#GetHired Summit offers 1,000+ job opportunities for virtual attendees

PROVO, Utah — In direct relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment rates have risen dramatically. Current unemployment rates vary from 5.1% to 17.4% across the nation. As unemployment numbers increase, the United States economy has suffered.  One of the nation’s largest job searches in history is currently underway. 

On August 13-14 the #GetHired Summit will be holding its 2nd virtual summit. Attendance at the first Summit exceeded 5,000. Registration is free and can be completed here. There will be thousands of job opportunities from the Summit sponsor companies, including over 600 positions at  Vivint Smart Home alone. 

CEO of Mentorli, Luke Mocke, the creator of the #GetHiredSummit has said, “This is the worst US unemployment crisis in a hundred years and we’ve vowed to be a part of the solution. We’re uniting the right employers, voices, and opportunities under one roof to make sure folks can get back to work as soon as possible.” 

Diversity is a major focus for the summit. Partners like the Utah Black Chamber, Utah Women in Sales, Diversity Career Fair, and RevRoad are working together to ensure the summit is inclusive and creates an equal playing field for underrepresented talent. #GetHired Summit leadership believe that the combination of layoffs and rising remote work present an unprecedented opportunity for employers to rebuild their organization in a representative way. 

The #GetHired Summit will be held virtually. For more information visit the #GetHired Summit website https://www.gethiredsummit.com.  

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For media inquiries, interviews, or additional information, please contact Marketing Coordinator Tanner Lenon at tanner.lenon@mentorli.com.

About Mentorli

Mentorli helps diverse talent land jobs through mentors. Having a mentor and referral can make you up to 15x more likely to land a job. We’re leaning in to that power to give every qualified person access to opportunities historically reserved for the few.

Mastering Investor Pitches (pt 3)

Written by: Seth Robinson

Every story has a beginning, middle and end.  Put another way, a premise, a conflict, and a resolution. Point is, even with a compelling story you won’t go very far unless the story is easy to follow. Structure lubricates understanding. The best structure I have found for investor pitches is Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 deck.

10-20-30 deck stands for 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font. The ten slides are (1) Title, (2) Problem, (3) Unique Value Proposition, (4) Underlying Magic, (5) Business Model, (6) Go-to-market Plan, (7) Competitors, (8) Team, (9) Projections & Metrics, (10) Status, Accomplishments & Timeline.  

These ten subjects give potential investors a comprehensive view of your company. They cover all the basics investors will need to know before they can consider further engagement. These slides function as the jump off point for additional engagement. The order of these slides isn’t important, and I would highly recommend changing the order to compliment your story.

Twenty minutes means you must be quick and deep. A quick and deep overview is always possible, but not usually easy. Refining your story will take practice, work and feedback from others. For practice, look into your local 1MillionCups groups. Investor pitch feedback is what those groups exist for!

Keep the presentation compelling, not exhaustive. If you do it right, investors will have follow up questions. An absence of questions means an absence of interest. In other words, the story isn’t compelling, or they had trouble following. Investor questions engage potential investors. It draws them into your story. Leave the bulk of your allotted time for their questions. The pitch will hook them; their questions will bring them on board. Do not vary from the 20 minutes! You can keep it to this time.

Thirty point font means don’t use any font less than 30. This is more important than it seems!  Thirty point font forces judicious use of slide space. It helps drive home important points, but keeps you focused on the story. With 30 point font, you can’t just read your slides, because there simply isn’t much text (don’t read slides anyway.  Bad form). Thirty point font complements a quick and deep approach because it doesn’t allow you to be exhaustive. 

Also, investors tend to be older, and they can’t see small font. An unreadable slide is a fast way to lose interest.

The 10-20-30 deck provides the structure that makes your story easy to follow. This has become an industry standard of sorts, and most investors expect this type of presentation. Use this to your advantage. Do not focus on the presentation! Use the presentation to focus on your story. Every slide should be telling the story of your traction, quick and deep, compelling and easy to follow.

Don’t focus on your idea. And don’t lose your story in your story’s structure (or slide deck). A compelling and easy to follow story maximizes investor engagement. Making a case that you are the smartest person in the room is not only problematic and difficult, but even if successful, it won’t have the effect you think it will. Stories do have that effect.

Mastering Investor Pitches (pt 2)

When assessing startups, look at the problem, look at the customer, and look at the market. The combination of those three categories will show you traction. There are many different definitions of traction. Whichever one you use, you’ll be in good shape. For today, we’ll go with: traction–your startup’s evidence of success within the market. 

