Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome into another
episode of Vision Pros Live. I'm your show host,
Jackson Callum, founder and CEO of First Class
Business. And we've got Kathy Fang in the house
of Signal Growth, and she's got other partnerships
in the works or companies that she's representing.
So we'll be talking about that. We caught her.
She's so cool that she's taking time for us while
she's also at the amazing South by Southwest.
And we're going to be talking today about why
your business isn't growing. And is it leadership,
team, infrastructure, marketing? We're going
to look at some of those dynamics. But first,
Kathy, welcome to Vision Pros Live again. Yeah,
thank you, Jackson, for having me. Super excited
to be here. Absolutely. Well, you've got such
a track record of different opportunities when
it comes to growth and marketing and leading
teams. And so I'd love for you to lead the way
by walking through some of your experience. What
does that spectrum look like? Because it's quite
the portfolio of companies that you've helped.
Yeah, absolutely. So my background is coming
from the Fortune 500 company. So I hold senior
positions from... Constellation Brands, where
it's the home of Corona, Modelo. Before that,
I was at Capital One. So overall, over 13 years
of experience coming from a Fortune 500 company
background. But currently, I also have my own
business, which is Signal Growth that you just
mentioned, where I help founders and entrepreneurs
to really diagnose their growth bottleneck. And
I recently took on Neuro, but it's still secret,
so we keep it under the cover now. For me, it's
like I'm coming from a very interesting background.
I have a good blend of the corporate world as
well as the startup world. So I understand the
pinpoints ins and outs from both sides of things
and am able to bridge the gap in terms of how
do we utilize the Fortune 500 company frameworks
to help entrepreneurs supercharge their growth.
Huge. And my friends, Kathy and I talked about
this, how we might be looking at repeatable systems
for pre -seed. growth stage and enterprise brands
if we have time today. If we don't, then I'm
sure her and I can work out some methods of making
sure that we bridge those gaps. If you want that,
then by all means, drop some comments in the
chats that we know and we'll always be looking
at those and getting back to them. So one of
the things that drew my attention with that too,
Kathy, is how long have you been a business owner
for? So far, probably two years now. So the journey
came from, I went to the Wharton School for B
-School and that's where I realized that I have
passion for entrepreneurship because the world
is so big. I grew up in the corporate world,
kind of like grew up in a corporate world. I
learned a lot of different things from a very
structured environment. But then when I went
to B -School, that's how I realized that. The
things can be conducted so differently. You can
look at the things like in hundred different
views and they're just kind of like the blue
ocean in terms of the entrepreneurship where
really inspired me to be one myself. I feel this
is definitely like once in a lifetime opportunity.
You got to be an entrepreneurship to understand
like ins and outs of the business. So that's
how I started my journey of entrepreneurship
like two years ago. Awesome. And my friends,
we're going to be diving in deep where, like
I said, we're going to talk about. um the the
realities of leadership team infrastructure and
marketing and don't sleep on that my friends
especially those who've been at this for a while
i see so many entrepreneurs stuck with looking
at sales and marketing as the challenge or as
a problem but often the uh the real challenge
is deeper than that so we're going to come right
back we'll dive into it and we'll see on the
other side all right welcome in to vision pros
live with jackson callum i'm your show host we'll
be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building fantastic
of visions out there. Hey, welcome into Vision
Pros Live. My name is Jackson Callum. I'm excited
to help you as a visionary pull your vision to
life, live your legacy. live with passion and
purpose all the good things in my opinion this
is not about hustle and grind this is about doing
things the right way and so if you feel stuck
between urgent projects unclear priorities or
you're stalling out in growth and sales and marketing
seems a little bit off we're going to dive into
some higher level realities that affect growth
first then we're going to bring the superstar
kathy fang in to talk about the wedding triangle
what now what's really neat is she's also gotten
to see these realities that fortune 500 companies
firsthand she spent more than a decade in those
and so we want to maximize her opportunity to
talk about every single one of these and she's
in her second year of entrepreneurship so um
and you know i'm always a little bit reticent
when it comes to newer entrepreneurs because
if they haven't crossed the 10 -year mark then
they really don't know the good and the bad and
the ugly that's coming. But at the same time,
she has gotten to see it from an entrepreneur
angle within those other companies. And I see
the solid nature that she has. I can tell she's
done things right. And that is something that's
super important to me. So before I bring her
back on, I want to give you another couple of
resources real fast. One is Dr. Shannon and Dr.
