The Monthly Meetup is an initiative of the Young Human Club. An online Business Club for Entrepreneurs, Experts, and Digital-Service Providers to work together and make change happen.
This blog is a recap of what happened during the second Monthly Meetup, written by Koen Vaessen, who runs The Vegan Academy, and a founding member of the #YHClub
Monthly Meetup #2
It’s Thursday the 25th of February, 17.00 Amsterdam time.
Since this is the second Monthy Meetup, I honestly felt more tension than the last time. I felt like we needed to show that we could give more value. That we had worked on the feedback that we received the previous time.
With more time to prepare and promote and even collaborate with Plantbasednews, we expected a much bigger show-up than we had last time. In total, 12 people signup just through this promotion, plus another 2 people who already joined us last time.
When the clock hit 17.00, I impatiently looked around and only saw the first person entering the Meetup.
Oh no, I thought to myself. Where would this go?
Luckily when the minutes passed, more people slowly dripped into the Meetup. Having eventually 5 people join us for today’s Meetup.
After the introduction and speed-networking, Randy hosted the Workshop about how to turn your vision into reality with OKRs.
The OKR Workshop
During this 20-minute workshop, Randy Hereman explained the difference between SMART goals and OKR’s. To understand better what to focus on to reach your bigger goals and create more alignment within your team.
A big take-away from this wasn’t just the information itself, but also the mindset of how we view goals. We often think we are busy and feel we do a lot of work, but does that mean you are actually productive? And does what you focus on help you directly to get closer to your goals?
That’s what OKR’s help you with. It’s about asking yourself the questions, what defines success and what metrics matter most?
The use of Airmeet allowed us to ask questions, host polls, and engage with the attendees during the workshop, which created a lot of fun interaction and provided real solutions to people's (business) problems.
We polled if the attendees wanted to dive deeper into this topic, to which everyone agreed. Randy asked if anyone would like to come on stage to share his goal and build an OKR together.
Yannick bravely did, which led him in just 30 minutes from having a vague goal to specific OKR and tangible action steps.
After we finished this part of the Meetup, we split up into tables of which one led by myself and the other by Randy.
Expert Table Conversations
It was fascinating to me that people didn’t just want to talk about business but also felt a strong urge to converse about their health and well-being.
The table I led was focused on that specific topic which led to an interesting conversation about the benefits of a whole-foods plant-based lifestyle and how to make that transition successfully.
A vegan chocolate maker from Belgium discussed the challenge of making healthier alternatives for sugar and speak to an increasingly health-conscious audience.
On the other table, they discussed OKRs. The dominant question was; what is the difference between goals and OKRs?
Our conclusion: Goals define where you want to go. OKRs tell you how you’ll get there.
The bigger a team/organization gets, the more value they get from OKRs because it makes goals and results visible so that everyone knows who is working on what and why their work adds value to the company's bigger goal.
What can we learn?
In terms of the overall feel, the interaction, and the value people got out of the Monthly Meetup, we can say it was a success.
However, the numbers are far less than what we expected and hoped to do. Looking at our OKR’s, we have set a goal to have 100 unique people join the Monthly Meetup by the end of Q1. Of which at this point we haven’t reached 10% of that.
Another goal to reach our OKR’s is to have a 50% return rate for all the people who join the Meetup. Currently, we are at 25%. Even though one more person from Meetup #1 wanted to join, but was unable due to a technical error.
We are doing something right. That we are providing value and that people enjoy what we are doing.
But there is still a lot of work cut out for us before we can reach our objectives and validate our plans and business model.
What’s next?
Tuesday, we have some hard assessing to-do and figure out how we can improve our numbers.
If you think you are the right person to help us with this and want to join the Growth Train, send us an email at Randy@younghuman.com.
Want to join us during our next Monthly Meetup on Thursday the 25th of March instead?
We look forward to seeing you there.
With gratitude,
Koen from the Young Human Club