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Author: Jen Tindle

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Design Startup Story

4 Steps to Build a Story Brand Website for B2B Software

When I left real estate to start my own B2B software firm, one of my colleagues recommended that I read Donald Miller’s Building a Story Brand book. This was hands down one of the best recommendations that I received. Donald explains in simple terms how to communicate effectively with prospective customers. While both my cofounder and I came from the real estate industry, 71% of our customers came from inbound leads. This means that our customers found us via our website. They knew that we solved the problem they had and contracted with us to help. In other words, the Story Brand method works. Here’s how to build a Story Brand website for a B2B software company.

First, keep your front page simple.

Explain what you do in layman’s terms. If a complete stranger can’t understand the gist of what your firm does within a 3-second (or less) glance at your front page, then you need to redo it. You also need an explicit call to action. That way, if a prospective customer finds your site, recognizes that you solve their problem, they know what to do to get your help.

For example, my startup was a real estate data integration company. We integrated with property management software like Yardi as well as more standard applications like Salesforce. Our customers often complained that they spent too much time pushing and pulling data. They would rather spend that time on more value-add activities for their business. I opted to narrow the communication to exactly what we do and how we solve that pain point. “CREx makes it easy to get data out of Yardi, Salesforce, and more. Stop wasting time. Start generating revenue.” I then immediately gave prospects a call to action, “Start now.”

Show your value proposition.

Make it clear to prospects why what you do is valuable. Before we had customers, I estimated the amount of time savings that we provided. Once we had customers, I translated those time savings to dollars. Once again, I included a clear call to action to “Automate workflows.”

Give prospects a plan.

Tell them exactly what to do to solve their problem. We aren’t the heroes in our customers’ journeys; we are simply their guides. They need us to communicate clearly what they need to do to succeed.

One of the most effective ways to communicate a plan is by breaking it down to 3 simple steps. Here, I told them that after meeting with us, they would get a kickstart on their data journey. Then, I appealed to their self-actualization; they would “get noticed” by their boss or investors by using our software. 

Provide authority.

If you have customers, here’s where you should show off your logos. People are “sheeple” after all. And before you say you aren’t, do you really not look up reviews of a restaurant before eating there? Yelp is successful for a reason!

4 simple steps to build a Story Brand website for B2B software

To recap, here are the 4 steps to build a Story Brand website for your B2B software company:

  1. Keep your front page simple. 
  2. Show your value proposition.
  3. Give prospects a plan.
  4. Provide authority.

If you follow these 4 simple steps, then I guarantee that you will succeed in converting web traffic to leads. The Story Brand method worked for my B2B software company, and I’m confident that it will work for you.

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MY COMMITMENT | Never sell or share your data | Provide useful and impactful stories

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Design Startup Story

Design Groupings of Multi-Hierarchical Relationships

Your goal is to easily and efficiently allow users to create and select groups of items. Those groups may contain other groups, up to several levels of groupings deep. Each individual item can be part of multiple groups. How do you solve these myriads of groupings when designing an app? It’s not easy. This complex relationship is difficult to convey visually in a simple manner. Fortunately, my product mentor, head of engineering, and I put our heads together to design for groupings of multi-hierarchical relationships.

Our problem came from real estate. Here’s how groupings of multi-hierarchical relationships work in that industry.

Groupings of multi-hierarchical relationships in real estate

Owners and managers view real estate in many different ways. Property managers may group their properties by regional manager or by ownership group. Owners may group their properties by ownership structure. For example, owners may have a fund that consists of portfolios made up of properties. Property managers and owners may also view their properties by city or submarket. These are just a few examples; the point is that whoever owns or manages real estate wants to evaluate their properties across many different groups. 

We wanted to make it easy for owners or managers to select properties, create and save groups of properties or groups, view groups of properties and groups, and see hierarchies of selected subgroups or properties within a hierarchy. 

Some important criteria to note:

  • A property may exist in many groups -> users may want to view a property by city, such as Austin, as well as group it by property type, such as the entire multifamily portfolio
  • A group (as a subgroup) may exist in many groups -> users may want to group a manager’s portfolio into the regional manager’s portfolio, and they may also want to see the manager’s portfolio grouped into the state portfolio
  • A single property may not exist twice in any group -> users want to add more properties or groups to the view

Requirements

Here are the specific user requirements that my team and I identified.

  • User can clearly see which properties are part of which group
  • User can view many properties and groups at the same time
  • User can save or edit a view of properties or groups as a group
  • User can quickly distinguish among many selected groups or properties
  • User can easily see how properties fit in the hierarchy of a group or levels of groups
  • If user selects a subgroup or property within a group or subgroup while viewing more than one top-level group, the user can see which hierarchy above the property or group selected that it relates to

I’ll explain how to solve these requirements by showing my design iterations.

