Acknowledge Your Achilles Heel

As we discussed in last week’s Female Maverick Must Dos for Rule Two: Build your Kitchen Cabinet, your own personal kitchen cabinet could be the difference between wild success or spectacular failure. We were amazed to learn that only 30 percent of entrepreneurs have one. Having a group of advisors and/or close friends who can call you a genius and a dumba$$ in the same sentence might be a Female Maverick’s greatest asset. Who else can tell you the unvarnished truth when you are heads down building a business? Before we go on, let’s review the Female Maverick Must Dos for Rule Two.

Assembling the group that will give it to you straight, however, takes time and effort. We found that brutal honesty was as important as business acumen, and that women in our lives were generally better at giving the unvarnished truth than men.

Let’s start with something easy - be honest about what you can do, and what you can’t.

If you came up with a business idea capable of making real money (see Rule One: Prioritize the Right Idea if you need a refresher) you’re clearly amazing. Nevertheless, no one we know runs the table on every single critical skill it takes to launch a successful business. In our experience, most mavericks go deep in a few of these important areas, but they need a boost in others. And that’s where your kitchen cabinet needs to be ready to pinch hit.

So, the first step to building the right cabinet is to take an inventory of the critical areas required to launch and execute your business idea successfully. Build a skills matrix and leave blanks for any area where you could use a little help or (be honest, get over yourself if you need to) where you are flying completely blind.

Brainstorm first, prioritize second.

When creating your skills matrix, include every must-have you can think of for your business as it grows. You won’t need them all on day one. But you can prioritize as you scale. Thinking through all your current and future skills needs, and highlighting the gaps, will help you keep your eyes open for the kind of people you need in your network today and down the road.

Here are a few skills that were part of our matrix and that can help you start yours.

• Strategy building. New businesses need six-month, 12-month, and three-year goals along with a detailed plan for how to reach them. Keep in mind that strategic thinking and strategy building are two very different things. Having access to an expert who has done the latter, either on their own or while leading a division of a larger business, could be crucial to helping you cover all the angles.

• Money matters.  Women are notoriously bad at asking for money, and investors are notoriously terrible at giving us money. Women comprised less than 5 percent of total venture funding in 2023, so chances are we could use some expertise in this area. Go find yourself a seasoned pro who can help you quickly summarize and sell financial modeling points you haven’t considered since your college accounting class.

• Legal / HR expertise.  Writing contracts, applying for patents, drafting partnership agreements and figuring out how the hell you collect money in different states and countries without getting snagged by the taxman are table stakes. So is managing your employees as you grow. Too many times, we have seen HR put at the bottom of the list, and boy did we, I mean they, regret it.

• Product or service features.  While you validated your TAM and considered you potential competition as part of Rule One, you will need to map out the specific and detailed features that will ensure your idea makes a splash and captures the attention it deserves. You most certainly will have a fantasy wish list, but the right sounding board will be key to deciphering need-to-haves versus have-to-haves.

• Pricing. Books (really boring ones) have been written on this topic. Expect more opinions than you can shake a stick at on how much your product or service should cost. The more diverse your kitchen cabinet is, the greater the chance of different, and usually confounding, opinions. Consider listening to all of them the lesser of two evils; it beats shooting yourself in the foot out of the box if the price is wrong.

• Scaling.  This might be the most important skill, so do not let this potential blank in your skills matrix go unfilled. You will eventually need smarties who can share good and bad experiences and rock-solid advice. Don’t skimp and be sure to cast a wide net to fill multiple seats here— find slow burners, rapid expanders and steady-as-she-goers. Trust us, this sh$t is hard.

What’s Next?

Now that you know what you need, it’s time to establish a first gen kitchen cabinet that can deliver. Next week you are going to turn your skills matrix into a spiffy visual framework to show off the potential matches within your network (or adjacent to it) including friends, family and next-door neighbors. Bring your contact list and colored pencils and be ready to get creative!