So let’s talk about what traction looks like in a story: movement. 

Can you move people? Do people care about what you are doing? Do they sign up for more information? Do they gasp and smile once they “get” what you are doing? Do people want to give you money but can’t because you don’t have a product?

The more people you can move, and the more profoundly you can move those people, the more traction you have. This is the evidence investors look for in the context of problem, customer, and market. This is how investors identify opportunities.

Traction is the compelling force behind the story of your venture. In a presentation, the story is how you make traction matter. Here are some real investor stories of companies. Which do you find most compelling? 

“I am not a marketer or sales person, but with the few sales I have achieved, people come back and buy more. One in four customers returns and on average and buys 3x more the second time. Over half of our site’s new visitors come from entering the URL, not from search results or ads. How do they know our URL? People are talking, not searching. The product is sticky. I just need more places to stick it.

“I thought people would use this product because it was convenient.  They tell me they actually buy it to avoid interacting with our competitor!  It turns out our go-to-market strategy allows us to not only avoid 90% of our competitor’s overhead cost, but charge 3x the markup and get 8x more repeat customers.  Help us rescue customers from our competitors!”

“This market doesn’t resist change, it’s simply been skipped over for 30 years.  When we apply basic technology used elsewhere, and apply it to this niche, we see a 100% sales conversion rate even though our price point is 50% higher than their current costs. Without marketing we have more inquiries than we can service.  We don’t need help with sales, we need help with onboarding!”

Each example shows traction. Proof of traction builds investor confidence in the opportunity; the story builds investor confidence in the entrepreneur. Good business models are built on good information, not on good ideas. Investors invest in people, not ideas.

Mastering Investor Pitches (pt 1)

Written By: Seth Robinson

I once heard an experienced, lifelong storyteller take questions during a Q+A session. An audience member asked a technical question about story structure, conflict development, and how to make stories more engaging. The storyteller responded to the question with the following story:

“Bill shot out of bed, heart racing, even before the alarm went off. He listened carefully, but couldn’t figure out what the problem was. In fact, he couldn’t remember listening to the morning  with this intensity before, and the experience unsettled him. Everything seemed quiet. It wasn’t just the absence of sound, but this quiet was so profound that ordinary silence seemed absent as well. Bill got up. His padded slippers seemed to scrape across the ground in a new and altogether sickening fashion. The soft swish, swish of his toothbrush echoed cavernously, and by comparison, the crunch of Bill’s breakfast cereal was ear splitting. While he sat, he ate.  While he ate, he thought, uncertain of what to think about. And then, all at once, everything from that morning, and every previous morning came together at once.  In that very moment Bill realized: a story doesn’t need a point to be engaging.”

Presenting a business opportunity to potential investors has more in common with being a good storyteller, that it does about being a good presenter, making a good case, or saying the right thing. Investor presentations by design have a familiar form, but what separates the best presentation from the average ones is the story.  

Every startup has a story, and this story is what carries your opportunity to the hearts and minds of investors better than a presentation of an idea ever could. Don’t present your idea to investors, tell your story. Your story doesn’t need a point, it simply needs to be engaging.

Idea: “The more people use our platform, the more valuable it will be to everyone. If we could get 1% of the market, we would have $100M in revenue.”

Story: “Guys, I’m not totally sure what I’m doing here, but for some reason people keep giving me money and they want to give me even more. You might want to take a look at this.”

See the difference? Which was compelling? Which was engaging? Which demonstrated a conservative plan for achieving impressive returns, and which one actually mattered?

In fact, in pitches ideas don’t matter. Investors looking for an investment, not an idea. And do you know how many good ideas fail, and bad ideas succeed? The first law of analyzing startups is DON’T EVALUATE IDEAS! So, before your next investor pitch, take some time to refine your story.

RevRoad + The SOSTAC Method

Planning and executing your marketing strategy can be done in so many ways. The more experts you talk to, the more opinions you’ll get, and rarely will you find overlap. So, RevRoad set out on a course to answer the question: What is the best marketing framework to help entrepreneurs build a robust  marketing plan that is simple enough to use on a daily basis? Not surprisingly, we came up with many answers. However, we decided to look at successful marketers such as Netflix, H&M, and Coca Cola. All of these companies use versions of SOSTAC® to accomplish their goals. Originally developed by PR Smith in the 1990s, this framework has gone through a series of iterations, most recently updated to capture the intricacies of digital marketing. 