Iteration #1: Put pen to paper, aka the throwaway design

This is a basic, pen-to-paper idea of how a group, aka portfolio, contains multiple properties.

First, does this solve our requirements?

  • User can clearly see which properties are part of which group -> Sort of, although the drawings of lines aren’t great… probably a better way to show this.
  • User can view many properties and groups at the same time -> No, it would be way too complex.
  • User can save or edit a view of properties or groups as a group -> Yes, but why is the Edit Portfolio button so bright and calling to the user? Is the user expected to click on that a lot?
  • User can quickly distinguish among many selected groups or properties -> Sort of, but the lines are confusing.
  • User can easily see how properties fit in the hierarchy of a group or levels of groups -> No.
  • If user selects a subgroup or property within a group or subgroup while viewing more than one top-level group, the user can see which hierarchy above the property or group selected that it relates to -> No.

In general, the lines around the portfolio and individual property somewhat overlap and aren’t visually distinctive. Plus, the “Edit Portfolio” button is looming large for some reason. Do we expect users to edit portfolios often? Not at all. Then let’s scrap that as a call-to-action type of design and make it optional.

Iteration #2: Find inspiration and riff

Alright, we’re getting better. Kudos to my product mentor, Brett Collinson, for liking the groupings in Google tabs to this problem. Google tabs inspired this design.

Does this solve our requirements?

  • User can clearly see which properties are part of which group -> Yes, although the groups that aren’t selected aren’t as obviously separate from one another or the properties… the line in between does solve it but the user has to think. We don’t want users to think.
  • User can view many properties and groups at the same time -> Yes.
  • User can save or edit a view of properties or groups as a group -> No, it’s not obvious to a user how to do that on these screens.
  • User can quickly distinguish among many selected groups or properties -> Mostly,  although it’s odd that the Austin portfolio is in a selected state at the same time as the two sub-properties.
  • User can easily see how properties fit in the hierarchy of a group or levels of groups -> Mostly, we don’t see more than one level deep here, so levels of groups have not been solved yet.
  • If a user selects a subgroup or property within a group or subgroup while viewing more than one top-level group, the user can see which hierarchy above the property or group selected that it relates to -> No.

We solved more of the requirements, which is great progress. I also liked that the button to add more properties or groups to the view is a circled plus symbol. It’s not a first-state button but still calls to the user. 

There are still some issues with easily displaying multi-hierarchical relationships (i.e. greater than one level deep). I also didn’t love the line across the top. While this works well for Google tabs, it’s a bit “extra” for our use case. Given how complex these relationships can be, we had to solve for simplicity. I wanted something simpler, something that was intuitive AND minimalist. 

Iteration #42: The answer to everything

Let me walk you through each of the screens and scenarios that we used to solve our requirements.

Above, I selected multiple groups (identified by the icon of a building with a “+”) plus a single property (identified by the icon with a building). The “Add Portfolio” button is back but in a secondary state.

I expanded the “All Multifamily Portfolio” group. Note how the “>” caret shifted to a “<” caret to the right of “All Multifamily Portfolio”. The user still has the overall portfolio selected as indicated by its purple background and transparent individual properties.

Now, I have multiple groups in a view with one subgroup selected. Note how the second-level subgroup has a “v” upside-down caret and is the one item selected for this view as indicated by the purple color.

Alright, let’s solve for multi-hierarchical groups. We’ll use a fund structure to explain. Note that we have a top level fund, the “All Properties Fund” in a view, of which the “All Commercial Fund” is a child entity. “Add Portfolio” changed to “Edit Portfolio” as well. We chose for the edit functionality to display only when one top-level group is selected, i.e. the “All Properties Fund” is what the user would edit if they clicked “Edit Portfolio”.

Let’s go a level deeper. I selected the “All Properties Fund”, expanded its components, and then clicked the “v” to see the children of “All Commercial Fund”.

Then, I selected one of the children of  “All Commercial Fund”. Note that the top-most grouping is in a default selection state, while the other sublevel groupings (in this case, “All Commercial Fund”) are transparent. The “>” and “>>” indicate which level of the hierarchy each groups represent.

Let’s keep going! 4-levels deep now. Here’s what the hierarchy selection process looks like.

And here’s what it looks like after selection. Note how the right carets increase from “>” to “>>” to “>>>” etc. for each new level.

Finally, one last check. Does this solve our requirements?