Justin Pierce of journey to wellness plan .com.
These sponsors up here, my friends, they do not
pay to be any sponsors. These are companies that
I love because I've seen what they're able to
do. I've known them for eight years and every
family member or friend that I know that has.
gotten to a point of hopelessness with their
own doctor. That's kind of the trigger for me
to, hey, can I introduce you to Dr. Shannon on
Instagram? And if they say yes, I do that. I've
done that for three people over the years, and
all three of them have raved about the different
results that Shannon has been able to bring them.
So if you happen to have a loved one who's suffering
from some type of illness or health concern,
then I highly recommend checking out what Shannon's
up to. She's not wavy magic wands. She just does
the right tests. And she also had a critical
illness, fibromyalgia. and other elements that
other doctors had told her like it's just in
your head um and that's not that's obviously
not fair it's not correct either there are things
that can be done so i hope that blesses one of
your loved ones then there's jennifer reed with
practice makes permanent jennifer reed is an
eq sq specialist she's a facilitator for corporate
uh sorry for cultural awareness and i i can tell
you that all there's so many studies if you go
to any ai right now and ask can you show me the
studies that showcase how does culture and leadership
have an impact on brands, you'll see that it
not only improves the work environment, it also
improves the profitability of the companies.
When you're evaluating who you want to bring
in for that type of retreat or experience or
up -leveling your brand, I would recommend that
you ask them, why do you care? What qualifies
you for this, right? Most people lean into resumes.
I like the ones who lean into their personal
stories and show you that they have a resilience
related to this that really helps them unpack
the truth and the reality of growth. I recommend
bringing a tissue box when you talk to Jennifer
Reed. You're going to need it. She has every
reason for helping every company on earth improve
in emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence.
So one last piece here, my friends. I hope that
you join me on supporting The Water Project,
even if that means just sharing the link. My
hope, though, is that you'll dive in and take
a look at these different stories because they
actually show you the communities that they're
helping. And I remember years ago when I first
donated to this cause, I sent them the $10 or
$20. And they sent me a report of that community
and what was happening with it. I got to see
how many people were affected by it. I got to
see what they built. I thought it was one of
the coolest, most transparent realities. And
then I started to note that there's hundreds
of millions. I don't know how many millions.
There are millions of people who do not have
access to clean drinking water. And I've taken
that for granted my entire life. I've never been
thirsty. in my entire life and so it was a little
bit hard to grasp the value and the importance
of this but when you start to study this out
with this come with this uh brand you start to
see that you're able to make a generational impact
on such a such a small donation and so if there's
a cause that's drawing your attention more than
this and do me a favor drop it in the link drop
the link in the comments because i will take
a personal look at that and see what we can do
to help out as well um this cause again i see
these kids celebrating water like my kids celebrate
christmas day And I can't think of too many more
humbling experiences in life and something that
we can do more to help for generations. So, again,
give us a chance to help out. We got a billion
people to help in the world. And now let's get
back to helping each and every one of you. So,
Kathy Fang, again, thanks for being here on Vision
Pros Live. Let's dive in. Yeah, let's do it.
Thank you for having me here again. Super excited.
Absolutely. I was mentioning earlier that there's
business owners who are maybe struggling with
their growth and they may think it's marketing
and sales or maybe that's their team. But I feel
like the real issue often lies deeper than that.
And so while they're sometimes maybe stuck in
between urgent projects and unclear priorities
or stalled growth, what have you seen? What's
really holding back these companies, Kathy, from
your end? And feel free to just say, Jackson,
it's just marketing. You can contradict me on
this. yeah um so so this is a very good question
because i was just talking to another um founder
about this yesterday so essentially from my point
of view um the growth bottleneck really depends
on the growth stage that you're currently in
right so like for me i have experience coming
from different um kind of like a different growth
stage of the companies what we really see like
the skill sets or even like the bottleneck that
you're experiencing from zero to three million
million is going to be different from three to
five or five plus right so when you're at the
ceo c company before hitting like three million
dollar mark you're essentially experienced different
type of uh gross bottleneck like you don't know
what your product market fit is you haven't found
your niche audience or even even being able to
find a scalability opportunity you can then establish
a system yeah you just feel like everyday scrambling
so there's a different type of kind of bottleneck
once you hit that three million dollar mark you
start thinking about what are additional growth
opportunities because you have the initial mvp
and you're getting closer to your product market
fit so here you will be you know hiring different
people with different skill sets you can probably
like start from founder -led marketing or even
product marketing into a more kind of into a
different like area of expertise you can actually
bring experts where the signal growth is my company
comes in that we help people or founders that
pass three million dollar ARR where you already
have some sort of growth system but it's not
stabilized yet and but you do have attraction
in terms of audiences so that's where my company
comes in to help founders to really diagnose
this stage of the game like what are their um
you know growth bottlenecks and then once you
have the system how do we really insert people
that have specific skill sets that help you continuously
skill um your your offer your product and your
company so um that's it how you view the bottleneck.
