The path to entrepreneurship glory is paved with tough obstacles. The good news is that you can overcome them if you (a) operate with the right mindset (b) pick people who can contribute to your vision and (c) work with a disciplined approach. Here are some points to ponder over.
Pursue your passion
Do what you like, like what you do. It is difficult to keep motivation levels consistently high – and particularly during challenging times – if you’re not doing what you love and believe in. Avoid doing anything just because it has potential; design, build and provide a product or service that you understand, solves an existing challenge, or makes a difference in the way that you and others care about deeply.
Take baby steps
Aim for small, daily wins that take you one step closer to your big goal. Be analytical and critical, ask powerful questions, and make the most of the data you can accumulate. Insights-driven decisions have a better chance of working than going ‘all in’ and realizing only later that you could have done things differently.
Plan and act on it
A plan not only allows you to align your actions and decisions to quarterly or annual goals, but also enables you to foresee the future five or ten years from now. Look at planning as a way to generate new information into your business and to challenge your own views and biases.
Don’t sit around on your plans – with delays come lost opportunities and outdated ideas. Today’s dynamic business landscape calls for ideating/innovating, experimenting/trialing, measuring outcomes and improving constantly.
Form a solid ‘A’ team
Even one bad hire can be toxic to your start-up team. Besides recruiting for skills and experience, market your company’s core values to attract like-minded individuals who stick around and serve as valuable assets.
Devote time to self-promotion
Showcase the success of your product/service on social media and through press releases. Contribute guest blogs on authoritative websites in your niche and/or leverage thought-leadership platforms such as LinkedIn.
It helps to build contacts with media websites and forge associations with entities who can enhance your reputation in the right circles.
Be the best version of yourself
Leadership presence matters. Use your position to drive action but also be mindful of your words and behavior. Practice humility, be nice to everyone, and explore ways to increase your trust and influence among employees and peers.
A single-minded focus on revenue can blind you to how badly your business is really doing
By Serenity Gibbons
From the outside, a successful entrepreneur’s career is often made to look like lightning in a bottle. Hopeful leaders and young professionals with dreams of striking it rich on their own rake through articles and memoirs in the search of a hint of the secret and using it to boost their own dreams.
Yes, we acknowledge that they must be smart and confident enough to take risks, but it often seems like there’s an X factor that separates the successful ones from the pack.
We, being the public at large, want to believe in the narrative that plucks hopeful professionals from the masses and hands them an opportunity of a lifetime. An entrepreneur whose story is steeped in strict budgeting and long-term cost per acquisition planning does not come across as exciting as the guy who stumbled across a goldmine. Unfortunately, this narrative is pure fiction.
Yes, it’s true that most entrepreneurs and business owners do not achieve wild success, but it’s not because of some intangible, predetermined force. As it turns out, fate and luck have almost nothing to do with business prosperity. What really separates the success stories from the could-haves is grit, resilience and a steadfast adherence to basic business principles.
Blake B. Johnson, a Los Angeles based entrepreneur, knows entrepreneurs who aren’t willing to take the time to build strong teams and core business foundations on basic business principles are simply digging their own eventual graves. Johnson knows because he has experienced this first hand.
As a young finance professional, Johnson forged a reputation for himself as an employee largely uninterested in the perks and adulation that are typically bestowed upon successful financiers. His uncompromising and undistracted work ethic boosted him to the top-producing position with his company in less than two years, which in turn opened new windows of opportunity for Johnson to try the entrepreneurial lifestyle on for size.
In just 18 months Johnson grew his first company’s revenue stream from $5 million to $100 million. On paper, Johnson represented the fairytale business stories that grip so many young professionals. But Johnson also realized that anything can be deceiving on paper, including the health of a company. After all, revenue does not equate to a financially sound venture, because it can disappear in an instant — and for Johnson and his team, that’s exactly what happened.