  • User can clearly see which properties are part of which group -> Yes.
  • User can view many properties and groups at the same time -> Yes.
  • User can save or edit a view of properties or groups as a group -> Yes, although I recognize that having a child selected may cause the user to think that the “Edit Portfolio” button would edit that subgroup. Fortunately, we never had any negative feedback about this feature.
  • User can quickly distinguish among many selected groups or properties -> Yes, the bright purple colors make it much clearer. We also added shading behind each button to make it more obvious that they’re clickable elements.
  • User can easily see how properties fit in the hierarchy of a group or levels of groups -> Yes.
  • If user selects a subgroup or property within a group or subgroup while viewing more than one top-level group, the user can see which hierarchy above the property or group selected that it relates to -> Yes.

Conclusion: the final design of groupings of multi-hierarchical relationships

We finally solved the design of groupings of multi-hierarchical relationships. Woohoo! But before I let you go, let me briefly touch on some technical requirements.

  • When a user selected the + icon to add a property or group to the view, or selected “Edit Portfolio”, they would see a pop up with a list of properties or groups. We opted to filter out any properties that were already selected. This meant that if a property was part of multiple groups, the groups for which that property was in would be hidden from the selection view.
  • Our head of engineering is incredible and helped out with our design tremendously. Their expertise was mainly on the front-end, so to help explain how the back-end of this would work, I referred them to watch this video by the incredible Dr. Soper. In this video, Dr. Soper explains how recursive relationships work. Recursive relationships represent the groupings of groupings that we displayed above. 

Now you know how to design groupings of multi-hierarchical relationships. You can apply this knowledge to any product or industry that has similar requirements to the ones discussed above. If you run into any issues, send me a note. Good luck!

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Data Analytics

Show Most Recent Data When User Selects A Date Range in Power BI

If you build Power BI dashboards for real estate firms, then you have likely visualized data over time. And quite often, you will display tabular data below line charts or similar time series visuals. You may choose to have the data table represent totals or averages for the time period selected. However, it often doesn’t make sense to sum or average the data. In these scenarios, you can add a date column to the table and show each row of dated data. This results in a cluttered data table that may confuse your users. A better option is to show the most recent data when the user selects a date range in Power BI. Here’s how. 

Let's Review the Problem: Multiple Rows for Each Date in a Date Range

Let’s walk through an example of the problem. In our scenario, the user wants to see collections trends in line charts along the top of your report. Examples include the collections rate, total receivables, number of delinquencies, among others. The user also wants to see collections, receivables, and delinquencies in a table. Let’s go to Power BI Desktop to see an example.

In this scenario, the number of units, delinquencies, and receivables sum for the time period selected. The collections rate and % of monthly charges are essentially averages. Two main issues to highlight:

  1. Summing the number of units is blatantly wrong. The number of units at a single property is generally static.
  2. Summing receivables data also does not make sense. Receivables are an asset on your balance sheet, which means that they should only be represented for a point in time.

While users may want to see the sums of delinquencies or average collections rates, you will be better off displaying a single date of data for the entire row. 

Solution: Show Most Recent Data When User Selects a Date Range in Power BI

How can you fix the issues above? Simply create a new measure for each column using the LASTNONBLANKVALUE function. Here’s how that function works when you want to calculate the number of units for the latest date selected:

				
					LatestNumberOfUnits = LASTNONBLANKVALUE(DimDate[ActualDate],[NumberOfUnits])

According to Microsoft’s explanation, LASTNONBLANKVALUE calculates the last non-blank value of an <expression> corresponding to the sorted values of a <column>.

				
					LASTNONBLANKVALUE(<column>, <expression>)

And that’s exactly what we’re doing in the above code for the LatestNumberOfUnits. We told Power BI DAX to look through the DimDate[ActualDate] column, which is the primary date column in our data table. Then, tell us the [NumberOfUnits] for the latest date where [NumberOfUnits] was not blank. 

Requirements and Notes

Now, one hiccup you could envision is that DAX pulls the last non-blank value with varying dates for each measure. If you don’t have consistent data storage processes, then you will have inconsistent latest dates of data.  

Also, you may read other content that suggests you calculate the maximum date for the date range selected. This does not work if you have non-sequential data. Most real estate firms store data on a weekly or monthly basis, rarely daily. As such, the LASTNONBLANKVALUE function will be your best bet. You will also need to use a date table in your data model for this formula to work appropriately.

Conclusion

That’s it! Now you know how to show most recent data when the user selects a date range in Power BI. 

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Startup Story

My Hopes for the Recently Laid Off

I remember the first phone call that I got from a friend who was laid off last year.

“It didn’t make sense,” he said. The late-stage startup hired him less than two months before, and yet they didn’t have enough cash to justify keeping him or dozens of the other recent hires.

He was confused, hurt, and most of all scared.

Many of us seek jobs for the stability they provide, and when that’s ripped out from under us, we’re in fight or flight mode. Do you run away for a while? Take a break from reality? Or immediately start calling up everyone you know for a job?

