For years, I’ve been saying that I ought to set up a drivetime consultancy. I’m in the car for 20-30 minute chunks each day, and I’d rather be talking with people than listening to the radio.
What’s held me back is the work involved. I figured I would need to build a fancy scheduling system, and I just never seemed to have enough time.
To heck with that. If I can tell entrepreneurs to get gritty and make things happen, I should be willing to do the same.
Therefore, I’m announcing the Chris Yeh Drivetime Consultancy. Anyone who wants to buy a 20-minute chunk of my time for drivetime consulting (either 8:30 AM or 5:30 PM Pacific, Monday through Friday) can simply send me $100 via PayPal. I signed up for PayPal so long ago that my PayPal address is actually my old business school email: cyeh@mba2000.hbs.edu
Once you send me the money, follow up with me via email (that same business school email still works, amazingly enough) to schedule your call in the next week or two.
If this MVP works, maybe I’ll go ahead and build that fancy scheduling system. And while $100 for 20-30 minutes may sound steep, it’s a pretty hefty discount over my Clarity.fm rate of $10/minute (I’m willing to discount for people who save me from the vagaries of drivetime radio).
Sign me up
I took advantage of Chris’s drivetime consulting offer and wanted to share my impression that it was a fantastic value.
In advance of the call, I sent Chris a short outline of the business opportunity that I had been working on over the past several months. I wanted to discuss whether or not seeking venture capital funding would be a viable strategy.
In his response, he identified caveats and assumptions and then gave me an answer that incorporated his own perspective along with a well-articulated awareness of the VC zeitgeist.
He response was valuable because he identified what threshold conditions I would need to meet in order to attract VC interest and investment.
We also discussed other funding options, including partnering with key customers. I walked away from the call feeling that I had obtained valuable information and with a clear sense of what actions to take next.