The 2008 recession exposed weaknesses in the business operations that the impressive revenue stream had previously shielded. On the brink of bankruptcy, Johnson made the decision to rebuild from the ground up — only this time, he promised himself he would build a company grounded in three core business values he had previously underestimated.
Honing in on these principles not only paid off as a sound rebuilding strategy for Johnson’s first company, but they have since proved to be the most important facets of his successive ventures, including Currency Capital and Prime Marketing, a firm dedicated to helping consumers repair their credit after the recession.
These principles are not groundbreaking; in fact, they’re often covered in Business 101 classes. Anyone with any entrepreneurial background can incorporate these pillars into their companies.
1. Cash flow
Every business owner is intent on finding ways to make money as quickly as possible. However, often early cash flow estimate grossly underestimate how long it actually takes to build up a revenue stream.
As you are planning a financial roadmap for your business, Johnson advises doubling your cash flow timeline; if you think it will take 6 months to ramp up, in actuality it will most likely take a year. Taking a reasonable timeline into consideration will help you allocate your capital and resources efficiently as you launch your business.
2. Expenses
No one enjoys logging expenses. However, taking a stringent approach to strategic budgeting recording every penny spent may spell the difference between success and failure for your company. It’s easy to tell yourself that a $10 cab ride does not matter in the grand scheme of your business expenses.
But $10 cab rides quickly pile up. If these seemingly minimal expenses are not accounted for, you may find yourself wondering why you can no longer afford your office rent. You may not want to be known as a penny pincher, but in Johnson’s experience, the most successful leaders practice frugality at every turn.
3. Cost per acquisition metrics.
Most first-time entrepreneurs obsess over revenue calculations but often overlook how much it actually costs to turn a profit in the first place. As Johnson rebuilt his venture, he shifted his priorities and fixated on how much it would actually cost his company to gain a new customer. Paying close and constant attention to individual CPA metrics allowed him to make stronger financial choices up front that set his company up for long-term success.
Most entrepreneurs are blinded by flashy metrics like revenue stream, but revenue stream cannot hold up a business in the long run. While no entrepreneurs wants to see his company nearly disintegrate, the collapse clarified the importance of paying attention to business basics, which has been the Johnson’s success ever since.
Being your own boss means freedom — and responsibility
By Constance Gustke
After being laid off as a journalist, Dorie Clark realized that being her own boss was the best way forward. In the next several years of self-employment, she discovered one important trait: willingness to learn.
“There’s an essential mindset for being your own boss,” says Clark, a New York City-based marketing strategy consultant and author of “Reinventing You.” “You have to be the one who brings in the business.”
Getting away from an employee mentality is hard, Clark says. Defined tasks are a thing of the past for many, and being your own boss means honing many skills and focusing on the big picture. “Entrepreneurs don’t own a task,” she says. “They own an outcome.”
But the payoff for mastering your own destiny can be big. Income is potentially unlimited. Your free time is highly flexible. And you’re not reliant on one client — your employer — anymore.
Not having a paycheck is frequently seen as risky, she says. But entrepreneurs actually are risk mitigators. “As a small business, you’re relying on multiple clients, so you’re better positioned to weather disruption,” she says. In her experience, she adds, “It’s much safer financially.”
There’s no entrepreneurial gene, Clark says. Success comes from working hard — and taking the following steps.
Identify a business where you can thrive. Understanding what you’re good at is key, Clark says. That can mean relying on skills you already have, pinpointing your passions and experimenting with different niches.
After becoming an entrepreneur, Clark tried political consulting, but she quickly realized she wasn’t getting much traction. More business was coming from nonprofits and other companies, so she focused her efforts accordingly. “Learning that early on [was] critical,” she says.
Build social proof for your business idea. Social media is a key tool for building a business these days. You can do that by blogging, posting photos on Instagram or Facebook, tweeting or producing a podcast.
Clark points to serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk as an example. He originally started blogging about wine. “And then he realized that he was a terrible writer,” she says, “so he moved to video.” Now he has nearly 800,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel.