Obviously these are large global companies. How does SOSTAC® help entrepreneurs just starting out? SOSTAC®, although simple in format, results in tremendous value if done right. This is helpful to companies of any size. Other benefits provided by SOSTAC® include ease of use, referenceability, application to current marketing practices, and comprehensive solutions. The RevRoad marketing department recently adopted the SOSTAC® model for these reasons.

As a brief introduction SOSTAC ® stands for:

  • Situation — where is the company now?
  • Objectives — where do you want the company to be?
  • Strategy — how do you get it there?
  • Tactics — how exactly do you get it there?
  • Action — what is the plan?
  • Control — did you get there?

The following is a graphical representation of how the system works. 

The structure of SOSTAC is a simple logic that builds on an in-depth Situation Analysis which helps inform strategy and tactics. This type of logic enables better decision-making and therefore better plans. Most importantly, it is a more simplified approach, retiring the notion that a lengthy traditional marketing plan is needed to reach objectives. As the entrepreneur, you should reference it often. 

Furthermore, SOSTAC ® contains a logical order for tackling plans and is used to assess processes critically. Including an in-depth SWOT analysis, the main differentiator of SOSTAC is the focus on implementation. Each module involves answering a series of detailed questions like: 

  • Who is your ideal customer? 
  • What is your stickiness or wow factor? 
  • How will you reach your customers?  

Once these types of questions (among many others) are answered, you are ready to execute and track progress. 

“The SOSTAC ® marketing model, created by PR Smith, is a popular and widely used model for marketing and business planning. Whether you’re creating an overall marketing or digital marketing strategy or improving individual channel tactics like SEO or email marketing, this is the tool to use.”

— Daniel Nilsson, Marketing Editor After becoming a RevRoad portfolio company and selecting the Marketing service package, the first step is to build a SOSTAC ® model for your company. RevRoad will help create a cohesive and workable plan, then use the Control element to follow up and ensure it is working. This is a collaborative effort, during which we are dedicated to answering any questions you may have. We look forward to working with you. Ready, Set, Rev!

5 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Improve Their Personal Finances Immediately

Being an Entrepreneur comes with many challenges and hurdles to overcome.

Unfortunately, one of those prevalent challenges deals with your financial health.

Most entrepreneurs either fall behind with personal finances or neglect them entirely. This can put you in a position where you are burdened by financial stress.

The last thing any entrepreneur like yourself needs is just that; more stress.  

While it can be unsettling, it’s the reality. This is what you signed up for.

But just because you’re making daily sacrifices, doesn’t mean that you are not able to make important financial decisions.

In fact, quite the opposite is true. Now is the time to practice and refine good financial habits, and look for ways where you can improve your personal finances so that you don’t feel the financial burden any more than necessary.

Financial fatigue is a real thing that impacts many entrepreneurs, but also something you can improve with some discipline. 

Here are 5 ways you can improve your personal finances immediately.

1. Take control of your spending habits

In the early stages of building your company, it’s critical that you exercise complete control over your spending habits. Not just for your business and company related expenses, but for your own personal finances as well.

One of the biggest pitfalls that keeps entrepreneurs and others alike from achieving their financial goals is the lack of a plan in place for their personal spending and savings habits. The absence of structure and discipline in these two areas can end up leaving you in a difficult financial situation.

The root of the problem for most entrepreneurs comes from not tracking where your money outflows. This can be extremely detrimental to your financial plan and can undermine your  goals.

Chances are that you track your spending when it comes to your company expenses. Don’t neglect this when it comes to your own personal finances.

If you’re not sure exactly how to get control of this one, start with taking a look at your previous expenses and spending habits. Take a look back and review the last  three months of bank statements on everything you’ve purchased (personally) and start writing them down. 

Once you have them written down, start categorizing them by expense types  so you can better understand the nature of your spending. 

Doing this will give you a good indicator and baseline for your first month of budgeting.  Again, it’s important to keep in mind that it won’t be perfect. Most likely your budget will require some adjustments along the way.

Just like any exercise, the more you practice this, the easier it becomes. Eventually, you’ll get to a point where this becomes second nature. 

There’s a good chance that almost immediately you will notice areas where you are spending way too much. Start cutbacks on those expenses first.. Ideally, you will want to find ways where you can eliminate most of your variable expenses (or the ‘wants’) so that you can focus on saving more and increasing your savings rate.