And then once you really pass that product market
fit stage, it's really the game of scaling. So
that's where the Fortune 500 company framework
comes in because that's bulletproof. That's already
proven. I've spent over 13 years to do all the
different tests and learns from different industries
against different consumers. So all the mistakes
that myself and my teammate, you don't have to
make it again. So that's essentially my offers
to the entrepreneurs at the different stage.
um but also from pre -seed um jackson will previous
talk about like a winning triangle so you probably
hear about this like along the podcast um yeah
we're definitely going to talk about it i want
to go back and focus a little bit on uh this
we called it a bonus earlier but since we dove
in if you can give one word let's play like um
who wants to be a millionaire style one word
or two word one to two word answer pre -season
Pre -seed company. Pre -seed. What's the challenge?
What's the most common challenge? Like one word
that comes up to my mind. That's like 10 words.
no chaos i would say pre -c is chaos um but also
very creative right so essentially no no no you're
gonna we're gonna go to we're gonna go to growth
stage now so yeah and they're gonna come to you
for that that resonates with them they're gonna
be like oh my gosh she nailed it right so growth
stage growth stage one to two words scale scale
is the challenge cool enterprise enterprise That's
interesting. Enterprise. I would say enterprise
is still scale. It's just different type of scale.
Okay, so growth stage, I would say it's growth,
but enterprise will be scale. Okay, so growth
stage is what? Growth. Well, growth. That makes
sense. Perfect. So what's one word, though, within
growth? If you had to choose one to two, what
would it be? That's interesting. One or two words.
I would say hyper growth. Hyper. So creating
hyper growth or is it because they're chasing
hyper growth? I think creating hyper growth for
the company to be sustainable into the next stage,
right? Because otherwise probably 30 % of the
company would die at the growth stage. Yeah.
Yeah. Nice. Okay, cool. That was fun for sure.
We'll come back to these subjects as well. So
we were talking about these elements that also
can disrupt growth. And I want to talk about
the growth illusion a little bit. I'll talk about
from my side as well, why most companies fix
the wrong problem. I see so many companies. It
doesn't matter if you're startups or not focused
so heavily on how do we get more leads? How do
we get more leads? How do we get more deals rather
than how do we serve better? How do we serve
people better? And if you're not serving people
really well, then the rest of that is going to
be an absolute challenge. And so leadership,
team and infrastructure, you know, don't be that
entrepreneur who thinks you're above and beyond
and already doing everything that you can to
support people. Usually when we get that level
of arrogance, our entire process starts to fall
apart and starts to disintegrate. So on your
side, Kathy, growth illusion, is that a concept
that AI invented as we created this? description
or is that one of your terminologies um i think
it's a one of my terminologies oh cool awesome
let's talk about your set of growth illusion
for sure yeah so For me, again, like the growth
solutions can be broken out into five different
stages of the game that the entrepreneurs are
playing. So we can talk about, like, for example,
for pre -seed companies where you're still trying
to build your MVP or solidify your product market
fit, your growth solutions is essentially, you
know, finding your winning triangle, right? So
where we talked about your product and market
and also pricing. a lot of blind spots at the
entrepreneur at this stage they typically find
is they love their baby but not everybody will
love your baby right so like in order to create
attraction you have to find some people that
really love your product not your friends not
your family but some people out there in the
consumer or in your addressable market that truly
love your product and not just like your product
they're willing to pay for your product so in
the stage of the game We really need to find
that winning triangle between your product market
fit, as well as the offer and the pricing offer
that's fitting into those customers' willingness
to pay. So, for example, if I really need an
iPhone, but if the iPhone is selling me for $10
,000, I'd probably just be like finding some...
or alternatives to you know like to replace my
needs so it's just if you can fit in that bucket
of a consumer's willingness to pay that's where
you start gaining attractions so that's what
i talked about at the pre -c stage um to really
finding your um your winning triangle between
your product market and the pricing so let's
slow down a little bit so when you say winning
triangle there's three points on this triangle
for you one is the product one is the market
and one is the offer And learning how to diagnose
where we're at with those three things will help
drive clarity for our ability to drive revenue.