“If you’re not good at writing, Instagram is a great venue,” Clark says. “And you’re only required to take photos, which nearly anyone can do, such as for wedding planning.”
Serve your customer well. Understanding what customers need is your main mission, and that means talking with them about what they want. Start with your own network, where you’ll have an audience you already know and who knows you.
“Never insist on doing things your way without getting new information,” Clark says. “Get close to customers so you can tweak pricing or service.”
Keep learning new skills. While you can outsource some skills, like bookkeeping, it’s best to learn others yourself. For example, be your own salesperson.
“You are the most believable messenger,” Clark says. “There’s something powerful about hearing about a product from the founder.”
Developing solid speaking skills is important, too. “You can get lots of mileage out of it,” she says.
Build a network of mentors. Clark recommends building a board of advisors to mentor you over time. “A trusted group of people in your industry is very helpful for alerting you to new trends,” she says.
Clark relied on her own network when she started teaching courses on the website Lynda. She asked: How do you market the courses effectively? How do you follow through with students? “You can’t figure this out in a vacuum,” she says.
“It can be lonely being an entrepreneur,” she adds. “You have to figure out everything on your own. But building a network makes an enormous difference.”
It’s still possible to create a Silicon Valley success story. But to do that, your company is going to have to be scrappy
By Daniel Wesley
Since the 1970s, Silicon Valley has been a place of innovation and promise where driven individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit could realize their visions, even if those visions emerged from their parents’ basement or humble garage.
Apple and Microsoft were among the earliest of these companies with humble beginnings. And, since then, giants like Google and Amazon have followed in their wake, also rising to global prominence.
Today, however, startups seem to be in a slump. Although 558,000 new companies formed in 2006, only 414,000 businesses launched in 2015, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data. Since Facebook became an established tech power 13 years ago, it seems that the biggest companies have done an excellent job predicting threats to their dominance — and quelling them early.
As a result, startups have greater hurdles than ever to overcome in their climb to relevance. Yet, pushing a startup to success isn’t impossible: Business leaders just have to be quick to identify new opportunities and follow a few strategies to think — and grow — outside the box.
Drought conditions
It’s still possible to create a Silicon Valley success story; it’s just that the enormous scale of the companies mentioned above hasn’t happened since Facebook. Take Airbnb, for example: It’s one of the most valuable tech startups in the world, but the company’s $31 billion worth is a paltry 6 percent of Facebook’s $500 billion market value.
And consider Venmo’s success in the person-to-person, or P2P, payment space. Since its pioneering development of that industry, Venmo has enjoyed a level of success not many startups achieve. But competitors are on the case: Since Venmo’s purchase by Paypal in 2013, its P2P payments feature has been duplicated by Square and Snapcash, among others.
And Apple will claim its own piece of the pie by incorporating P2P payments into iMessage. That adoption is a late one but nonetheless demonstrates the ability of large companies to incorporate features of their smaller competitors and make competition more difficult.
Even if your own idea is promising, your startup likely won’t stand up to much scrutiny from investors if they’re comparing it to Facebook, Airbnb or even Venmo. It might be tempting to accept the first funding offer you receive, but if all you really need is money, you’re better off just heading to the bank. Hold out for an investor who doesn’t expect your startup to become the next Apple, and emphasize that you’re willing to earn investment equity with your own sweat equity.
Funding isn’t the only means you’ll have to compete with larger brands, and getting funding might feel downright easy when it’s time to hire new employees. Competing for talent against Amazon, Facebook, Apple or Google is almost impossible. No matter how attractive tech graduates find your company culture, your salay scale will inevitably fall short of their expectations.
To acquire talent, you’ll have to get to those talented people earlier and more creatively, using events such as hackathons and other competitions. Have your executives or other leaders reach out to promising candidates to make a better impression than the run-of-the-mill recruiters employed by the bigger companies.
