GoodSphere

Since founding Contactually in 2011, I’ve spent ~9 years building software focused on helping professionals leverage relationship marketing in order to grow their business. In hindsight, it took us too long to realize how software was only part of the solution. In fact, software by itself is a one-legged stool – completely useless without the rest of the system. Churn was a persistent challenge for us – not “I really need feature X” churn, nor “product Y is better” – the answers we heard continuously were “I just got busy” or “I got overwhelmed.” We implemented a lot – I took up training and speaking and writing directly on relationship building, we built courses for our users on strategies and habits, and did our best to implement that in and around our product. Our users kept asking for more – going as far as asking us repeatedly for 1:1 training. There is a huge missing gap in how we can help professionals better nurture their business, complimentary to having the best tools. I’ve studied, partnered with, referred to nearly every major coaching program and curriculum, and still, found nothing fully satisfactory.

Hitting the open road on my entrepreneurial journey has afforded me the opportunity to scratch an itch I’ve been feeling for a while. So, joining forces with a few others who have been looking to attack this problem for years, we launched GoodSphere.

We took nearly every idea and concept we had and had been wanting to try for years and baked it into a single program.

Going deep – When it comes to nurturing relationships, we are really good at getting in our own way. Fear and overwhelm keep coming up as blockers. Rather than brute-force our way around it (“MAKE 100 CALLS TODAY”), we go deep and address the root issues with proven, yet unorthodox, tactics.

Keep it simple – We avoid the common “shiny object syndrome” and give simple systems. We are really good at overcomplicating things and falling victim to decision paralysis. While many others feed off of that, flooding our minds with new tools and unproven tactics, we are clear and direct with simple habits, done repeatedly.

Accountability – I’ve heard from many coaches that half their job is bugging their clients to do what they say. We removed that burden from our program entirely, with a pretty novel accountability system.

We launched in January, building our “what if we…” dream program. We were committed to the long-term vision of it and likewise warned our clients that it may take months for them to see results. So we were blown away to be flooded by results within the first few weeks. Millions of additional revenue. Tripling their business. Growing teams. And it’s not just business growth – but feeling more in control of their business and lives, happier and at peace – one client shared that this was the first busy period where she didn’t wish she would quit.

We’re now in our third class, and looking to the future. Our first program is narrowly focused on helping real estate agents at Compass nurture their spheres of influence. But we believe that true balance, living in your GoodSphere, entails many other parts of your life and business. And the formula we have developed can be brought to those, and different brokerages, and entirely different industries. It’s also posed a fun challenge to consider how to scale it as a collective of people, most of whom have other lives (95% of my time is focused on Talk Social).

While there are some strong arguments in general for focus, I’ve found walking in two worlds to be enjoyable. The long-term expedition of building the Talk Social juxtaposed with the quick-launch, figure-it-out-as-we-go-along nature of GoodSphere has been a lot of fun to oscillate between.

Also, if you know anyone, we’re hiring a Director of Marketing.