The FemtoConf 2018 Notes and recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Title: Mental Health Superpowers – self-reflection, relaxation, and connection for the entrepreneur
Website: ZenFounder.com
Twitter: @ZenFounder

The Entrepreneur Life

• No one else is writing your paycheck
• You take what’s inside you, put it out into the world and make money
• Really high highs and really low lows ==> emotional rollercoaster

Why did you choose this path? 

• 70% did it because of freedom
• 40% creativity
• 30% more money
• 40% terrible bosses
• There are some great upsides
• A lot of “internet marketers” are selling the dream and giving the impression that you are failing if you’re not killing it
• Downsides: 
  • Isolation
  • Anxiety
  • Burnout
  • Failed relationships
  • Sleepless nights
  • Becoming obsolete
  • Instability
  • Self-doubt
  • Failure
  • Selling yourself over and over and over again
• ==> The psychological price of entrepreneurship
• We need to pay attention to our well-being
  • Your work depends on YOU

Burnout

• Z73.0 Burn-out state of vital exhaustion
  • Physical & emotional exhaustion
    • not having any energy
    • no spark
  • Cynicism & detachment
    • You don’t care anymore
  • Ineffectiveness & lack of accomplishment
    • No relation to reality
    • You feel like you’re not moving the needle
• Burnout has the power to change the function, structure, and chemistry of our brains
• 30-40% of attendees feel they have experienced burnout
• Burnout is caused by: 
  • Not enough social support
  • Lack of clear, meaningful goals
  • Too much work (multi-tasking – great book: “Deep Work”)
  • Few observable or rewarded successes
  • Limited control over work
  • A mismatch between what we think is important and the demands of our work day
  • constant interruptions
  • conflicting goals (family vs. business)

Founder Superpowers

• #1: Breathe
  • Breathe deep into your belly
  • Sit relaxed, place a hand on the belly button, inhale & exhale through the nose, try to move your hand
  • 5 deep breaths (5 seconds in, 5 seconds out) are enough to start calming you down and push anxiety away
• #1b: Sleep
  • sleep is the most important way for our brains to reset
  • Benefits: 
    • Improve memory
    • Improve concentration
    • decrease excessive eating
    • improve mood
    • build immunity
    • decrease mistakes
    • improve productivity
    • extend life
• #2: Body
  • stand up straight and stretch your body for 2-5 minutes
  • If you battle your body, you will lose. 
• #3: Brain
  • Add some silliness to the thoughts that frighten you and put it on a shelf
• biggest protective factor: friendships & connection

-Christoph

The FemtoConf 2018 Notes and recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Full title: Following up… without looking & feeling like a complete dirtbag
Website: Bluetick.io
Twitter: @singlefounder
Slides: 

• When you email people it is hugely important to you, but barely registers with them
• Clarification: Follow up email!= Cold email
• Why follow up? 
  • Was it received? 
  • Did they make a decision? 
  • Did they inform you of that decision? 
• If they don’t answer those questions, you have an open loop
  • Follow up is about closing the loop!

Email Black Hole

• There are 4 common reasons
  • #1: They never received it
    • Mail server issues
    • Wrong email address
    • Filtered as spam
    • Out of office/vacation/traveling
  • #2 Received, but dismissed
    • Email filters or rules
    • Irrelevant subject line
    • Skimmed & made “wrong decision”
    • Gatekeeper said “Nope!”
    • Wall of text
  • #3 Received with best of intentions
    • Traveling, working remotely or mobile device
    • Mailbox flooded / Email Bankruptcy
    • Dropped off their radar
    • Something on fire
    • Guilt from not responding sooner
      • BONUS: Follow ups give permission to reply
    • Popular misconception: 
      • If it’s important to them, they’ll reply
      • ==> Follow up more than feels comfortable. It works.
  • #4 They hate your guts
• #1 Incorrect Value Association
  • The value of an email is measured in 2 places
    • The Recipient: What does the email do for them? 
    • The Sender: What does a response mean to them? 
  • The value of a response does not feel measurable at the time an email is sent
• #2 Time Constraints
  • Feels like busy-work
  • Because… deadlines
    • I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make when they pass by. 
• #3 Your Emotions Will Get the Better of You
  • Sending follow up emails is emotionally painful
    • You feel like you’re repeating yourself
    • Variable rewards schedule
    • Negative emotions disproportionally outweigh positive ones
• #4 We are afraid
  • Terrible emails

Does Following Up Work? 

• 52.8% average open rate
• 5.9% average reply rate
• Average of 11.3% subscribers block tracking pixels – you don’t get “open rate” stats for those!

Successful Follow Ups

• When: Select situations where it makes sense
• Action: Clearly define the single action you want the person to take
• Automation: Templates, software, reminders, Zapier, outsourcing, etc. 
• Personalization: Use their name, use your own domain, reply to previous emails, etc.
• Pass along first name, last name, and email address when redirecting people to Calendly/etc!
• First email in sequence requires users (your!) approval, all steps after that are fully automated

-Christoph

The FemtoConf 2018 Notes and recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Title: Achieve GDPR compliance without losing your mind
Website: SmartLeads.com
Twitter: @pl4n3th 
Slides & help: Slides // gdpr4saas.eu

• Protects personal data of persons inside EU
  • any piece of information that can identify a physical person
  • Data subject’s rights
• any person who’s physically inside EU
• Privacy
  • What you can do with people’s data & what you can’t do
• Security of processing
  • Processing is collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration… EVERYTHING. 
    Once you touch data, you’re on the hook
• Joint responsibility as Data Controller & Data Processor

