Recap: How I prepared to work on Mane Hook-Up full time
What to consider before you start working for yourself
Welcome to the first installment of 240 Days to Raise! Today is a bonus post (lucky you) as I’ve written a recap of everything that happened in September. Given quite a few people have asked how I transitioned from my day job to working on Mane Hook-Up full time, I thought it would be worth shedding light on this now. Enjoy!
🎯 Objective
Prep for the transition to full-time Founder
Early September marked a month until I’d be a full-time Founder. This meant juggling my job as Head of Marketing at a tech start-up with prepping for the shift to building my own business.
Before diving head first into ‘doing’, I made a list of my biggest questions about the transition to working for myself:
How should I manage my time and focus?
Where should I work and for for how long each day?
How do I juggle the big picture work with the time-consuming (but necessary) building blocks?
What are the big blockers/tasks that will slow me down if I don’t do them asap?
The to-do list
These questions helped me to create my September to-do list:
Find a system that keeps me organised and focussed (tackles problem 1)
Find a local co-working space that doesn’t cost the earth (tackles problem 1 & 2)
Find an intern/volunteer who can offer regular support (tackles problem 3)
Pinpoint the 2x biggest challenges I need to tackle asap (tackles problem 4)
Now, remember I was doing this while working 32 hours a week at my day job, which meant I had roughly 4-5 hours a day (or 80 hours for the entire month) to spare on getting myself set-up. I wasn’t really expecting to get everything done, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised…
🔋 Progress recap & highlights
Biggest wins
WIN 1️⃣: Figured out my 2x biggest challenges for the next 3-4 months ✅
To close a funding round in 240 days, I need to understand what makes investors feel comfortable with going all in. And let’s be honest, the world financial market has been on fire for the past 12-18 months, so gone are the days of just selling a start-up solely on the story and the vision.
The best way to get this kind of insight is to either speak to investors or Founders who have successfully raised in the past few years, so that’s what I did. Five phone calls and a few hours later, I had a few nuggets of gold to help me identify what my biggest challenges are right now.
What do investors need to see?
A great idea: you have to be creating a product that clearly solves a problem for people who care to pay for it. Your idea doesn’t have to be unique, and you don’t have to be the first, but there needs to be a clear problem that people can engage with and understand. A lot of Founders make the mistake of flippantly saying ‘we’re the first!’ in an attempt to validate the idea, which isn’t really necessary (and from the convo’s I had, it sounds like that drives investors nuts — one to avoid 😅).
Great team: for early stage companies, investors are making a bet on the best jockey in the race (the people). They need to feel confident that the people behind the product are the ones most likely to win in a competitive market.
Big market opportunity: whether you’re looking at how many people there are to serve (TAM) or, how much customers are prepared to spend on solving this problem, it needs to be big enough for investors to see that they can get a reasonable return.
Great traction: finally, you need to demonstrate that there are people who are interested using your product. Whether this is a waitlist, letters of intent, MVP users or referrals, there needs to be a sizeable group of people who are interested in your product and are ready to pay for it.
How Mane Hook-Up stacks up…
With those 4x big questions in mind, I decided to
A great idea ✅: when there are Black actresses, musicians and entertainers struggling to find hair stylists to bring on TV sets and photo shoots, we know there’s a problem. Besides the global publicity, I surveyed 100 Black women, only to find that they rated their current booking experience a 2.7/10 (ouch). Combine this with the fact that afro and curly hair stylists don’t have time to properly market themselves, and there’s no surprise things are messy. Giving me a problem that people will definitely pay to be solved.
A great team ✅: 🥁*drum roll*🥁… we have 3x advisors (all with experience in the afro/curly hair market), a tech agency that have built for major start-ups and a marketing agency all ready to go.
Big market opportunity ✅: the global hairdressing market is huge (around $50-60bn) and Black women are some of the biggest spenders.
Great traction 🤔: after spending my time on the UK market, I’ve now started to target stylists in the States. With the majority of my sign-ups coming from Europe, I now need to prove that I can serve customers in the US of A. Bingo, we have the first challenge.
The second challenge is a bit more obvious… I just need to speak to as many investors as possible. The more exposure I get, the move conversations I have, the easier it’ll be to find investors who are genuinely interested in our product and market.
