Where has this been the past year?

As humans, I think we all have a predisposition to think we know what we’re talking about. It’s like we assume we know something about the topic, or what the solution is. Maybe it’s hard wired into us since our early ancestors thought “I bet it’s not that scary outside this cave you know. Pass me my spear Terry, I’m off.”

But it’s rare to meet someone who genuinely goes into a conversation and humbly admits they know nothing. Too often we’re hit with “Hey you know what you should do…” or “my 2nd cousin’s best friend’s sister’s dog walker’s masseuse said that the reason your back hurts is….”

Now this is fine for trivial things, but what about something like our physical and mental health? Should we really take anecdotal evidence or gut feeling advice about what will help us?

I’m not ashamed to admit that this past year took a toll on me physically and mentally. Let me be clear, I’m not looking for sympathy. Millions of people had a much worse year than me. But about 5 months ago I saw a picture of myself from a few years back, looked in the mirror and was frankly shocked at the bloke looking back at me. “Blimey mate, you’ve had a hard paper round” I thought to myself.

With the mounting responsibilities that life brings, the growth of Black Nova, running a restaurant with my partner, the COVID pandemic and long periods working in isolation not seeing family etc (my appendix also burst which was loads of fun), it’s safe to say I aged in dog years last year. Oh I also bought a dog as well.

But I made a clear and concise decision that I needed to start taking better care of myself. “I’ve always been active, I get enough sleep, I know I exercise regularly and I eat healthy. This will be easy.” My results said otherwise. Reality hit when my partner bought me a FitPro smart watch, and I realised I knew precisely jack about what my body was doing. I was getting nowhere near enough sleep, not moving enough and my food intake was way overboard.

I’m a stats person. I love measuring performance, tracking it, and always trying to improve. “Where has this been for the past year? Or all the previous years for that matter?” I knew these products existed, but again I assumed I knew how to do it. Instantly it enabled me to make data driven decisions about my diet and exercise, to get into a better sleeping pattern, and ultimately lead a healthier life

This feeling must be what many businesses go through when they find a product that helps them solve acute problems, whether it be how they engage with clients or customers, how they manage teams or how they build their products. Data driven decisions change everything. Businesses should no longer rely on gut feel, or “this worked last time” thinking.

The tools available to monitor and improve your business are right at your fingertips, and more are launching all the time. At Black Nova we’re excited by startups trying to solve these problems. As workforce processes and ops adapt to the future of work, as customer and client behaviour constantly changes to meet shifting demands, we love to hear from startups building products to enable companies to become better at all of their processes.

If you’re building a B2B SaaS product, and are looking for support to take your business to the next level, then get in contact to understand how we can help.

Black Nova are here to support you on your startup journey. With a blend of services and deployable capital, we partner with you to scale safely through the challenging early years of starting out. We provide services across investment, go-to-market, product and talent to empower the next generation of iconic companies.

Now my watch is nagging me to move, so I’m off to do 500 laps of the garden.