2. Create (and stick to) a financial plan

Would you navigate your current business without any sort of plan, assumptions, or direction in place? Probably not.

That would only increase your chance of risk and failure.

Yet, most entrepreneurs are managing their personal finances completely blind. In fact, it’s more than just entrepreneurs. Most people are navigating their personal finances without having a proper financial plan in place to guide them.

Having a financial plan is necessary to ensure a successful financial outcome. Your plan is there to help guide your financial decisions with confidence so that you are continually working towards your  goals. 

There are a lot of reasons why entrepreneurs don’t currently have a financial plan. Traditionally, financial planning has been reserved for wealthy individuals, which excludes many  entrepreneurs just getting started. Additionally, financial planning has been known to be a time-consuming process, taking hours, days, and even weeks. This incentivizes  entrepreneurs to  choose running their business  over taking the time to build their financial plan.

Savology has good news. Now you don’t have to spend hours building a personal finance plan. 

Savology, which also happens to be a RevRoad portfolio company, provides free financial planning in just five minutes.

As an entrepreneur, having access to free, accurate, and personal financial planning tools is priceless. That’s why you need Savology.  

3. Get an accountability partner 

This one can be a real game changer and the additional motivation you need to help keep you focused and stay the course with your financial planning journey.

An accountability partner is exactly what it sounds like. It’s someone who helps you stay accountable to your financial goals.

Typically, this person ends up being a spouse or significant other. However, it can be any individual that you trust. Which means an accountability partner could end up being a close friend, a relative, or even your co-founder. Remember, trust and reliability is the most important thing with an accountability partner. 

Trust and reliability are important because you need to be able to share information (and likely details) of what you are working and be comfortable asking for their help to get you there.

If this is something that you’re considering, which we highly recommend setting up regular “check-ins”. This will allow you to have regular conversations about money, so that you can help one another stay motivated, focused, and working toward your goals.

4. Create and consistently review financial goals

Just as you would with your business, creating and reviewing personal financial goals is critical to your success.

The reason is simple. Setting goals is one of the best ways to create clarity around your personal finances, so that you understand what you are working towards and how you will get there. 

Remember, when you’re setting goals, don’t just focus on long-term goals. It’s equally important to set both short-term and long-term goals that work together. This is  comparable to setting monthly, quarterly and annual goals for your business.

Your long-term financial goals are there to keep you on track holistically, while your short-term financial goals are there to keep you on track day-to-day.. Both should complement one another and play a vital role in the financial decisions you are making.

Lastly, before you move ahead with any type of goals, it’s in your best interest to make sure that you are setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. The acronym stands for:

  • Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
  • Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
  • Achievable (agreed, attainable).
  • Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
  • Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).

5. Diversify your risk by generating new income streams

As an entrepreneur, protecting your income is a financial priority. There’s a good chance that you are not paying yourself market rates, at least not right away, which is why it’s critical that you protect what little income you might be earning.

While it’s important that you are devoting as much of your time and resources to building your company, it’s equally important to make sure that you are not jeopardizing your income and putting yourself in a position where going bankrupt is a possibility.

Because of this, you’ll want to focus on generating new income streams, whether that’s from a side hustle or passive income. This can provide you with earning opportunities that will help you pay your necessary bills, allow you to contribute to your monthly savings, and importantly extend your runway.

By establishing multiple income streams, you’ll be able to diversify and lower your personal financial risk. Ultimately, this gives  you more financial resources to build your business.

The concept of this is similar to creating additional revenue streams within your business. By selling through new channels or introducing new products, you create additional opportunities for sales growth. What you are doing is essentially protecting your business against financial risk. If one sales, or revenue, channel underperforms, your business still has a chance of surviving and thriving because of the established revenue and profitability derived from existing channels. 

Moving beyond financial fatigue 

Financial fatigue is real for the majority of entrepreneurs. But it doesn’t have to be, nor should it be the default option. By using the five tips above, you’ll be well on your way to making steady improvements to your personal finances. 
Importantly, it’s critical to focus on building a personal financial plan, before anything else. In just five minutes you can build a free, personal, and accurate financial plan with Savology. Your plan will show you your current financial trajectory and our strengths and weaknesses. That way you can focus on addressing the areas that need attention right away.  Build your free financial plan today!

6 TikTok Tips for Business

TikTok has quickly become a dominant platform in the world of social media marketing. Gathering user-generated content, cross-pollinating content, and advertising are some of the main reasons why your company may want to utilize TikTok. 