And so how do you how do you diagnose product?
How do you diagnose market and how do you diagnose
offer? Let's go one at a time. Yeah, that's that's
a great question. So. essentially at the pre
-seed stage where you don't necessarily need
a lot of paid media or like a paid marketing
support right so at this stage it's still uh
about marketing where vc loves the most they
want to see the product to sell itself so how
do we really diagnose if the product and market
and then pricing offer is you know like hitting
the right spot is to really build your consumer
feedback loop to understand who are you targeting
right so first is clarity like uh as an entrepreneur
first you have to love your product and then
be passionate about what you're building and
then second is your your passion point, not just
a passion point, but it's a passion point that
can solve and address some people's pain point,
not just vitamin, it's a pain point that people
want to have a product or service to resolve.
So being able to diagnose this part of bottleneck
is to essentially build a customer feedback loop,
right? So finding the right customers intentional.
that you intend to target, and then being able
to build that feedback loop to have them give
you feedback, try out your product, give feedback
of what your product is doing, if there's any
advancement or additional features that they
hope that you can offer to solve that problem.
So continuously building that product loop and
pushing out iterations to really improve the
overall features is very critical. the frequency
of pushing out features and being able to like
continuously solidify their product loop has
to be very frequent not just like every month
every week it could be every day right so you
will never be able to build a really great product
without consumer feedback and then the faster
you can do it at this stage the the further you
can go compared to other people so it's very
important to really create a product feedback
loop within your consumer it continues building
that product that's really solid that people
will love um and then once yeah and then once
that's where i'll i'll just double double tap
that with you michael uh michael gerber of the
e -myth is all about making sure that that happens
first um gina wickman of us same thing that's
gotta happen first um uh the one the scale book
um shoot what is that book called um i'll think
of a little bit but it's another they talk about
building communities and how you want to build
your community first you can get that feedback
of what is it that you actually want so continue
what's next Yes. So after you build a product
feedback loop to understand your consumer needs
and wants, and if your product can satisfy them,
then it's more consumer insights here, right?
Like based on your product offer that they love,
how much they can pay for it. A lot of SaaS companies
start with the freemium just to get user acquisition,
get the traction going. But once you pass certain
goals, then there's where you can see how much
you can actually make. through your product right
so when you transition from freemium into either
subscription model or different type of business
model then the pricing offer becomes really critical
at this stage like how much does a cost customer
will willing to pay for your product and then
that requires a lot of different tests and learns
to understand is it $9 .99, $7 .99 or $19 .99.
And that even every dollar matters when you scale
up to a million plus people, right? So $1 difference,
it's a million dollar difference. Well, let me
speak to the lower end of the market, the SMBs
out there, because you're right. And when you're
in the SaaS world and you're in the corporate
world, they understand freemium well, but small
business owners don't understand freemium at
all. All most of the time. And they're so worried
about giving things away, giving value that they
choke themselves out because they're not providing
enough value to be relevant in the market. My
friends, the only five companies to crack the
top 50 companies in the world in the last 50
years, every single one of them has a freemium
business model. Nobody has done it without that.
And so as a small business owner, we've got to
be able to think. What can I do to provide more
value to people that doesn't take my time, that
doesn't bankrupt my company, but that allows
my brand to show that we have an unfair advantage
over the market because of how well we serve.
There's so much opportunity with that. So pricing
and offers also super important for you and the
small business side. Most of you aren't CFOs.
And so trying to figure out your own financial
reality and how to create your margins and yada
yada, it can be a very overwhelming, intimidating,
frustrating process. Lean into an executive that
you trust to help you build that out. Continue.
Absolutely. And then like some of the clients,
though, I work not only with entrepreneur or
like the SaaS company, but also kind of creators.