Surviving the startup dry spell
Competing might be difficult, but there will always be entrepreneurial opportunities for those willing to dig for them. I’m a firm believer that the internet will continue to change the way we live, from helping us find instant answers to our questions, to making shopping or business operations ever more convenient. Artificial intelligence will also open doors, and despite a certain level of fear surrounding AI, there’s nothing all that scary about computers unearthing deeply hidden patterns that humans themselves are unable to spot.
No matter what the market in which you hope to establish yourself, competing against major companies will always be an uphill battle. In addition to old-fashioned grit and determination, here are a few more strategies to help your startup gain a foothold:
1. Be scrappy. Getting things done is easier — and cheaper — if you use some street smarts. We bought all our office furniture with rewards points from corporate credit cards, and we use deliveries from Amazon Prime Business so that valuable employee time isn’t spent on an office paper towel run. Instead of an expensive coffee service, we bought a Keurig and stocked up on pods from Sam’s Club. If yours too is a small business, try not to overpay when you can save with minimal effort.
Of course you can’t always avoid spending money, but you should explore all your options before you sign up for something big like a subscription to workflow management software. You can get most of the same features from an option such as Trello for free and then spend more down the road when you have the cash for it. Almost 30 percent of businesses will run out of spending money before they can generate a sufficient level of income, according to CB Insights. Don’t let your business fall into that group.
2. Seek out local talent. With any luck, you’ll be able to find employees already living in your area who aren’t willing to relocate, no matter what the salary. Not every person trained in technical industries, for example, wants to move to Silicon Valley or the East Coast just because the pay is right. Many people love where they live and will gladly accept positions they’re qualified for that are located in their own backyards.
Find these potential employees through advertisements posted to your industry’s local message boards and free social media posts. You can even get creative: Zeefo CEO Alex Stepanov was the first business leader to start recruiting tech talent outside climbing gyms. Climbing gyms! What began as a somewhat unorthodox practice is now being imitated by recruiters from companies of all sizes. Don’t hesitate to go outside the traditional avenues of LinkedIn and email listings. Creative efforts will yield better results.
3. Listen to your employees. How do you react when an employee brings a great idea to the table that goes against your company’s mission? Change is hard, but if you can identify a long-term value proposition in a controversial idea, it could be time to chart a new course. A willingness to listen signifies a critical shift in leadership, from directing to coaching, and demonstrates to employees that they’re more than just bodies at desks.
Far from frightening off enterprising entrepreneurs, the current climate of startup drought should instead inspire more intelligent innovation. Large companies might have seemingly endless resources at their disposal, but they don’t have you.
Combining thoughtful leadership with hard-won capital investment and enthusiastic employees is your recipe for achieving the next level of startup stardom that’s overdue for the current decade.
Unless you are already Walmart, don’t get sucked into competing on price
By Stan Peake
If you’re an entrepreneur who ever has to go to tender with your product or service — those three little letters can raise your blood pressure and unleash a barrage of expletives. Why? Inherently, we know that a high percentage of the time, Requests For Pricing (or Proposal) are often decided by the lowest cost provider. Of course, this is not always the case, as several variables may influence the decision, but you get the point.
While there may be subtle curve balls we can throw to change the decision-making criterion in a call for multiple providers, there are simpler ways we can avoid entering that rat race altogether.
The first lesson for many entrepreneurs is that not all customers are created equally. Just as a larger organization might identify their decision-making criterion when selecting a vendor, an individual consumer subconsciously is juggling several variables when deciding whether or not to buy from you.
Knowing that the price tag is also being weighed in their minds against quality, durability and other factors, businesses can learn to position their offering in a way that avoids a single variable (price) decision on behalf of the buyer. This can be done in several unique ways.
Bundling
Home entertainment companies may sell televisions and home theaters (which can be compared apples to apples with other companies), but they can also sell installation services, an extended warrantee and integration solutions based on the internet of things (IOT) that transform the way consumers might enjoy their products.