Getting started on a new social platform can be overwhelming, so here are a few tips to help you through the process. 

  1. Be Fun & Vulnerable
    People are on TikTok for a lot of reasons, but the common denominator is to be entertained. If your content is not entertaining or interesting, then it is a waste of time. Be fun, real, and vulnerable.
  1. Keep it Short
    Videos can only be up to 60 seconds on TikTok; however, many gravitate to stay within the 15-second range.
  2. Focus on the Music
    Music is a critical piece of creating shareable, popular content on TikTok. Utilize the trending music and original sounds in your videos.
  3. Maintain Consistency
    When you consistently create content around a specific topic, you generate interest. If users find your content relevant, useful, and interesting, they start following you. Gradually, you start getting more likes, shares, and engagement..
  4. Collaborate
    Every industry has influencers. Find out who they are and make something happen. Reach out to them, duet or react to their videos, and participate in their challenges.
  5. Use Trends & Hashtags
    Check out the “Discover” tab for trends. If you see something relevant that you like, copy it. Make it your own. Expound on the creativity of others. Find trending hashtags that are relevant to your business.

Download your “TikTok Tips” sheet here. Enjoy!

Watch the free TikTok workshop here.

The Power of Clear Company Values

Written By: A.J. Rounds

Grit. Growth. Gratitude.

These words make up the simple values at RevRoad’s core. 

In 2020 we modified our values to replace the third value, previously known as +1 (going above and beyond what is expected for our portfolio companies), with Gratitude.

Does that mean that + 1s have disappeared? No—quite the contrary. The +1 mentality will still be a part of RevRoad’s culture. We will always go above and beyond for the success of our portfolio companies, but we feel it is important to publicly acknowledge, by way of gratitude, the opportunity we have to work with passionate entrepreneurs striving to scale their businesses. 

Every day we are grateful for the insights and energy our portfolio companies bring to RevRoad. Since the switch in our values, not only does our team vocalize and demonstrate more gratitude, but our portfolio company founders have responded similarly. 

What we’ve found is that implementing gratitude into everyday company values and practices has improved the team synergy, overall productivity, and appreciation for all the incredible people that make up the RevRoad family. 

Share this with someone below who you think exemplifies one of RevRoad’s core values: Grit, Growth, and Gratitude!

Learn more about RevRoad here

Responsibility in Families

Written By: A.J. Rounds, Chief Marketing Officer at RevRoad

Responsibility in family. What a fantastic topic. Families come in all shapes, sizes, and varieties. 

Cultures and societal norms can play a big part in what defines responsibility in every family. In other words, it can be defined in many ways. 

Most can agree that parents have a responsibility to care for their children’s well being, while children have the responsibility to learn to be responsible family members, good citizens, and demonstrate responsible behaviors.

Teaching Children Responsibility

One of the ways in which children can learn responsibility is by watching and emulating the examples set by parents.

Being responsible means taking action.

It is beneficial for kids to learn that helping yourself, your family, others, and the community is a choice. But taking that first step towards responsibility is not always easy. 

Responsibility often requires an act of courage.  

Parents have the responsibility to guide and support courageous behaviors. 

Taking the initiative to be responsible requires a push out of our own bubble. It requires us to leave our comfort zone for the sole purpose of helping someone else. 

Sometimes, the choice to do so is simple. If we see a pregnant woman on the train it’s a good idea to offer our seat. If we see someone struggling with many bags, we should open the door.

These small acts of kindness are essential to creating a responsible society and are often taught within the family unit. But there are other, different types of responsibility that we need to partake in as well — actions that require a little more courage and choice. 

These behaviors are often less clear and require value judgements, judgements taught and supported at home.

Recognizing Responsible Situations

Think back to being a kid on the playground. Maybe, as we dangled from the monkey bars, we noticed another child bullying a classmate. The easiest thing to do would be to ignore the incident and keep playing. The responsible thing to do, however, would be to stand up to the bully. Doing so would be scary but show bravery, and ultimately a powerful act of responsibility.

Responsible situations happen daily. There are always opportunities to act responsibly. 

 What about stepping in to help out a community after a disaster? Or reporting to the scene of a crime?  These things can be difficult but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do what we can to help.

Sometimes responsibility means inserting ourselves into situations in order to do good, and teaching family members why and when it’s important to do so. 

Let’s make a resolution to find the courage within ourselves to take on responsibilities where necessary and teach family members to do the same. By teaching responsibility in families, we are preparing the world’s next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders.