Reflecting on the first few months
Learning what to embrace as mutable and what we hold as constant
Building a startup means the one thing you know is that change is constant. Knowing this is the only dependable reality, I find it helpful to create a true north mission as a second constant.
For us at Reset Your Nest, our true north constant is our mission to empower women and support families.
Since joining in January, we’ve learned a lot. Below is a list of things I got wrong in the first six months.
So many crumpled paper drafts to find that lightbulb idea….
1. We tried to launch as a B Corp.
I spent 4 months determined to launch as a B Corp to signal to our clients, team, and investors that we were committed to social good. While we still may eventually pivot into a B Corp, it takes an average of 18 months. At this stage in the game, we need all hands on deck to give ourselves the best chance of still being a viable company in 18 months. I had to put this goal on the back burner.
Pivot: Instead, we created a Social Impact position on our board and wrote our social mission into our corporate documents.
2. We tried to expand with a franchise model and realized we may need to think again.
We had almost finished working with our legal team on the required franchise documents when we learned that franchisors have a ton of control on most COGs, but significantly less on important issues like
setting a base payment rates. Because our north star is to pay higher livable wages we are going back to the drawing board. We’ve spent a lot of time and I wish we had identified this conflict 3 months earlier.
Pivot: We’re bringing our community along in the journey and sharing the decision process transparently with the team as we continue to learn more.
3. Hiring a “warm body” who is interested in the work but not capable to perform can actually be worse than not doing the project at all.
We lost time and money working with inexperienced team members whose heart wasn't in the job. We have since spent some time really getting clear on our needs and looking for individuals who meet specific expertise requirements. To be clear, if you are hungry and willing to learn, we can both take a chance on one another—but our next round of team members need to be individuals who can clearly do the job.
Pivot: Write better job descriptions with requirements. Even if the work is short-term, contract work, don’t waste time on talent without a track record for important projects.
As a fun note: We’re currently hiring for Inventory Management, Data Scientist, and Mid-Senior Product Manager—people who have led projects successfully and can tell us what needs to happen, rather than waiting for us to tell them.
4. Expecting everyone on the team to have a growth mindset is not a given. Personal safety and comfort with ambiguity are real needs and deserve respect.
It’s been critical for us to realize that what makes a great organizer feel safe and happy at work is being a knowledge expert with a clear set of guidelines and ability to express creativity in an area of strength. Building a startup requires embracing a growth-based mindset and being comfortable with DIRST, or “Do It Right the Second Time,” which not everyone is. Rather than asking our organizers to change, we’ve tried to separate our iterative growth from their day-to-day experience.
Pivot: We’re opening more conversations about mindsets—meta conversations to build safety. Having a co-founder who complements me with this mindset has been really useful for us to make it psychologically safe for teammates to have preferences on how much they want to embrace ambiguity and how we ask (or don’t ask) them to take a risk when the outcome is not certain.
5. Telling the story of purpose and profit is hard. Understanding what version people want to hear is even harder.
A great brand team in the Bay Area passed on us because we didn’t have funding at this stage and the business didn’t look promising enough to be compelling. I had focused on our mission when talking to them, but what they wanted were the numbers, the proof that this as a viable business model. With a revenue of almost $500K in the first six months of 2022 and a compelling market opportunity we could have told this story differently. My experience with this brand team was a valuable reminder of the ways we need to shape stories depending upon the audience.
Pivot: Now I’m trying to tell this story with context by blogging so that more people can find either version—the profit or the purpose that excites them to join us in this journey.
We’ve done a few things well. In the spirit of sharing both our thornes and our roses, I’ll name a few…
1. We’ve engaged with startup communities like YC, Founderkind, and FourthFloor. We have been accepted to an accelerator with GovLab. (I look forward to sharing more soon!) There is compelling value that comes from an engaged community and a wealth of great ideas to help us move faster and learn from others. We prefer to learn the “fast way” by starting with humility and pausing to listen first, whenever possible!
2. Invest in strong relationships as co-founders. We have a coach—not because we need one or have experienced problems, but because we have a commitment to talk about feelings before they become unmanageable. I am so grateful to be working with Jen Martin. She is talented, driven, and has a vision for organizing homes that inspires our entire team.
3. We stand fully behind our mission and our values.
We empower women and support families.
We are kind and effective.