Differentiate
The automotive industry is a highly competitive one. Each of the major companies in a particular customer segment offers comparable products (ask anyone with a truck, “Ford or Chevy?” and you will start a debate!), with subtle differences they hope to capitalize on. Ford is known for their technology, Volvo for safety, Audi for luxury performance, and so on. They will all get you from point A to B which is the function of an automobile, but they each try to position their mode of transportation in a very different way.
Price structure
Rather than having to be either a “high end provider” or a “low cost alternative,” what about changing the structure of the price? Think of the massage industry. You can pay upwards of $150 for a one-hour massage in a tranquil spa, or you can find a massage for $60 or less an hour in a rough part of town where you might need to clarify the scope of services being offered! A third direction might be a ‘massage membership’ where a monthly fee covers a monthly or weekly massage, and clients start to look at their massages as a part of their total health solution rather than a dollar per hour decision.
Go-to-market strategy
Changing the way your customers buy, or how they receive your products, can drastically change your business. Where do you buy your groceries? Do you go to a 100,000-square-foot warehouse superstore to save money, or do you go to local market to get as close to “farm to table” as possible, knowing you’re paying more for lemons, honey and bread in exchange for knowing its source? What if there was a third direction — having your groceries delivered? Now you’re not comparing the price per lemon, you are placing a value on the convenience of shopping online and having your groceries come to your doorstep.
Psychology
Just as the famous ink blot test is used to understand how certain patients think, powerful marketing campaigns evoke emotion into the purchase decision so that potential buyers feel strongly about their products compared to others. In Simon Sinek’s famous TED talk, he demonstrates this beautifully when comparing Dell computers and Apple in the way they market to their customers.
Layered strategies
If each of the above can change the purchase decision, imagine coupling two or more strategies? Using that grocer example, charging a monthly membership for delivery of differentiated (organic or locally farmed, for example) products combines three different potential value propositions to create a very different experience and value for the end user than couponing at grocery store A or B.
In summary, companies today need to be different on purpose, or they get bunched in with everybody else, and the one variable that every consumer understands when having to decide between too many similar choices? Price.
Want to avoid a “race to the bottom” where providers perpetually must lower their prices? Be different, then price differently.
Another day, another pitch from an entrepreneur. The ones who go somewhere all have one thing in common: They get to the point.
If you can’t explain your business in a few minutes, then you’re probably going to struggle. The success hack that works is to get to the point!
Life is precious, and so is our time. We don’t have two hours to listen to your long-winded pitch and see 56 Powerpoint slides with size 12 Times New Roman font. Get to the point, squire! Here’s how to get to the point and tell me succinctly what your business does.
What is the problem you solve?
Given that business is nothing more than problem-solving, what problem do you solve? Describe it to me using all of my senses. Make me give a damn about what you do even if it’s not my passion or expertise. Look me in the eye when you’re describing the pain I should be feeling caused by this problem.
Don’t tell me the entire history of your problem. Instead, give me three (just three) key points to illustrate in beautiful images the problem your business solves. Take me on a journey with this story about your problem. Stories sell. Make it real. Make it authentic. Make me care!
How big is that problem?
If the problem you solve is tiny compared to the rest of my problems, then you’ll have a hard time convincing me. Make this problem real for me but choose problems that are big and worth solving. Big problems have big rewards.
If your problem is a “nice one to have,” you’ll struggle to get momentum.
Why should I care about the problem you solve?
There are lots of problems but how does your problem affect me personally? Answer this question, and you’ll make me care. Once I care, you can take me through the solution and have my attention. My attention is the only thing you should want in the beginning. Social media has made attention the most valuable resource of the modern era.
I won’t understand what your business does unless I care. Without caring, I will be biased towards not understanding your business. The mind likes to focus on things it cares about. Again, make me care. Make me feel an emotional connection to your businesses.
Otherwise, it’s nothing more than a price play. “Your business is rubbish, but it’s cheaper so I’ll try it” becomes the default human response to your business.
Who are the people you serve?
A business doesn’t exist without a customer to serve. That customer is a living, breathing, human being (until robots arrive and become customers) and they have to be central to the story you’re presenting. If you don’t know your customer, then you don’t know their problem.