Risks & penalties

• European companies will ask for GDPR
• people will ask for their rights
• Stop collecting and/or processing personal data 
• Fines… 

Set of best practices

• Marketing & customer relationship
• Security
• Functionalities

Keep Calm & Document

• processes & procedures
• Record of processing activities
• Privacy notice
• Take inventory of your data
  • You want to know the Who, What, Where, How long, Why, and How?
  • Do I really need that data? Do I really process it? 
  • Where? 
    • Transfer to third country: 
      • Adequacy decision
      • “Privacy Shield”
      • Standard data-protection clauses
      • Data Processing Agreement
  • How long do you store the data? 
    • You need to state a duration
• Train your team on privacy & security
  • Identify when “it’s personal data”
  • Procedures for: 
    • Marketing campaign
    • New users stories
    • Transfering list of contacts
  • Privacy by design & by default
  • Profiling, retargeting
  • Notification of personal data breach to authorities within 3 days

Review information to people

• What you’re doing with people’s data
• How they can exercise their rights

Update your consent process

• Clearly distinguishable
• Intelligible & easily accessible form
• clear & plain language
• Make it easy to withdraw consent

Implement data subjects’ rights

• Access
• Rectification
• Erasure (“right to be forgotten”)
• Portability (easy to read by machines. Make it easier for people to switch services)
• Restriction of processing

-Christoph

The FemtoConf 2018 Notes and recaps can be found on the central hub page.

Full title: Why even the tiniest companies should think about their “brand” – and how to get it over with in 3 hours or less
Website: Userlist.io
Twitter: @ClaireSuellen
Slide deck & brand sprint templates: bit.ly/brand-sprint-femtoconf

• I’m not an expert on “brand”, but I had to become “okay” at it
  • “brand” stuff makes me uncomfortable
  • Original idea for brand sprints comes from https://library.gv.com/the-three-hour-brand-sprint-3ccabf4b768a
• Brand or Brand Development
  • Brand is a promise you make to your customers
  • Makes your life easier and your company more attractive
• branding 
  • Messaging & positioning
  • voice & tone
  • color palette
  • website & product design
• Brand Marketing
  • Efforts to build top-of-funnel awareness of your brand, sometimes in ways that are difficult to quantify – e.g. billboards
• Brand dev challenges you to think more holistically
  • Where will my company be in 5 or 10 years? 
    • Lets you make smarter marketing and pricing decisions
  • Your company will keep growing. That’s what successful companies do. They don’t stop. – Jason Cohen, MicroConf 2014
• Brand development simplifies all the “squishy” decisions
  • How do we describe our features? 
  • How do we tell people how awesome our software is? 
  • What should the logo look like? 
• a consistent experience makes your company feel trustworthy
  • Imagine meeting a person in t-shirt and jeans one day and a tuxedo the next day. Which of the two versions “are” they?
  • It’s confusing, same goes with the brand
  • Brand development lets you outsource work – without worrying about losing consistency
    • How should a page on the website look? 
    • How do we write copy? 
    • What’s our tone when we do customer support? 
• Brand Development helps your employees, customers, and potential strategic partners (3 target audiences – not just customers!)
• Slide deck & brand sprint templates: bit.ly/brand-sprint-femtoconf

How to run a Brand Sprint

• Do it. Takes 3 hours
• The 6 brand sprint exercises
  • Your company’s motivation
    • 20-year roadmap
    • What, How, Why
  • Your unique details
    • Top 3 values
    • Top 3 audiences
  • Your brand relative to others
    • Personality sliders
    • Competitive landscape
• Before you sprint, prepare – it makes the actual sprint faster
  • Make sure there are no phones

Step 1: The 20 years roadmap (15 Minutes)

• Write down your predictions for your company for 5, 10, 15, and 20 years
• Share with your team members and discuss
  • What do you do after you get acquired (if that is the plan)? 
• It was great for Benedikt, Jane, and I to learn about each other’s visions
• If you’re doing it in a group, have a decision maker. At the end of the 15 minutes discussion he/she highlights the most important vision in 5,10,15,20 years
• Do we want to raise money or not? 
• Are we going to be part-timers on Userlist forever? 
• Are we going to grow it to 100+ employees?

Step 2: What, How, Why (30 Minutes)

• What we do
• How we do it better than anyone else
• Why we do it
  • We enjoy to work with founders and want to make their lives better (Great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA)
  • Why are we making money with this exact product? 

Step 3: Top Three Values (30 Minutes)

• Write a list of 5-10 company values, these should help make why (above) more specific
• Start with a long list, narrow down in first round, then select the Final Top 3
• e.g. “honesty” will be a great guiding light in dark times

Step 4: Top 3 Audiences  (30 Minutes)

• Same process as Step 3

Step 5: Personality Sliders (30 Minutes)

• Pick your stand point on each of these scales
  • Casual – Formal
  • Young – Experienced
  • Modern – Classic
  • Simple – Complex
  • Friend – Authority
  • Quiet – Loud
  • Feminine – Masculine
• With Benedikt, Jane & I there was a lot of discussion about “Quiet – Loud”

Step 6: Competitive Landscape (30 Minutes) 

• place competitors on two-dimensional matrix relative to their brand personality:
  • Classic – Modern
  • Expressive – Reserved

-Christoph