March 3, 2017
It is hard to know where to start. The last few months have flown by in a bit of a whirlwind. But it really all started a year ago when I enrolled in Digital Nova Scotia’s – Navigating New Sales Channels program hosted by inspiredEggs’ John Robertson. To be honest, I had originally enrolled because I knew John was doing some things in the same industry I have been hustling in and thought that if anything, working more closely together on a regular basis could help solidify a good partnership moving forward. I also thought to myself, if the likes of entrepreneurs like Alex Gillis are enrolled in this course then you know it will be a good one! These regular meetings actually turned out to be more like the consistent sales mentorship I needed at just the right time to help me with the new challenges that were popping up every day at a time when our MVP was finally built and ready for testing. You can never plan for the things you don’t know about, so having an ally like John on our side to help us foresee some of the challenges we did not even know to plan for was crucial to our success over these past few months. Not only that, but his guidance in using channel partners to scale our sales quickly is what has enabled us to get farther than I imagined at this point. This, coupled with the fact that he is always generous with his time and network, forever connecting the participants to the right people, was the extra cherry on top that helped us to kick our sales into high gear. I should mention that even after the course, he continues to be an ally and mentor who we speak to for advice on a regular basis.
During this period of time, I have gone from only having the finishing stages of an MVP to connecting to the perfect channel partner where together, we have landed several pilot projects (with some of the largest players in our industry). This has allowed us to hit 6 figure revenues in our first month of deployment with pilot partners who will provide us with compelling case studies.
We are growing quickly and are in fact currently looking for a Lead Gen Specialist here in Halifax to assist us with this growth. Startups are so much fun because of how dynamic they are. To think that just a few months ago I was finishing up customer discovery and testing our technology. Now, after successfully deploying our first round of tech, we find ourselves in the stages of scaling and automating our sales process. Knowing now that we were going to need to learn new skills around every corner only solidifies more in my mind that having John’s help, to prepared at every turn, was crucial to our initial burst of sales.
A massive thanks for the support we received from Ulrike, Emily, Rosie, and the rest of the team over at Digital NS and of course to John Robertson and my fellow course-mates: Alex Gillis of Bitness, Laurie Dolhan of Dadavan – Cultural Codex, Paul Farmer of VidSnippets, and Corinne Boudreau of Two Certainties Law Inc.
Megan McCarthy
powerWHYS Technologies Inc.
Founder & CEO
Please note, our Navigating New Sales Channels Program is now recognized as the Incubating Ideas Program.