Many businesses have a great vision, but no practical customer to sell it too. Know your customer and get into their heads. Spend a day in their life and see if your solution really does something tangible for them. Being too broad with your business and targeting everybody never works.
Every business starts with a niche and then expands from there. Capital in the startup phase is limited, so you have to be hyper-focused on your customer base and the problem you solve.
What traction have you had?
If your business has this great idea, but it’s never been used by a customer, then I’m not interested. Don’t give me excuses. Go out there and try your product or service with people on the street if you have to. Test it.
Traction has the following characteristics: You’ve successfully solved a problem for a prospective customer; that customer has given you their feedback; someone or something has come into contact with your product or service; and more than three people have been customers of your business, excluding your dog, mother and significant other.
Are you someone I like or do you make me think differently?
Part of getting to the point is making me like you. If you have the world’s best solution and I dislike you like I dislike Hitler, then you’re probably going to have a hard time convincing me to buy in. If you fail the likability exercise, but make me think differently, then you still may have me as a supporter.
No one wants to have an army of suck-ups saying yes to everything they do. But, we all want to be challenged to think differently and to feel new experiences, as much as we pretend we don’t.
The challenge as I see it is that entrepreneurs are trying to say too much. It’s not about what you say, but often about what you don’t say. It’s the silence between the ideas that you present which help communicate what your business does.
If your business is not simple and can’t be spoken about that way, then you’re going to get lost in the cesspool that is the startup ecosystem. You’re going to find yourself going to too many meetups. You’re going to see low engagement on your social media posts. You’re going to get tired and burnout from the lack of people listening to what you have to say.
So, tell your story; get to the point; use emotion; and make me care.
To succeed, a small business has to leverage every resource it has available
By Deep Patel
Existence and survival are the first two stages in the development of a small business, according to a five-stage model put forward by the Harvard Business Review. Small businesses are more likely than large ones to face threats from finances, innovation and barriers to market entry.
To survive and thrive in such an environment, small-business owners need to be frugal and calculating with their resources to fully harness the power of what’s readily available to them.
Here is a list of the latest tools that small businesses can use to maximize their profitability.
1. Due
Despite consumer credit card dependency, card processing systems are (often) still slow and expensive. Due aims to solve business processing headaches with one streamlined solution. Due’s payment solutions offers highly secure and expedited credit card processing at a rate of just 2.8 percent. Additionally, Due prides itself on transparency and users never face additional monthly or hidden fees.
2. MouseFlow
Ever wanted to get more insight into how your customers are actually interacting with the features on your site? MouseFlow has a solution: the tool takes a CCTV-like recording of the activity of each visitor on your site. MouseFlow forms heat maps of where your users have been putting their cursors on the various pages of your website, allowing you to home in on which features are the most intuitive and best received by the average visitor.
3. You Need A Budget (YNAB)
“You Need A Budget” sounds like a tagline, but it’s actually the name of the service itself. YNAB helps businesses with their accounting and legal needs by offering a number of debt visualization and categorization techniques — valuable software when you consider that one third of all small businesses fail within two years. The tool, which promises a 34-day free trial, has helped a number of entrepreneurs accurately calculate the scalability and profitability of their products, thus allowing them to weather the critical existence and survival phases mentioned above.
4. GetResponse
Want to keep track of and organize all your marketing efforts in one centralized space? GetResponse can do just that through its multidimensional marketing automation platform, which tracks email marketing, landing pages and webinars. It can even help to automate the marketing process as a whole so that your business can focus on innovation. The GetResponse conference is a crucial event that highlights the functionalities of integrated and automated marketing software for small-business owners.
5. Slack
Want to efficiently outsource labor? Need a way to hold business meetings remotely with a number of people in different time zones? Recode estimates that three million people now use Slack every day to manage their remote teams. Slack is a messaging platform that has it all: text channels, calling and video, as well as file- and screen-sharing, all in one convenient, easy-to-manage bundle.