I did some back of the napkin math to figure out roughly how many investors I need to speak to…
Now this is very rough, but it’s a start and can be a guide for how I work. While volume is key, that doesn’t mean that I should compromise the quality of that interaction. I plan to keep track of key info and interactions in a spreadsheet (I’ll let you know how that goes) to stay on top of out reach.
So there you have it, my challenges for the next 3x months are:
Building traction with a US audience
Booking in 100 investor intro calls
There are a bunch of other things I managed to get done that are also worth mentioning:
Building our ‘Invest in us’ website on WordPress (about 6 hours of work)
Making the final touches to our pitch deck and financial model (months of iterating, but we got there)
Re-engage with investors that I’d spoken to in the past (2-3 hours of work)
Make the decision to build out loud and start prepping to launch this newsletter (30 mins of brainstorming before bed followed by 1 hour of talking my husbands ear off in the morning)
TIP FOR SOLVING INVESTOR CHALLENGES: You may find there are 2-3 things on that list you should be working on but just focus on 1-2 at a time. Rome wasn't built in a day and your start-up won't be either. Biting off more than you can chew will only slow you down, so try to prioritise the most pressing challenges first. WIN 2️⃣: Found the worlds best planner (no joke) and saved 5+ hours a week ✅
I’m often guilty of focussing on the thing that I’m most interested in vs. what’s really helping me to move the needle on an objective. So I needed help with:
a) prioritising my major and minor tasks and,
b) being laser focussed with my time management
I very vaguely remember reading that people find it easier to retain information they’ve written down, so I spent some time looking into diaries, journals and planners to keep me on track. After some digging, I found this incredible hidden gem: the Intelligent Change Quarterly Productivity Planner
This glorious planner helped me to identify my five major objectives for the next three months, set weekly priorities and daily task lists that gradually build up to the outcome I’m looking for.
Had I not started using this planner, I’m 99% certain I wouldn’t have been able to get everything on the list done in all of 70-80 hours. As it single-handedly saved me 10+ hours of time a week, it has rightfully earned a place in this months toolbox (more details below).
TIP FOR STAYING FOCUSSED: Fun fact for anyone that loves a video game. Gaming music was designed to help people stay focussed as they play. The same principal can be applied as you work. Next time you need to power through some work, find your favourite music from an old video game (mine is Final Fantasy VII and VIII) and listen to it as you work. You'll be surprised how much it helps you stay in the zone! (P.S. I've dropped my fave gaming playlists below, thank me later). WIN 3️⃣: Found a local co-working space to separate work from home ✅
While I loved the benefits of working from home (e.g. a 2 minute commute to my desk, snacking at every hour of the day, catching the Amazon delivery person before they vanish into thin air), there’s a real risk of working all hours God sends when you’re in from your living room. So, I made the decision to look for a co-working space that allowed me to:
a) create a healthy degree of separation between work and home
b) have a start and end time to my working day (e.g. 8am to 6pm)
c) consider how spending this money would have an impact on the rest of my budget
After a week of searching, I found this beautiful spot 🤩
The space is open between 9-6pm, giving me ample time to get my work done and (two days in) I can say this is well worth the investment as I already feel like home is home (not an extension of my office). Win, win, win.
TIP FOR FIGURING OUT THE COSTS: I'd say between £150-£250 is reasonable for a monthly pass to a co-working space. If you have a budget, figure out exactly how much you're willing to spend before you visit any spaces (and accidentally fall in love with one that's beyond your budget). I worked out that I was willing to spend as much on a co-working space as I spent on travelling into my old office every month. Another win. WIN 4️⃣: Found an intern in 2x weeks ✅
With 240 days to get this done, I can hand on heart say that time is money.
My energy should be spent on anything that will move the needle on the raise and that meant hiring a second pair of hands — an intern.
And as much as I love recruiting, I didn’t have the luxury of months to find the right person, which meant speeding up the recruitment process without compromising the quality of people that I spoke to (challenge accepted).
Fortunately, it took me 2x weeks to power through the entire recruitment process and that largely came down to having rating systems when reviewing CVs and recapping interviews notes.
