Explaining What We Do
When I first became an entrepreneur, someone said to me, if you can’t explain your idea on a business card, it’s not clear enough. I’ve always kept that in mind. Yet, even when it fits on that card, it still may not have the clarity it needs. We suffered from that problem.
Ever since the summer of 2016 when we formally started Middlerock Partners, we’ve had a hard time explaining what we do for a variety of reasons. In some cases it’s hard to describe the work. We’re not exactly a consulting company, but we are more like an advising company in some respects, but even then, we’re not like anything else we’ve encountered before. A lot of our work is highly confidential, making it harder to tell our story. Much of our work is to get a company from A to B. Whatever that may,,, B.
The Seattle Times wrote a piece earlier this year where we were mentioned as it related to our client. Yet, even that isn’t something we’d write about. In this case, it would make a good book. We’ve taken on some interesting client dilemmas over the past few years and this recent project is just one. The problem remains, how do we describe what we do?
In part, we get so wrapped up in doing our work that we forget to talk about where we are going. We get deeply immersed in our clients problems and often we end up in full time roles for a while. Many of our clients come to us at a very shaky crossroads, and timing and execution are critical. Compounding the problem is they don’t always follow our advice.
I was in a recent conversation over lunch with a very large company CEO and he was asking me about my work and how it led to co-founding E@RTC. I did my best to explain my world, post sale of Open Interface to Qualcomm, while he sat listening and asking questions. I could tell he was giving Middlerock a lot of thought and said, “Oh, you’re really a special projects company.” It was like someone slapped me up the back of my head and woke me up. Why did it take someone else to give us the clarity we needed? It nailed it. It’s exactly what we do, and have done since we began in 2016. Actually, it goes back much further than Middlerock.
Middlerock isn’t just a “special projects” company either, but it nicely frames what we do for revenue. We designed Middlerock to also be a resource for all entrepreneurs and managers, from those who are broke, still working on that first business plan, to large corporations that have some issues they want to resolve without reassigning people within the company. We don’t make money in that area, but it does give us some connection to the startup world. As it stands, startups are rarely a direct part of our business, but we love helping others and so we carve out time for budding entrepreneurs for the benefit of everyone. We want to share everything we know with others.
Our clients needs are so varied that there isn’t a set pattern, other than the overall expectation that we improve these companies somehow. We don’t have a big roster of people in Middlerock because we hire the experts we need, when we need them for the exact problem we’re working to solve. Often, when we learn what our clients want to solve, we can suggest a solution based on what we learn from our research, but it’s up to the client to ultimately chose their path and decide if that solution is best for them or not. We get clients who don’t always like what we conclude, but like your doctor, would you prefer they not tell you what they discover? We’re the same way. We’ll tell you what can work based on our experience and from there it’s up to you.
We’re now going to use the crisper definition of what we do, that we are in fact a special projects company. It fits us well.