The Superpower Marketplace

Written By Scott Saslow

Virtual CEO Summit Recap

 

After a full morning of speakers at our Virtual ONE WORLD CEO Summit, we hosted “The SuperPower Marketplace,” our version of an open mic, in which several CEOs shared specific practices they have mastered. During this time, our speakers were Sri Artham, Founder and CEO of Hooray Foods, Rick Schwerdtfeger, Founder and CEO of Leading Edge Equipment Technologies, Maria Jose Palacio, Co-founder and CEO of Progeny Coffee, and Daniel Enking, Founder and CEO of Everflux Technologies.

 
 

Writing Investor Updates that People Actually Read with Sri Artham, Founder & CEO of Hooray Foods

Our first speaker during the open mic portion of the event was Sri Artham, Founder and CEO of plant based bacon company, Hooray Foods.

Key Takeaways, Insights, and Resources for How to Get Creative with your Investor Updates:

  • Focus on crafting a story and engaging readers, dig beyond the analytical aspects of investor updates and focus on the creative side

  • Philosophy: appreciation, since they invest so much in you as a CEO, a great way to share the personal story with them (bringing them on the CEO journey)

  • Picking a theme for the updates and writing it in a narrative style. Make it visual (graphics) and relatable/personal. Examples: 

    • “Two Years Ago, One Year Ago, Today”. Three themes: 1) Focus on how much bacon was/is produced. 2) Points of Sales 3) Team. Reflecting on how different his startup world is today than before. 

  • Danger in only sharing wins and celebrations (“rainbows & sunshine” all the time), won’t let you be authentic

  • Send email to current investors and potential investors, a few customers, employees, advisor/stakeholders that are really invested in the company

  • Assume that the newsletter will be shared publicly

Resources 

Securing Non-Dilutive Funding with Rick Schwerdtfeger, Founder and CEO of Leading Edge Equipment Technologies

Our second speaker was Rick Schwerdtfeger, Founder and CEO of Leading Edge Equipment Technologies, a company focused on revolutionizing the solar industry with new silicon wafer manufacturing technology. 

Key Takeaways, Insights, and Resources for Securing Non Dilutive Funding:

  • Four buckets of non dilutive funding:

  1. Customer money - consulting firm for a potential customer, sales/pre-orders before you’re in full production in exchange for rights/discounts

  2. Debt financing - general/normal financial loans/lines of credit, capital equipment that you can lease

  3. Government contracts

  4. Government grants - SBIR grants

Resources: 

Growing my Community and Sales through Engaging Micro-influencers with Maria Jose Palacio, Co-founder & CEO, Progeny Coffee

Our third speaker was Maria Jose Palacio, Co-founder and CEO of Progeny Coffee, a coffee company dedicated to lifting coffee farmers out of poverty.

Key Takeaways, Insights, and Resources for Growing through the Use of Micro-influencers:

  • Criteria for finding micro influencers:

    • Below 1 million followers, around 500,000

    • Each post has at least 100+ engagements (discussion, comments etc.), to ensure it’s a real micro influencer

  • Ask micro influencers personally as CEO (and not via an agency) - to try coffee and get on board with the product

  • Provide influencers concrete guidelines (1 google page: What to do & What not to do), how you want them to share & how you don’t want them to share your product

Brand Ambassadors:

  • Get a discount code for the unique influencer and brand ambassador. Incentive to share their content

  • Try to get celebrities that will review your product

  •  Make sure they understand the cause and can tell the story

Platforms recommended:

  • Instagram (you can identify influencers by their follower size)

  • TikTok (more open in terms of who gets traction and is based on views rather than just followers)

    • Targets TikTok influencers based on growth, as in ones that are receiving a lot of views/comments

The Power of DISC in your Sales Process with Daniel Enking, Founder & CEO of Everflux Technologies

Our final speaker during our open mic section was Daniel Enking, Founder and CEO of Everflux Technologies, a company focused on soil health and regeneration.

Key Takeaways, Insights, and Resources for Using the DISC Personality Profile in your Sales Process:

  • Using the disc personality profile can help identify how a person acts and reacts in a work environment/what kind of leader and communicator they are

  • DISC helps you in understanding the decision making process of an individual, very helpful in the sales process

  • CEOs often have the Dominance Personality, as in they are focused on achievement, direct, outgoing, etc.

  • The Influence Personality is also common in CEOs

  • Dominance & Influence: Extroverted Individuals

  • Conscientiousness & Steadiness: Introverted and Emotional Individuals

  • If you can identify these kinds of personality types, you can be more informed about what your sales process is going to be like with different types of people

Resources:

  • DISC test here

  • Daniel wrote a semi-autobiographical action-adventure novel called The China Front, based on four years living in China

 

Find the SuperPower Marketplace session from 1:46:35 to 2:34:30

Scott Saslow http://www.oneworld.training
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