I’ve been there – stuck in a situation that you didn’t want to be in with no idea what to do next.

It’s hard.

You may feel like crying, screaming, or just withdrawing for a while.

That’s okay. It’s okay to be emotional about work.

We spend much of our lives working and often wrap our identity around what we do. Having that taken from you without warning is like taking a bottle away from a baby for the first time. You’ve always known where your source of income (and for many of us, worth) is coming from. And now you don’t.

Layoffs Hit Close to Home

When I quit my stable job, I had a startup idea and venture funding promised by an investor. It didn’t feel risky; it felt like the next logical, safe move in my career.

Then, shortly after we started working together, the investor made a move on me. Not like a jab in a basketball game or even a dance move at a party; he expressed sexual interest in me.

I had to get out.

So I left the company… technically by choice but more because of the circumstance. And then I had nowhere to go. No idea what to do next. For a few days immediately after leaving, I felt like a vegetable in my own skin, barely surviving.

Then, reality set in.

Never in my working life had I gone without a paycheck. I needed to make money.

I didn’t want to go work for someone else. Believe me, if you’ve experienced the kind of behavior that I did, you need space to recover, and your confidence does too.

So I started exploring other ways beyond the traditional, career-oriented methods to make money.

How to Hustle a Side Hustle

The year before, I helped a friend edit her book on how to set up your house as an AirBnB. That sounded interesting and fun, I thought. Why not give it a shot? I love hosting friends; what better way to show your hospitality and make new friends than invite them to stay in your home?!

I had a blast coming up with the welcome letter and description too.

^my AirBnB welcome letter

Next, I started reorganizing my home. Weeks in, I finally made it to the furthest back closet – you know, the one we all have where we store all our junk that we hope no one finds.

That’s when I found a couple of old boxes of Pokémon cards. I seemed to remember my Dad trading them on eBay when we were kids, and with his permission, I listed a couple of them on eBay.

One of those cards made me (and my Dad) more money than I made in a full weekend of AirBnB!

I had always wanted to learn about OCR and saw this as the perfect opportunity. Painstakingly, I took pictures of each card and sorted them into bins. Then, I uploaded those photos onto my computer. With a few lines of python code, I was able to quickly read the description of each card and organize it into a Google Sheet for my Dad and me to share. He and I spent hours combing over cards, deciding what to buy or sell.

We continue to trade Pokémon cards to this day. Unfortunately, with my startup, I don’t often have as much time as I’d like to spend with him on this. I will always value and treasure our early Pokémon card trading days.

With the combination of AirBnB, Pokémon, and a handful of side-of-the-desk-consulting jobs, I supported myself. I certainly wasn’t making the kind of money I did before, but I slowed the bleeding.

Not only that, I discovered new, interesting hobbies that I can continue for the rest of my life while also becoming closer with friends and family. 

Make the Most of a Bad Situation

For all of you going through a layoff right now, there is hope. I hope that you will use this time to explore your passions.

Did you really love your job? If so, by all means, go after another version of it somewhere else.

If not, is there another way that you can make money doing more of what you love? Let yourself explore your interests outside of the traditional career mold. You may surprise yourself – use this gift of time to become closer with a loved one. Or perhaps begin to carve out a new career path.

I recently listened to a podcast by Mel Robbins where she interviewed Jamie Kern Lima. Jamie described the difficulties she encountered while starting her business. Many investors told her – straight up – that women wouldn’t buy makeup from someone who looked like her. She took beating after beating from people who said she was crazy, not smart enough, and not good enough. She worked odd jobs to support herself, never letting their words convince her to give up. Instead, she framed her experience as this:

“The seasons in life that are setbacks are actually setups for what we’re called to do.”

Jamie Kern Lima Tweet

I hope that you will use this time to set yourself up for what’s next. I’m convinced that incredible careers, companies, and life experiences will be born out of this difficult season. I can’t wait to see what you do.

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Startup Story

Indifference to Rejection

Getting used to bad stuff happening to you

Vimal Vachhani writes an amazing weekly newsletter. Drop what you’re doing and subscribe to it here.

NOW.

I said NOW.

Great! Thanks for subscribing… and coming back.😊

Vimal confessed to me that he was nervous about putting himself out there with his newsletter. It was strange, he said, because he’d been writing blog posts for well over a decade, co-authored several books, and taught classes. Somehow though, the idea of committing to a weekly newsletter with his name on it was scary.

Naturally, I asked him why.

“Because I’m putting my name on it. This is me,” he said.

Ah, I get it.

It is absolutely terrifying to put yourself out there on your own. To be creative and risk someone sh**ting all over your hard work because they didn’t like it (or even worse, if it wasn’t good).