So creator coaches like going into digital service
verticals where exactly like Jackson, you mentioned
like they feel like, oh, you need to pay for
my service to begin with. Right. But before you
build the credibility, before people actually
know you in a very competitive and clustered
market, it's really hard to break through without
having having some sort of connection with your
audiences, either virtually or actually in person.
So there is a different ways of entrepreneurs
like in the input product stage that you can
provide free values to kind of lure your customer
in to get a little bit more face time with you,
get a little bit more like building trust and
building likability. And then those are the essential
step that needs to take before they can actually
pay the premium and high ticket price to your
product. So that's also very important. in terms
of how to build this flywheel to, you know, based
on the consumer journey to, you know, kind of
baking into from freemium into lower ticket and
then finally high ticket. Absolutely. And so
I get a little bit lost. So which one are we
on as far as the winning triangle goes? Yeah,
we completed the winning triangle. We completed
the diagnosis of pre -seed, I believe. Yes. Okay.
And so where do you want to go from here, Kathy?
From here, I think we can talk about growth stage
of the company. Growth stage. Okay. Growth stage,
diagnosing, winning triangle. So from the growth
stage where you had the 35 million revenue. revenue
dollar mark here you're playing a different game
you have some sort of mvp and then you understand
initial customer feedback and you cannot test
out your product market and the pricing offer
and then where you need to scale from 35 million
plus to 20 million is a different game so here
is you need to start building a team like because
you cannot do a 5 million people job anymore
and then you need to go you will start pivoting
away from the phone I speak for marketing because
I'm a marketing person. But of course, for other
operations, sales, different functions of the
business, it's no longer being able to just take
on by the founder because you have more business,
you have more volume. So here. how do we really
structure a healthy split of the team, like roles
and responsibilities, being able to hire people
to really help you continue to drive your growth,
replicate your growth model, and then solidify
the team growth to achieve that even higher revenue.
It's something very critical in this stage. Let
me slow down a little bit because I want to make
sure that we all understand. I might have misunderstood
you. Kathy, otherwise we have to agree to disagree.
I've never seen a solopreneur make it to $3 million
ever. Yeah, that's true. Ever. So they had to
build a team in order to get there. And so when
you say build a team, can you break down what
the difference looks like between that original
team and the scaling of a team? Absolutely. So
original team is just funding team, right? So
anywhere from solopreneur one person to maybe
like three, four people. How do you know that's
made $3 million by themselves with no team? Name
one person for me. I know a consumer brand that
I used to work with. It's like they are able
to drive to 3 .5 million revenue with just founding
teams for two people. Of course. So they had
at least one person. Okay. So they did have somebody.
Yes. And you name another. Yeah. Name another.
This is my point. We can't. And so please, guys,
don't follow that. Like, don't follow. Don't
don't be the anomaly in the world. Don't be the
only unicorn that exists. You're probably not
that you're putting yourself in danger. So recognize
that you need a team as an entrepreneur from
the beginning or you're going to end up ruining
your own. Don't do it. Get a team from stage
one. But let's go to growth stage. Let's define
the team. So the team is what I meant was you
absolutely need to have a team, but the team
of part -time people, right? You probably don't
need a full -time hire at the initial stage.
I don't agree. No, hell no. Neither does the
EMS with Michael Gerber. Neither does EOS, Gina
Wickman. Neither does the stats of the United
States. We have more than 100 years track record
of 96 % of businesses failing. That means 96
out of 100 people that we talk to in a day, their
business is going to fail and lose. And the primary
reason for that is because they delegate by abdication.
They don't know what they're delegating. They
don't know how to bring team members in. They're
bad leaders. We've got to recognize. I'm not
the greatest leader in the world either. I've
got to become a better leader if I want to make
sure that my company scales sustainably. So I'm
not immune from this. I'm saying we've all got
to lean into that. But I have seen so many solopreneurs
that post on Instagram and act like they're winning.
But in reality, if you looked, if you got to
see behind the scenes of their private lives,
you would see that, no, they're making less than
a janitor salary and they have massive debts
and they have these. vas that they're virtually
abusing because they're not paying attention
to what their needs are either it's a disgusting
process and so i i know that you know how to
win I'm not doubting your ability to win because
you've done it at Fortune 500 companies. You're
starting to do this. You hopefully you built
your business with a cash reserve, you know,
and you aren't burning yourself out financially.
