a risk of damaging one’s development and of creating a false feeling of ‘closure’, which in my opinion shouldn’t exist at all – especially not in startups, particularly early-stage ones. The problems with storytelling mainly arise when: 1) We fall in love with our own story; and 2) We try to tell our story while there’s not much yet to tell (or: take the first problem and make it ten times worse).

Problem number one: when we fall in love with our own stories

a) Separate yourself from your story – A story is a simplification, a summary which often leads to a reduction of processes and ideas. For presentation purposes it’s fine, but in other respects a ‘bottom line’ mentality is risky – for example when you consider your work to have certain meaning and depth. It’s important to bear in mind that your story isn’t you, it’s just an ad-hoc, true-for-now-only representation of what you’ve been through, summarised in a (preferably) amusing way for others to consume. While your story freezes in time once it has been ‘closed’, you (or your startup) should continue to evolve.

b) Remain open – When we manage to connect a series of events and wrap them all up in a nice little linear tale, we think we ‘understand’. Our impression of ‘figuring things out’ harmfully increases, at the expense of the notion of ‘not knowing’ – an integral element in startups’ state of being. Startups develop by repeating the processes of testing assumptions, getting feedback from the outside world, and improving. That means that there should always be some space for scepticism in what we do, and we shouldn’t take our stories as a final representation of things.

c) Mind the context – Making our business presentations amusing and fluent is useful. However, when we go back to work on our product, team and business development (our main and most important tasks), we should forget about stories and stick to data, information and facts, and rethink. This is how stories are built and rebuilt.

Problem number two: When there’s not much to tell (yet)

a) Let your story build itself up – Good stories are based on, well, good stories, and not on good storytelling skills. The potential damage of storytelling is particularly acute when it comes to early-stage startups that don’t have much to tell. It’s not rare to find young startups telling a story of how their passion led them to create the most amazing product and at the same time have no traction indicators to back it up. A story normally consists of a plot and a hero who undergoes some development stages. If the hero is our product, and the plot describes its development, then we need a thing or two to happen in relation to its development in order to start telling its story.

b) Mind what’s yours – It’s pretty common to hear ‘storytelling experts’ amazed by how many startups lack storytelling skills – a problem which, according to them, might cost them their chance of success. These experts are missing the fact that most early-stage startups find it hard to tell their story for the sole reason that they don't have one to tell yet! The combination of founders feeling they ‘must’ heroically tell stories, together with missing parts in the plot, leads to an awkward dissonance often resolved by deploying the wrong type of creativity: inventing parts in the story or beautifying facts which might not yet be very appealing to the listener. 

c) Be honest – Telling a story which is partly invented creates an ethos of falsehood. If we choose to accept this, it might increase our anxiety levels – not only while pitching in front of audience, but also for the longer term. Paradoxically, sticking to the small, incomplete story we’re able to tell right now is the best way to remain authentic and reliable – qualities which are most appreciated by experienced angel investors, for example. It also helps us to build up our entrepreneurial experience and confidence (or at least doesn’t damage it).

Storytelling in a business context originates from ‘brand storytelling’ and ‘narrative marketing’ – well-known concepts for established and mature companies, and the corporate world. It’s time for the startup community to think critically about the concepts, models and ideas it automatically adopts from the old-economy organisational body of knowledge. After all, we’re not here for that purpose, are we? It’s efficient to use existing practices, but we should do so in a more sophisticated manner and mind the (fortunate) difference between what has gone before and us, 21st-century company builders.

I’m Keren Beit Cohen, founder of the 3P Model (2014), Founder CEO of Free Founders (2020) and a business-and-personal development consultant for entrepreneurs.

This post is dedicated with appreciation to one of my most influencing mentors, Dr. Yaron Mazliach.

“Per avere il successo devi sporcare le mani e non mollare mai!”

“To succeed you must get your hands dirty and never give up!” - We met Sharon Ezra in Milan, back in 2015. She was then getting her hands dirty in one of her amazing fashion startups and we were highly impressed by her intelligence, energy, values and determination. Sharon is one of our favourite founders and we also love this talk from her - about the value of starting from the bottom.