My experience with rejection

Sam Zell once said, “Indifference to rejection is a fundamental part of being an entrepreneur.”

In other words, part of being a successful entrepreneur is getting used to people not liking your work.

To be fair, indifference to rejection is hard.

One time, when I lived the Power Point life, I spent all weekend crafting new strategy slides. I’d never done this type of work before, and I was excited to breathe life into my ideas.

Finally, Monday morning came, and I was ready to present my work.

I remember anxiously sitting in the conference room. My deck was on the projector, my heart was racing, and I felt like I had some strange pounding in my ears that I couldn’t identify. 10 minutes late, my boss finally shows up.

He walks in and says, “What do you got?”

I proceeded to walk him through my carefully and thoughtfully prepared deck.

Before I even made it to the third slide, he said, “This is total shit.”

I’ll never forget the way my heart felt like it dropped out of my chest and slammed into the floor like the anvil in Looney Tunes.

Except it wasn’t funny. No one was laughing.

My face was most certainly red, and I fought back tears best that I could.

My boss walked out of the room, mumbling about how he shouldn’t have wasted time on me.

Now, it’s easy to focus on the tragic part of this story: how rude and inconsiderate my boss was. About 15 minutes later (after a good cry on a toilet in the women’s bathroom), I took a hard look at my deck. I started googling comparable decks, something that I admittedly should have done that weekend before presenting my pitch.

While my deck wasn’t “total shit,” it certainly could use improvement. The design wasn’t clear, and my language could have been more concise and direct.

In fact, the older and more experienced I’ve become, the more I value criticism.

Achieving indifference to rejection

Sure, the initial shock of a critique *may* still hurt my ego. But over time, it hurts less and less. Instead, I focus on the WHY, the WHAT, and my VALUES.

  • Why did that individual dislike my work?

  • What could I have done differently to avoid that criticism?

  • Do I value their viewpoint, i.e. do I believe that their views are consistent with the views of my target audience?

Truth be told, most people don’t critique. Check out The Mom Test if you don’t believe me. Rob Fitzpatrick shares that when entrepreneurs ask their friends, colleagues, and strangers about an idea or their product, they likely won’t receive honest answers.

From childhood, we are trained to be nice. Being nice sometimes – or often, for some of us – means keeping our opinions to ourselves.

That’s why these days, I value criticism more than compliments. When I meet someone who gives me their honest, unabashed opinion that disagrees with mine in a valuable way, I latch onto them immediately.

Indifference to rejection is a skill that anyone can learn. It simply takes practice and repetition.

Put yourself out there over and over again.

The only way through is through

Vimal and I put ourselves on the line everyday by being entrepreneurs. Even more so, we put ourselves out there by becoming thought leaders. It’s terrifying for me, and as he confessed, he’s scared to.

However, like the childhood story about going on a bear hunt, the only way through is through.

As long as you practice self-improvement and self-care, you will gain more than you could ever dream of by sharing your creativity with the world.

And maybe someday, we will all be indifferent to rejection.

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Startup Story

Run Fast, Turn Left | Tips on Execution

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On how execution is what really matters in startupland

We have a saying in track and field, “Run fast, turn left.”

I remember one of my middle school friends making fun of the assistant coach after they said it for the first time.

“So stupid,” he said as he jabbed an elbow into the boy’s arm next to him, trying to sound cool. “What idiot turns right?”

Like many of us in middle school, this boy missed the point in his quest for social acceptance.

If only he’d been truly listening, he would have understood that the meaning behind “Run fast, turn left.” is quite powerful. You could be Usain Bolt – the fastest person in the world – but if you don’t follow the process, you will be disqualified.

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You can have the best idea in the world and an all-star team, but if you can’t execute, nothing else matters.

Someone once told me that I was the “queen of execution” but that I didn’t have what it takes to start a business. Let me tell you: execution is EXACTLY the skill you need to start a business.

From the queen herself, here are a few tips on execution.

See the goal.

If what you’re doing doesn’t get you closer to your goal, then you need to reprioritize quickly. My basketball coach used to say “see the goal” while we did courtside pushups as a way to keep our necks engaged.

I now envision that round hole, glass backboard, mesh net and bright red square every time I do a pushup. Let me give you a work example too.

We initially funded CREx with consulting dollars (I’m a no bullshit person and don’t call this R&D or whatever you’re supposed to do when talking to investors). One of our early consulting opportunities was with a guy that had us redo the deck 8 times, pitch to him twice, and yet, he STILL hadn’t introduced our offering to the executive team. Not to mention that he nickled and dimed us on every little piece of the consulting proposal.

Rather than continuing down this godforsaken (and low margin, if any) rabbit hole, we bowed out.

It was scary to do that because that kind of consulting project paid our bills. Ultimately though, that deal would have cost us more than it benefited us; we would have been in the red on time spent.

We opted instead to see the goal – supporting ourselves with projects that would allow us time to build our SaaS product.

Break big ideas into smaller, tactical pieces.

If you’re an entrepreneur, chances are you have lofty visions. However, you need to be realistic about the time it takes to accomplish pieces of that vision. Focus on what matters most, and then…

Cut, cut, and cut some more.

Get your team together and ask each other over and over again, “Is this feature really necessary?” “Will it impact the user experience significantly if we wait to include it in the next iteration?” 

Cut as much as you can so that you can get the product/feature in your users hands and have real user feedback ASAP.

This is something that Darren Allen, or Daz, does exceptionally well for us at CREx. By focusing on the simplest version of the feature possible, we move quickly while still solving our customers’ problems.

Celebrate the wins.

Starting a company is tough.

Building a product is even tougher.

You will probably get it wrong the first few times, and that’s okay. When you do get it right, go all out and celebrate. Let your team know that you appreciate them and respect their hard work.

In summary, you can be the best at what you do and still not succeed simply because you can’t execute. Focus on execution.

And remember: Run fast, turn left.

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Startup Story

You Can Do More Than You Think: Practice

Historic Cullen Building at Southwestern University

The importance of practice | Don’t be afraid to try something new

My high school basketball team worked harder than any other team I’ve ever had.

We practiced year-round. In season, we practiced 6 days a week, even when we had games. Our strengths were our endurance, team comradery, and muscle memory. Truth be told, we ran more during our basketball practices than I ran in my track or cross country practices! And we did the same drills, over and over: quick feet, jab steps, punch passing, etc.

Not only did we work our butts off in the gym, we also set goals for each game. Think of it as the basketball version of OKRs (and this was well before OKRs gained popularity). We had targets for shooting percentages by 2 pointers and 3 pointers, turnovers, assists, offensive and defensive rebounds, and more.

If we exceeded our targets, our reward was that we almost always won the game. Our coach would also reduce the amount of running over the next week. If we failed our targets, not only did we typically lose, we also had to do sit-ups for each basis point that we missed our goal.

In one (rare) scenario where we lost and played particularly badly, we had to do 532 sit-ups. 5-3-2. These days, I’m happy to do 30 sit-ups, much less over 500! But we did every single one of them. As a team.

We knew that based on how we practiced and played, we can and should have done better. We held ourselves accountable. And you know what? We won the state championship later that year. We were the first women’s team from Martin’s Mill to win state ever, and the first for all genders since 1949.

I’m not the tallest or the fastest. I don’t have the best hand-eye coordination. But what basketball taught me was that if I did enough reps of anything, then I could get good enough to be better than average.

That’s how I learned the importance of practice.

It’s also how I learned to not be afraid to try something that I’m not naturally gifted at right off the bat.

Face Your Fears

Let me give you an example.

I was wrapping up my first year of college and needed to find a summer job. My closest friend found an on-campus events coordinator job, and I thought it would be fun to stay on campus that summer with her. The only other role available was a summer internship at the admissions office. The admissions intern mainly gave tours of the campus to prospective students 2-3 times a day.

Many of you who know me now may not believe this, but I was painfully shy at 19 years old. As one example, I was afraid to talk to strangers on the phone. I used to call my mom and beg her to make a call on my behalf.

I would literally panic on the phone with a stranger, palms sweating and heart racing. Just the idea of speaking to someone I didn’t know terrified me. Fortunately, my mom recognized the impending panic in my voice and agreed to make calls for me. That said, I was NOT ready to give tours to 50+ students a day.

Then, I remembered my basketball training. Giving tours can’t be that different than flexing and strengthening a muscle, right? So I applied for the job. To make sure I landed the position, I asked one of my professors to give me a recommendation. (This is how I first learned about the importance of referrals and reputation; more on this later.) Turns out, he was friends with the admissions hiring manager! Bingo. I landed the job… for which I had absolutely no skills.

Walk the Talk

I approached my tours how I approached every basketball game. I practiced, and I practiced, and I practiced. My parents ingratiated me with listening to every iteration. Many of my friends did too. Days before the internship started, I talked myself hoarse. Then, I started practicing in front of a mirror with memorized words and hand gestures.

I’ll never forget that first tour. My backwards-walking skills needed improvement, to say the least. I still laugh to myself thinking about the faces of prospective students and parents who tried to warn me before I banged the back of my head on a car window while crossing the parking lot backwards!

I had to use notecards because I nervously forgot my lines a few times. Still, I made it through. The second tour went smoother, as did the third and fourth.

After a couple of weeks of actively giving tours, I had it down. So much so that I started making up jokes. The parents loved it. I also told stories about our historic buildings.

For example, the Cullen Building staircase has unusually short steps. I would normally take them two at a time to classes. For purposes of the tour, however, I would slowly, painstakingly walk up each step, explaining to the group of prospective students and parents that when Southwestern opened for women, the female students weren’t allowed to show their ankles. They had to take tiny steps to avoid impropriety. 👀

“Can you imagine what those professors would have thought of me in this tank top!?” I’d joke, eyes open wide in mock horror. (It was over 100 degrees most days that summer!)

Historic Cullen Building at Southwestern University

All that to say, we had a stronger application pool that year than ever before… in no small part due to my tour and also, our amazing admission staff.

Practice, Practice, Practice

I share all of this to tell you – don’t be afraid to try something new that you don’t feel equipped for.

Want to learn to code? Practice every day for a month and see how amazing you become.

Want to learn a new language? There is no substitute for practicing daily with a friend.

Afraid of public speaking? Practice in front of a mirror and then groups of friends and family.

You may just find that you love learning new things. And what a gift that would be! 

You can do more than you think you can.

Practice, practice, practice.

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Data Analytics real estate Startup Story

Build vs. Buy in Proptech Reporting

Reporting got you feeling overwhelmed? I’ve been there. Should you buy a software package and try to make your reporting fit in that box? Or go with a vendor that can customize for you? Or should you choose the most flexible (albeit expensive and time-consuming) solution and build it yourself?! Let’s weigh the build vs. buy proptech for enhancing your reporting game.

First... Do You *Really* Need Something Else?

On second thought, is your current system working for your size firm? If you’re a small team of 10 or less employees, stick with the out-of-the-box property management software reports. These bad boys are powerful enough to get the job done for daily operations and accounting. Plus, you’ll have the latest data at your fingertips without any extra effort.

When to Build

Next, when should you build? Simple answer is when your reporting needs aren’t met by your existing software package’s pre-made reports. If you have a team who can code in SQL, then you’ll be off to the races. For example, you can leverage Yardi’s custom SQL function for those specific requests like owner reports or a weekly executive dashboard. Keep in mind, you or your team will not only need strong SQL skills, you’ll also need to know the software application’s data structure. 

Or, if you have someone on your team who knows Power BI, DOMO, or similar, you can pull in your data into one of those tools. Again, you’ll need to know the software application’s data structure. 

When to Buy

Lastly, when should you buy? Easy answer is when it’s more cost effective to do so. For reporting specifically, you may decide that you need a ton of custom reports and that having a consultant build all of them is more expensive than someone in-house using Power BI. Or you decided that you want better visuals and trend tracking. 

Don’t break the bank if you don’t need to! Use an existing SaaS product either for your data integration, visualization, or both. These platforms offer easy integration with various property types and can meet most analytics needs in just a few weeks. Plus, they’re way cheaper than building reports in-house. 

Conclusion

In the end, knowing whether to build vs. buy for your proptech reporting is all about your needs and budget. Got more questions? Reach out to me for guidance.

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Data Analytics real estate Startup Story

How to Create a Proptech Strategy

Congrats on your new gig leading tech for a real estate firm! Ready to make some magic happen? Here are 6 steps to help you create a killer proptech strategy.

Step 1: Get Your Execs on Board

Leaders set the tone, so it’s crucial to have at least one C-level exec championing your proptech plans. The pandemic showed that businesses need to adapt and embrace new ways of doing things, so this should be an easy sell. Plus, you can highlight that tech-savvy employees are more productive (and presumably happier since they automated boring tasks!).

Step 2: Create a Proptech Strategy Team

Assemble a small, enthusiastic team to drive your proptech initiatives. Ideally, team members’ roles should benefit the most from technology and automation. Don’t let the group get too big – if it takes more than two pizzas to feed everyone, you’re doing it wrong!

Step 3: Identify Your Needs

Figure out what you want to accomplish with technology. Start with small groups to identify areas for improvement, rank the pain points in order of priority, and estimate timelines. Keep in mind that not all problems require tech solutions.

Step 4: Determine Your Budget

Once you know what you need, you should create a budget. It helps to identify opportunities and cost savings and to make your case for executive buy-in.

Step 5: Find Potential Solutions

There are tons of proptech vendors out there, so do your research. Start by working with proptech venture capital groups, but also reach out to peer firms to learn about their experiences. Collaboration benefits everyone.

Step 6: Track Your Progress

Measure your success to see if you achieved your goals. Identify the ideal outcomes for each proptech solution, track progress, and hold your team accountable. Don’t forget to assign team members to key projects to boost engagement.