But we won't know about your business until you're
10 years in. Then we can talk about where your
business is at. But before that point, for now,
it's just humility. It's like, OK, I'm learning
as an entrepreneur. But I'd love to know what
you've seen as far as team building goes from
a not a one off situation, but. If teams are
building at the three to five million mark, what
types of team members do they have on with them
at that stage? What what titles or roles are
being fulfilled? Yeah. So first of all, I want
to define like the teams. I still believe solopreneurs,
like you mentioned, if it's just one person,
I believe they're called entrepreneurs for a
reason. yes but then when for example like the
sas companies where you actually have a funding
team that you can actually go a little bit further
than just a solopreneur one you have You could
have mentors. You could have, I don't know, like
a different like community that support you.
You could be like in a different kind of incubator
that give you different resources. So like when
I say like a team, I really mean like kind of
structured team like a Fortune 500 company where
we can talk about what exactly the team needs
to be at the growth stage. So definitely there
are nuances. I think the answer is it depends,
right? Depends on which verticals you're in.
Like for Infoprice, it will be different from
consumer product versus a SaaS product. So depends
on which stage or depends on which industry you're
in, the team members will need to be different,
right? So for example, I have pretty extensive
consumer background. So for me, for consumer
business a lot is marketing and sales so you
definitely will need to have a marketing and
sales team in place like somebody who does better
job than you are like in doing marketing and
in doing sales so having those people in place
i think a great leadership is always hiring somebody
can do like a better job than they are so at
this growth stage you're starting to transition
into that kind of framework and then being able
to kind of stack your teams from you know like
with expertise yeah well i i really like that
thank you for for putting that out there i'll
put the and i i one once upon a time i was uh
arrogant enough to try to build a universal org
chart And I got into that process like, holy
crap, wait, hotels and restaurants, pest control,
they all have different needs. Like there's no
way you can build a universal one. But there
are founding roles that absolutely need to be
accounted for. And especially if you're in the
digital world. So I'll name them for you guys,
visionaries. You've got the founder, the person
who's, I'll call it the chief visionary officer.
You get the vision. You got the CEO, a COO, a
CMO, a CFO, a CLO. a CTO, an HR director, a sales
director, a fulfillment specialist, a social
media manager, a designer, a copywriter, an editor,
a strategist, and then ideally you would have
as well a chairman of the board and an investor.
Now, those roles may be divided between two people,
but anybody who thinks they are cool enough to
do all that by themselves, the market knows you
can't. and you at the end of the day will find
out that you can't either i don't like to guide
people off of cliffs i like to teach people sustainability
but then there's specialty roles so to put into
perspective kathy's point if you have a restaurant
you also need a chef um right you're probably
going to need a host team member you might need
an expo you might need a waiter waitress you
might need a bartender right so there's it goes
above and beyond this oversimplification that
is called get rich quick we don't support that
envision pros We will not help you move towards
an era or towards a reality that's not going
to help. Maybe AI can fix some of that, too.
But guess what? You're going to need to assign
your AI agents to be able to do those roles as
well. So let's go into the next piece of the
triangle itself in that bigger level, Kathy.
So at the enterprise level, what is diagnosing
product? market and offer fit look like? Yeah,
that's a great question. And it comes into my,
like really my wheelhouse, right? I've seen enterprises
like in and out for over a decade. I think enterprise,
it depends on which level, like you can break
it down into Inc 500, like Inc 500 or Fortune
500, like a different level of the company. When
you're still relatively on the smaller side of
the enterprise, maybe mid -market into enterprise
range, you're still... kind of navigate what
the scale feels like and then how to build the
team that actually improve the overall efficiency
because sometimes when the system is not solid
a lot of times you feel like a lot of employees
you're higher than eating up your cash flow but
not really produce the results you want right
so those will be like some sort of kind of like
bottlenecks or even like diagnosis so you can
start looking into into the team efficiency building
barometers building like all the different structures
to make sure like the team is running as good
as they can. When you go into the even bigger
enterprise level, like some of the companies
I've stayed with, it's almost too big to fail.
So it becomes a different type of game is, you
know, the team culture, the company cultures
and the brand perceptions. How do you want to
continue showing up in front of consumers? or
in front of your customers to continue to get
your business. So it's a little different type
of games that we're playing, but I know most
of your audiences are probably not going to be
like in your Fortune 500 or the company level.
