Thursday, November 24, 2005

The Meeting that Went Very Well

Joe RasmussenI was once the polar opposite of one Joe Rasmussen (pictured), then a partner in GreyPilgrim Inc. He was, as his current Web bio suggests, "CFO and primary business leader" for the company. His bio paints a picture, however, that's a bit of a stretch. The site says
He was instrumental in building this new company from concept to products and markets, creating and implementing financing and strategic plans to obtain $100M revenue potential.
...but since GreyPilgrim never got really close to that revenue potential, what Joe did turns out to have been more theoretical than actual. (Of course, all my engineering work on the EMMA robotic arm -- and I did a bunch -- falls into the same category, since EMMAs were never shipped out the door until GreyPilgrim resurfaced as a new business. By then I was long gone.)

All this is just water under the bridge for the same reason. But what I really remember Joe for is for conducting meetings with potential customers and clients and funding sources. Seems like he had a meeting with someone every few days. And when I would ask him how a meeting went, he'd smile and say "it went very well." And that's all I ever got out of him. Joe, what does "very well" mean exactly?

In retrospect, the dynamic works like this: I'm an engineer, he's a financial guy. He made the assumption that we didn't speak the same language. Since he didn't speak his language to me much, I'll never know whether or not his assumption was on target. And now that I have a teaching certificate in ESL, I think my ability to understand the speech of others whose English isn't the same as mine is really pretty good. :-)

If you work for an entrepreneur, you have to ask the right questions. The more specific, the better. If the partners don't want to give you a straight answer, you can at least force them to tell you so with specific questions. Try these, if you work with a guy like Joe:
  • How soon will we be receiving a check?
  • How much did you get them to commit to?
  • When will they expect their first order to ship?
  • Did they have any questions for me?
You have to wring answers out of these people. Don't settle for a meeting that Went Very Well.

Labels:

posted by Ron @ 9:33 PM

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home