This is Part 10 of a weekly series on my growth and development at a software startup in Austin Texas. Click here to view the full series or start at Level 1.

Back at it again with the meetings.

Level Ten Stats

Weapons gained:

  • Connections + 2: One of the weaker weeks in making new connections. Though I’m still amazed that even though this week I didn’t actively seek it out, I still met probably 5 new people and developed good connections with them. 
  • Ability + 6: Each week, I’ve been increasing my meeting count with customers. This week I had a bunch of meetings both with new customers and follow-up meetings with customers I’ve already talked with. Balancing all of these meetings while still getting things done has proved difficult but I’ve been developing better routines to make the best use of time in between.
  • Knowledge + 4: I’ve been doing a fair bit of research on our new automation we are working on involving RPA (Robotic Processing Automation). Understanding how it works and also how it fits into the practices we work with has been very eye-opening this week.
  • Discipline + 4: My phone broke this week which caused both good and bad things to happen. Good in that I didn’t have the distraction at work. Didn’t have texts I was replying to etc. But bad in that it threw off some of my routines because I was working on getting it fixed and having to run back and forth between going to get the situation figured out and getting to meetings. It made me realize that I need to set up a 30-minute system or so for looking at my phone. This way I will still look at it routinely in case it’s anything important, but I also won’t just be looking at it every time a message comes through because that throws off my routine all over the place.
  • Organization + 6: I’ve honestly been really happy with the system I’m using to keep track of my meetings, to do’s, and follow-ups. Very simple but I feel like I’m really getting things moving at a quicker pace as I get more and more used to my organized system.
  • Strength + 2: Nothing special on this end. I’ve continued doing my small morning workout, but not much else besides that.

Kills: We’re going to a big Eye Care conference in two weeks and I was tasked with the job of setting up a few meetings with customers who would be there so that we can talk to them. Within 24 hours of being asked I already had 5 customers interested and within 48 hours had 2 scheduled.

Deaths: Was hoping for a more explosive week off my long weekend and it wasn’t quite what I hoped for.

Outside the Game

I laid low this week. Talked to a lot of people on the phone from back home and friends in other parts of the country. Was a really good week, just in a different way than it usually is.

Final Takeaways

Meetings is the theme for me now. I’ve gotten really comfortable talking to our customers and am really starting to enjoy it. I love hearing from them and trying to figure out what we can do to help. If they are succeeding, I count that as a success for us, and that’s the real win for me.

I can’t wait until I’m even more proficient in our system and can start to answer even more complicated questions, but I’m honestly pretty happy with where I’m at.