So the ghost bottlenecks are like a different
here, but what we can do. But yeah, let's, I
think some of them might, again, so one of the
things about podcasts, this is great for visionaries
to know too, these segments that we talk about,
they're redistributable. and there's something
that ai is going to be looking at as well right
so if you speak to the fortune 500 the the the
ones that are crushing it and you come up with
a plan and a value that's super super valuable
that's going to pop up in ai someday and those
people are going to find it and be like oh gosh
i want to know what this kathy lady has to has
to say so i would love to hear it um if you can
focus in on one of those areas one of those diet
um dynamics whatever level you want to and then
just clearly articulate what's the product diagnosis
look like what's the market diagnosis what's
the offer diagnostic that would be awesome yeah
so The diagnose for Fortune 500 company, like
constantly you hear like a reorg, right? That's
basically diagnosed. You hire a consulting firm
and coming either McKinsey or BCG and diagnose
a whole organizational structure, like really
drill down the efficiency between teams, like
including your team members, like your functions.
Is that really aligning with your business strategy?
How does that look like in the next three to
five years? And is your current team structure
aligned? with your future three to five years
so that's some sort of diagnosis that consulting
management consulting firms are doing right like
and then you're drilling down into specific roles
and responsibilities um sometimes even time tracking
like how how many hours that each team members
are actually allocating to specific project prioritization
like the list of a project are those projects
really needed to like aligning with your three
to five year growth are those being able to trim
down and then if those are trimmed down are the
member associated with those projects still stay
or not so that's where we hear a lot of layoffs
reorganization from like fortune i love that
but kathy how do you diagnose the winning triangle
that's what we're talking about and so how do
you diagnose the product the market and the offer
in those companies yeah sorry if i don't make
that clear but i think the winning triangle is
not really like existing in fortune 500 company
because you're already you already have the product
market fit. Here you're playing the different
game. You just need to, you know, build brand
awareness, like improve consumer conception where
you spend a lot of pay media in marketing. So
here it really is no longer like a winning triangle
in my perspective. I may have a different perspective,
but it's a different game at an enterprise level.
Okay, cool. No, that's helpful. Now I understand
it. So perfect. Is there any audience that you
want to... dive back into based on the winning
triangle, or is there another process that you
want to dive into? yes so i think the winning
triangle um is mostly uh suitable for the pre
-c and the c company where you still navigate
that product market so being able to solidify
that winning triangle and building your foundation
is critical for the future success and then once
you hit the growth stage of course like it's
going to be dialed down like you will have to
focus on something like building teams leaderships
company cultures and the different kind of things
but um i truly believe that entrepreneurs come
with the clarity and making sure that you understand
what you're building and if your consumer will
like it. And also your scalability within that
market is also very critical. I'm a strong believer
of numbers. So I believe in addition to building
your winning triangle, once you have that solidified.
i would start like focus on projections right
like financial numbers making sure you have enough
runway um because one of the biggest failing
reason for startups is you run up money you run
up one wrong way and you cannot be sustainable
in your business anymore so know your numbers
being able to build a projection um that's really
tracking towards your future success Super, super
important. And I think too many of us as founders
and visionaries forget the importance of the
numbers or downplay it. And if we do that, we're
not being wise stewards of our brand. We're not
putting ourselves in a position of stability.
And that's not a good thing for those who are
internally working with us or those who are hoping
that our company will be able to help the market
itself. So, Kathy Fang, thank you so much. This
has been awesome. I want to make sure you get
to enjoy South by Southwest while you're there.
For sure. Enjoy. Austin is one of my homes. Austin
in San Antonio, Texas. And so I miss it. I'm
grateful for it. I hope you enjoy it fully. I
hope my people take care of you. Vision Pros,
if any of you want to come on this show and be
with us in the top right corner, visionproslive
.com. Click the button that says be our guest.
You can also find myself or Kathy Fang simply
by Googling us and going and connecting with
us on LinkedIn. If you have questions or comments,
drop them below so we can take a look at that
and we'll be happy to help you out with your
growth. We'll see you in the next episode. Thank
you for being here today. I'm really happy that
you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking
forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes
continue to move forward. This is going to get
more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in
the show. And thank you for giving us your time
and attention. Have an excellent time building
out your vision and becoming a vision.