I founded Zirrø — a local & ethical grocery delivery service — a few month back, in a Covid-free world. I thought that I was getting on a nice and easy ride at the time but the journey has already proved to be a rollercoaster and I am sure that it is going to get even more thrilling…
This week I am embarking on an exciting new part of this journey, starting the 6-months startup accelerator from Impact Central — a programme designed for startups with a social or environmental impact. The first week was quite intense with a lot to digest and think about already.
What will this be about ?
I met a few very inspiring entrepreneur already through the programme, whether they are in my cohort or speaking within the program.
So I am creating this blog as a journal to log my notes, thoughts, progresses, failures, etc encountered over the course of the programme and my hope is that, in 6 months, when I will read this article again, my first reaction will be “My God, what a journey… how much have I and the business learned, evolved and changed over the course of the programme”.
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The idea is to be transparent and honest about everything and the thoughts going through my head at the end of each week as we meet inspiring and amazing people along the way. Sharing is caring, right ? Well I’ll try to care a lot more then moving forward…
First things first… Let’s do the introductions!
I always struggle when I need to introduce myself for the first time, how much shall I say? How long do you have? Shall I just go “Hey I am Vincent, I am 35, French, married — I love sports, travelling and watching wildlife” or shall I go the long route?
As it was our first week, we did work on introducing ourselves in a few interesting ways during this first week, from imagining a river representing your life with its rapids, junctions, rocks, etc… to Pecha Kucha presentations (12 photos — 20sec per photo to sum up who you are — really makes you go to the essential). I promise I’ll tell you the full story in a future post :)
But however unsettling or fun these exercises were, they left me with a few thoughts:
1 — Everyone has a unique journey and all journeys are inspiring one way or another.
2 — Everything I have done in my life has had an impact on who I am, what I do and why I do it today.
3 — I feel closer to people in my cohort because of how transparent everybody was about their own journey, ups and downs. Can full transparency be a way to build trust ?
An entrepreneurial journey can be a lonely one, and Covid definitely did not help in my case, so meeting people facing similar challenges and being able to share and get help from each other already feels great… Gives me courage to keep working on our problem in the coming weeks.
But what is the problem ?
Feels like an easy question, right? After all if we are all starting a business we must know what we are trying to solve, isn’t it? WRONG!
Sure, deep down we all know why we are doing what we do, but being able to articulate the problem in a concise and persuasive way to someone not familiar to the issue is a whole different story.
And it is really easy to start jumping into solutions and what we do to solve the problem because it justifies the purpose of our business. But what is the essence of the issue? Can we make the issue clear and simple enough to people so they engage with us into solving it? That’s the real trick.
An audience is never going to buy your solution if they first do not understand the issue at stake and what problem you are trying to solve.
Less is more
With Zirrø, we are committed into finding solutions to make grocery shopping more local and sustainable — so we focus on protecting local businesses, reducing packaging, food waste and carbon emissions.
I like data and number, so obviously I threw a lot of data to prove why over packaging, food waste or carbon emissions involved into delivering groceries are an issue for the planet — completely lost my audience after the second number. What was I trying to prove, that I know my subject?
Yes, probably, and that was missing the point, the purpose was to expose the issue and engage people into caring for my problem — not proving that I know the issue better and teach a lesson about it.
Story is everything
Global warming is probably the biggest issue of our time but a very complex one too — showing numbers on how over-packaging, CO2 emissions etc contribute in this complex process is interesting at best, but it feels out of reach. People might care about the issue, but they may not engage if it is too big a problem for someone to do something about it.
Throwing a lot of complex and high level data is not going to convince my audience. Showing how their own shopping habits contribute to the issue however and how with a few tweaks, that we help them embrace, THEY can make a difference, this has a great change to engage people along with us.
Where does that leave me ?
Very excited, because I already met inspiring entrepreneurs from my cohort and within the programme but also because this exactly why I joined this programme.
It is very easy to put your head down and get swallowed up by operations, trying everything to grow your business, improving your processes, communicating on social medias, but losing sight of why you are doing it.
And that’s also why I think this programme is going to greatly help Zirrø. Yes, it will be time consuming but it will also force me to take a step back from the day to day operations and think about more strategically about the business, which I love.
I can’t wait to see what the next 6 months bears for us.
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