The first Quarter Revenue Retreat Recap

This idea should have come to me so much sooner.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been collecting data on how companies grow from $0 to $250k in annual revenue.

With that data and my own experiences of leading entrepreneurship programs at Yale the last 5 years, this idea of hosting a day long retreat should have been more obvious to me. But it wasn’t.

So, last month, I hosted the first ever Quarter Revenue Retreat where 12 founders who are trying to grow to $250k showed up to work with others on their businesses for an entire day.

We worked on their pitches because if no one understands what you do, nothing else matters. We then worked through a new revenue framework I built based on the data I have, and then had them create experiments in a pretty unique way.

This entire event was an experiment to see what’s helpful for founders in a one day event and based on the feedback I’ll show you at the end, I think I hit the mark.

Let me walk you through it all.

Testing one-liners

Getting your one-liner pitch right is the most important thing for your new business.

Literally nothing else matters if your one-liner pitch stinks.

You can’t market, you can’t sell, and you shouldn’t even think about developing your product or service until your one-liner is great.

Even then, you need to be constantly testing it because your business is going to evolve and so is your customer.

And yes, you don’t need to evolve your pitch to include AI. I said what I said.

Because the reality is that most successful founders aren’t pitching AI in their one-liners.

They’re just simple enough that you and others are able to explain what your business does in one sentence.

It’s critical for selling and for referrals.

So, at The Quarter Revenue Retreat, we spent the first two hours just refining them.

Some founders threw out the pitch they came in with originally and others just tweaked on the edges. Either way, they developed a dozen different versions and got real honest feedback on them from another founder they had never met before.

As I said at the retreat, we rather get it wrong at the retreat than 3 months from now in front of a potential customer.

I had run this session before at Yale and this session just continues to surprise me with how valuable it can be for founders.

Not only did I get to see founders work together to really refine their pitches, but I got to see founders not feel like they’re building alone, the lightbulb moments of “why didn’t I think of that version earlier??”, and maybe most importantly, watched confidence rise as founders pitched their businesses.

If we had stopped there for the day, I think it would have been a successful day by that alone.

But we weren’t done.

The ABCs of Revenue

Once we had the pitches in a good spot, we transitioned to my new framework, The ABCs of Revenue.

A framework for how to grow from $0 to $250k in annual revenue.

Not a single pathway. Not an overly simplified linear process to revenue. Just a framework that shows the numerous pathways you can take to grow from $0 to $250k in annual revenue and beyond.

I felt like this new framework was needed because last year, I developed the 10 ways to grow a business, but it didn’t get granular enough and it wasn’t clear enough how someone actually grew to $250k.

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So, I spent April focused on building the new framework based on the data I’ve collected through interviews to show on one page how businesses grow from $0 to $250k in annual revenue.

Here’s what it turned into:

Awareness Avenues being “how do people learn about who you are and what you do?”.

Bridge Builders being “how do you develop trust with people who already know of you?”

Closing Centers being “how do you make a sale with those that have trust in you?”

For the last two years, I had thought I could simplify revenue building linearly in a funnel format.

In a way I still have that with the ABCs of Revenue but the reality is that growing revenue from $0 to $250k isn’t a straightforward linear process. It’s really a portfolio of strategies within a linear process.

With this new framework, I showed founders others who have grown to $250k and highlighted what they did all on this framework. That way, you can see what strategies they used to grow at a quick glance.

It’s one thing to see a LinkedIn post or a blog post of how someone did something, it’s another to see the big picture in a simplified way.

I was the most nervous about this new framework but I saw the head nods and took a deep breath after that.

It worked.

Founders at the retreat started to circle and highlight what they’re currently doing and then mapped out what they needed to focus on to grow to $250k. In two hours, they had a high level roadmap to $250k for their own business along with feedback from other founders trying to do the same.

Even with this high level roadmap, it’s not a guarantee to $250k. That’s where experiments within the framework are key.

Experiments are the key

Growing a business isn’t just throwing things at the wall or posting randomly on social media.

Growth is intentional testing.

Based on the ABCs of Revenue, the founders then developed experiments to test for the next 90 days in…wait for it…someone else’s business.

Everyone traded their company to someone else who then spent an hour designing experiments for that founder to go run.

The reality is that when it comes to the granular parts of your business, it’s actually a lot easier to look at someone else’s business and give them what they need rather than your own.

Everyone designed tactical, measurable, and time-bound experiments and then chatted through those with another founder.

Because business growth isn’t an art, it’s a science.

The feedback

And if you’re thinking to yourself, “that’s a lot for one day”, you’re right.

Yet here we were with 12 founders having a refined pitch, a mapped out high level plan to $250k in annual revenue, and tactical experiments for them to run in the next 90 days.

And based on the feedback I received, the day was worth it.

I heard things like “it helped me focus in on the important things”, “the experiments were the best part”, and “I love how practical today was”.

It wasn’t just listening to someone lecture or a group of people talking about their own experiences with growing.

It was practical. It was data driven. It was community based.

What’s next

Join the next Quarter Revenue Retreat here

Based on the feedback and others messaging me “when’s the next one?”, we need to do another one.

If you’re a founder looking to grow to $250k in annual revenue and are feeling a little stuck, overwhelmed, or just want to meet others trying to do the same, come join the next Quarter Revenue Retreat.

This July will be in a virtual format so that anyone, anywhere can join. Not just those in Michigan. It’ll be a shorter time frame because all day on Zoom is exhausting but it will be all of the same content and format.

If you want to learn more about The Quarter Revenue Retreat and sign up for the next one, check out the link in the description below.