Conclusion

And that’s it! Follow these 6 steps and you’ll be on your way to create an awesome proptech strategy. Don’t forget to check out our other blog posts for more tips!

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Startup Story

How to Land Your First Customer

Maybe some people are inherently gifted with the ability to sell anything. For my cofounder and me, sales was a learned skill. Truth be told, we’re still learning, and I expect that we will be learning and improving for the rest of our careers. We completely lucked into our first customer; my cofounder had been writing blogs about getting data out of Yardi for years, and a prospective customer came to him about providing data integration as a service (heck of a market demand, amiright?!). Landing our second customer was much harder. I’m sharing our experience in the hope that it will help you land your first customer.

There are a few key strategies that worked for us. First, we needed a fully-fledged product to sell. We also needed a good website (the modern-day storefront). Then, we had to sort out a good pricing strategy. Finally, we needed to find people who wanted to buy from us. I’ll walk through each of these steps for you.

Create a Product that People Want to Buy

This should go without saying: you need a product to sell that is 1) serving a real need and 2) at a price point that make customers willing to part with their hard-earned money. I am NOT in the camp of selling a product that you don’t have. In my opinion, this results in stress and confusion for your engineering teams that ultimately leads to poor performance, bad engagement, and ultimately high performers leaving your company.

We will often sell folks on new features or services that we’re currently building. However, unlike many salespeople (because again, we aren’t salespeople by trade), we’re incredibly transparent about our product stage. Plus, if you’re a startup, you need to be up front that you are early stage and looking for a partner to grow with you. Having a good reputation early is critical to your success, and transparency is key to trust. I guarantee that we lost prospects because of our transparency. However, we would have had a lot of churn if we were dishonest. And we don’t roll that way anyway.

Short story is that you need both supply and demand for your company’s product.

Design a Good Website

I absolutely love the book, “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. If you’re designing your company website, buy this book. Now. And no, I don’t know the author and am not getting any kickbacks (currently…).

Websites are the modern-day storefronts. Instead of walking down the street to find a product, prospective customers google their questions or needs. If your website ranks high in their results and has an interesting sitemap, then they might just “walk in” and click your company’s link.

Copy outranks site design all day, any day. If your website doesn’t explain what you do well in the first three seconds, then you lost that prospective customer. They’ll go back to their jaunty walk down the proverbial street looking at all the fun, shiny objects.

At CREx, we were fortunate in that we had the skillsets to build websites with good copy in-house. If you don’t have that, then by all means, spend what you can to get good copy and a not-bad looking site.

Define Your Pricing

We screwed up on pricing several times before we got it right. To all of our prospective customers who were our guinea pigs, thank you for your patience. We now know what we are talking about and would love to hit the reset button.

In the real estate tech market, software companies price using all sorts of creative methods. Some of the most common include pricing per square foot, assets under management, per user, per property, and many, many more. We tried each of those methods, and each time, we had difficulty communicating to our customers “why”. Why didn’t we price by some other method? Would it be more expensive for them over time? (Or, often, pricing that way was too expensive today). Ultimately, we chose to price in a way that felt authentic to us. 

We figured that if the pricing model was easy for us to understand, then it would be easy for our customers. And you know what? I think we were right. At least, we grew 894% year over year! That ought to count for something.

Moral of the story is to not be shy about trying different pricing models early on. Troubleshoot until you figure out what makes the most sense to you and to your customers.

Find Customers

CREx has never paid for advertising. While we did get our early consulting customers through relationships, our initial SaaS customers came to us. I attribute 1,000% of our success to my cofounder’s content marketing strategy.

Vimal Vachhani wrote quality blog posts on topics that our prospective customers would google. Our website then ranks highly in search results (based on good SEO practices). Once a prospect goes to our website and reads the post, they will be prompted to download a free whitepaper for more information. Any new prospect’s email is automatically added to the CREx subscription list.

This resulted in CREx achieved nearly 1,000 email subscribers over the last year and a half. We now have several free whitepapers available on our CRExchange and CREx Software blogs. We also amped up our LinkedIn presence and created a community for real estate tech users on Slack called CREx Connect. Reach out if you’d like to join.

Sure, it’s more effort to create content regularly that’s good and interesting. It’s also more authentic, and that authenticity will win you more loyal customers. It’s loads better than throwing money like spaghetti at the paid ads wall and hoping something sticks.

Conclusion

It’s not easy to ask strangers and friends to give you money. Yet it’s much easier if you have a good product solving a real problem, a legitimate website, and a solid pricing strategy. Use content marketing to your advantage. If you follow these four recommendations, I guarantee that it will help you land your first customer.

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MY COMMITMENT | Never sell or share your data | Provide useful and impactful stories