It’s been a great journey, sad that’s its come to an end. What started as my simply as me attending a networking event to step out of my comfort zones ( I hate networking events and small talk with strangers, super draining) turned into pitching the Spiela Story, to winning a space on a pre-accelerator. Crazy right?
In the last week, we focused on some important topics: financial modelling & public speaking. I felt confident about both having attending drama school and given maybe 50 or presentations to rooms ranging from 20–50+ & having studying accounting from year 12 to undergrad.
Ed xxx made learning about numbers fun. Which is surprising, I remember being bored stiff in accounting classes. the only thing I enjoyed about them was solving the problems and putting theory into practice. It was the personal stories that Ed told about his accounting mishaps that highlighted the importance of what he was teaching and his candidness about the mishaps that resonated with me the most.
We covered some important elements that included the financial statements that are important pillars in our business; cash flow and P&L — we didn’t touch the balance sheet or whatever it’s new name is (all my accounting lectures would be so disappointed right now). The stand out was the material that Ed supplies that do most of the manual laborious work of financial reporting super easy. Thanks for that Ed, no reason for us not to be on top of our reporting now!
We followed up with Rowan who educated us on the framework required to deliver a good pitch. I’ll be honest any time I have to do interactive activities for a seminar I dislike them but Rowan selections were great. It highlighted one key thing, the importance of understanding your audience and communicating with them the way they want to communicate with not the way you want to be communicated with. This reminded me of an earlier workshop where we covered DISC theory and understanding how different types of personalities want to be communicated with.
Overall the YSYS FounderDoor journey has been a blast. It’s pushed me out of my comfort zone, I’ve recorded a podcast episode, attending networking events all things I wouldn’t have considered. In addition to that numerous pivots on Spiela and how we can better solve the problem we set out to solve. I look back at the notes that I made on Spiela in the past and to some degree, it’s a completely different business
Words can’t begin to my graduate and thanks to all the amazing peoples we’ve met over the last 7 week who have given up their weekends and the additional time required to plan. Thanks to Arun, Merlie, Jenny, Nana, Funke, VJ, Deb, Lois, Dama, Kwaku, Gen, Yemi, Rowan, Alice, Ed, Amanda, Taz, Mark, Sonya, Kay, Muhammad, Abiola, Reetu and everyone else (sorry if I forgot to mention you)
Words aren’t enough so the Spiela team will like to say thank you by working hard.
Talk to you soon ✌🏿
-aj
Bedroom 2 Boardroom 🚀 