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| How to mentally prepare for your raise… | Over the past few weeks, I’ve increasingly been talking with clients and subscribers who are just burned out. Many have been trying to raise for 6+ months and are now struggling with the emotional ups and downs of fundraising. This has prompted me to re-evaluate the human aspect of fundraising. | I was recently hired by North America’s largest urban innovation hub, the MaRS Discovery District, which operates as a government-funded not-for-profit organization providing support to over 1,200 science and technology companies. In this role, MaRS will pay me to offer free support to 50-60 seed-stage companies per year, helping them raise capital. This role has allowed me to work with a wider range of people who are not longtime subscribers and often come from non-entrepreneurial backgrounds. This means for many, their innovations came first, and fundraising strategy was not at the front of mind early in the company’s development. | What I’ve noticed is that with many of these companies, the founders are mentally exhausted. They've dedicated their lives to getting a product off the ground and now must dive into fundraising, starting with their tank near empty. This is a recipe for failure. Fundraising is much harder than anyone imagines; that's why most of my clients (ones I work with outside of MaRS) are multiple-time founders. They understand the challenge and use me to ease the burden. | Here are some tips that I have for how to mentally prepare yourself for fundraising and how to ease that mental burden: | | One Account. Every Market. No Closing Bell. | | Markets don't wait for Monday. News breaks on a Saturday morning, and most traders can do nothing but watch. | Not on Liquid. Trade domestic and international equities, commodities, forex, crypto, and prediction markets — all from one account, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Liquid gives you access to any market, from anywhere, anytime. To us, access is arbitrage. | Getting started takes under 10 minutes: log in with Google, deposit with Apple Pay or a bank transfer, and trade from your phone or desktop — wherever you are in the world. | While everyone else is refreshing headlines and waiting for the open, you're already positioned. That's the difference between reacting to markets and actually trading them. | Trade 24/7 on Liquid Today |
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| | Don’t start on empty. If you have spent the last year developing a product working 16hr days, 7 days a week then unless you have investors knocking on your door, this is not the time to jump into fundraising. You need to take a some time off, get yourself together, get mentally reset then you can start focusing on fundraising. Unlike innovation, fundraising requires you to have strong interpersonal skills, which are often the first thing to go when you are overworked. Here is how to effectively take that time off: Select a week and notify everyone on your team. It should be 9 days from Saturday to Monday with a whole five-day work week off in the middle. Pick your time at least a month in advance so that you can spend 3-4 weeks doing extra work beforehand, so that you aren’t falling behind while you are off. This should also include ensuring that your responsibilities are assigned to other team members, so they can prevent you from coming back to a pile of work. Remove social media, Slack and other energy sucking apps from your phone. You can have them back in 9 days, but give yourself a break from the constant drain. Plan activities, most of us entrepreneurial types are not good at sitting around. Make sure you plan ahead and have some activities planned such as hiking, boating, driving, reading, etc. Try to spend time outdoors. I’ve found that time outdoors helps you feel rejuvenated. I’d also recommend that you plan some “healthy” eating. Enjoy your food, but don’t just eat junk; it will make you feel slow.
Once you are refuelled, you need to mentally prepare for the challenge ahead and focus entirely on it. Trying to split time between fundraising, managing, and development is impossible. If your team is big enough to support you going 100% on fundraising until you have raised, do that. If not, then set aside days in your calendar for fundraising, management and development. On those days, focus only on the task at hand; don’t switch between functions, as it will drain you. Prepare for rejections. You will likely hear lots of NOs before you get a YES. Get yourself to a place where you are comfortable with that, as it can be extremely mentally taxing if you aren’t prepared for the challenge.
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