I had 5x criteria for rating CVs, each criteria was scored from 1-3, making 15 the highest possible score. The people with the highest scores ended up being invited to the 6x interview spots I had time for that week.
And, everyone that made it to the interviews went through a very similar process. The rating systems and notes made easy for me narrow down who I wanted to talk to and eventually, who to offer the role to. Word to the wise, 1x interview is enough for an internship. It’s a sense check to make sure they are motivated and keen to learn. If I can find someone incredible in 2x weeks, you can too.
TIP FOR INTERVIEWING WHEN YOU'RE TIME POOR: Figure out exactly how much time you have to speak to people. I had a max of 3x hours (6x 30 minute interviews) and didn't speak to any more people after that. You need to protect your time and that means saying no more often. Biggest L’s 🤕
LOSS 😩: I got no where near enough sleep, which seriously slowed me down
Fortunately, there was just one loss last month, but it did some serious damage.
On average, I got about 4-5 hours of sleep a night and doing that for 3-4 weeks straight left my body feeling like a train wreck. By the end of week two, I was in dozing off in front of my laptop like this…
It doesn’t sound like the end of the world, but remember about every email I send, calls I have and interaction adds up. If I come across like a butter knife, then what are chances that someone will actually buy what I’m selling? Not getting enough rest is a risk I don’t really have time to take, so my priority next week month is consistently getting 7 hours in each night.
💡 Lessons learned
Quote of the month:
Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction — Harry S. Truman
Lesson 1: There is never a perfect time to get started so just start
As someone that can be a bit of a perfectionist, I often look for the ideal opportunity to get sh*t done. Last month, I considered waiting until my first week of working as a full-time Founder to start tackling my to-do list. Because why not wait until I have all the time and headspace?
But what I soon realised is tackling all of this prep work ahead of time actually created more space for the important stuff — working on the round. There’s rarely an ideal time to do anything, so you’re much better off doing what you can with the time that you have.
Lesson 2: Rest is precious, make time for it
Never again, will I try to live off of 5 hours sleep a night — it doesn’t work. Nothing more to add here 😅
Lesson 3: Sometimes you have to be brutal to protect your time, and that’s OK
I had over 100+ applications come through for the Marketing & Opps intern and, of them, 30 were a great fit on paper. A shame that I only had time to speak to 6 of them. Not only did I have to be brutal with selection, I then had to be pretty strict with my follow up too…
No reply to my email about booking a call? I didn’t follow up.
No show for a call? I didn’t follow up.
Running late for a call? I still had a hard stop.
It’s in my nature to give people a chance (because who are we kidding, life happens), but this was the first time that I have ever had to protect my time at all costs. And that meant making it as easy as possible for to say no and move onto the next.
🧰 Founder’s toolbox
Anyone who knows me, knows that I love finding tools, apps and systems to add to my arsenal. Each week, I’ll share 1-3 tools that I’ve added (or removed) from my toolkit and hopefully they’ll serve you well too. Here’s a list of the best tools that I found last month…
Intelligent Change Quarterly Productivity Planner
What’s it for: This quarterly planner will help you to create a vision for how you’d like the next 3-months to go, and craft monthly, weekly and daily action plans to get there.
How it helped: Amazing for anyone that needs to keep themselves accountable and is struggling to create an action plan for any substantial goals. It helped me to use my final 3x weeks at my old job very carefully and intentionally, giving me the space to walk into my first few weeks as a Founder confidently.
Price: £33 for one planner
Rating: 5/5* — this has been a game changer for me and will be a permanent part of my toolkit.
Homerun ATS
What’s it for: Managing the job application, screening and interview process all in one place.
How it helped: Homerun is hands down one the best ATS systems I’ve used (and I spent 4+ years in the recruitment industry) and it’s an absolute goldmine for start-ups.
It has a free ATS that can be fully branded and customised, allows you to create as many draft job ads as you need, customise recruitment stages, send interview invites, keep track of notes. The list is endless. While you can only have 10x applicants in the system at a time with the free version, that was more than enough for me to choose an intern in a couple of weeks.Price: €25 - €139/mo depending on the plan that you go with
Rating: 5/5* — as above, one of the best ATS platforms I’ve ever used!