6. Intercom
Twenty thousand businesses use Intercom for personal customer communication. Customer management can be difficult when you have various avenues of communication, including through the site, through phone and through email. Intercom allows you to aggregate all of these functions in a noninvasive blue messenger box at the bottom right-hand side of your screen.
This allows your customer service representatives to clearly and easily keep track of who needs immediate attention, where users are coming from and even what pages they are currently looking at, to facilitate the most accurate customer service experience.
7. Trello
Need a place to put all of the ideas that the people in your business and your customers give you? Trello’s like an online whiteboard. It’s the perfect medium for brainstorming and arranging tasks according to priority. With 14 million users overall and one million daily users, Trello will allow your company to boost how it records and prioritizes ideas and how it adapts.
8. Shopify
Business Insider claims that ecommerce will grow by approximately 8–12 percent as a result of increases in mobile sales, along with a relatively stable market from PCs. Shopify offers an interface that allows your business to take advantage of this transitioning and globalizing market by giving you the ability to quickly assemble an aesthetically pleasing and intuitive ecommerce platform for your business.
9. Rapportive
Emails are an often overlooked form of marketing. If used correctly, they can provide great results when it comes to driving leads, conversions and retention. Most people wouldn’t expect email marketing to be one of the most effective marketing methods, but reports show that the average ROI for email marketing is much higher than that for other methods.
In fact, Delivra estimates ROI for email marketing to be $43 for every $1 spent. Rapportive is a handy plugin that works with Gmail to allow your business to keep better track of its email interactions and campaigns with its customers.
10. Google Docs or Dropbox
Google’s data centers are huge, taking up miles of space, and they have a global, interconnected fiber-optic cable network to service their data. When you’re managing a group of people, communication and keeping tabs on the amount of work that is done is essential. Google Docs is omnipresent and comes with your Gmail account, so it’s an easy way to link everyone up. If you’re looking for a fancier solution that offers plenty of space, Dropbox is a good alternative.
Tony Robbins says every entrepreneur needs to be able to overcome their “threshold of control.”
By Richard Feloni
While all of Tony Robbins’ one-on-one coaching sessions are personalized, they’re drawn from more than 30 years of experience in coaching — and for his business clients, what he’s learned from running his own portfolio of companies.
In September, the winners of Shopify’s Build a Bigger Business competition won the chance to be personally mentored by Robbins at his Fiji resort, Namale. The winners are the founders of profitable online retailers bringing in millions of dollars in sales who are in the midst of scaled growth. While that’s a mark of success by most measures, each of the entrepreneurs are in fragile positions that will determine the fate of their business.
We went to Fiji to spend time with Robbins and the winners, and in a podcast interview — which you can listen to below — he told us that there were two fundamental insights that guided each of his mentorship sessions.
Prioritize your customers, not your product ideas. “I’d say there’s only one way to really succeed long term — and it’s simplistic but it’s true,” Robbins said. “It’s add more value than anybody else.” And the way to do that, he said, is by falling in love with your customer, not your product.
“If you fall in love with your product, you’re screwed,” he said. A common mistake new entrepreneurs make, he explained, is failing to notice changes in demand from their customer base because they’ve wrapped their identity in their company’s first offering. Expanding the brand or pivoting to a new approach will be just as fruitless if the decision is catered to vague market developments rather than a relationship with a specific customer base. “You’ve got to figure out how to know more about them than anybody else does,” he said. “Maybe they know about themselves in some areas.”
Pinpoint your ‘threshold of control’ and learn to overcome it. Throughout Robbins’ week with the Shopify winners on Fiji, he repeatedly had them pinpoint their “threshold of control,” to help them learn to overcome it.
Robbins used an example from skiing: You’re an intermediate skier who skis blue square (intermediate) slopes, but one trip up the mountain you realize you’ve accidentally begun going down a black diamond (expert) slope. Skiing is dangerous, and potentially fatal if you don’t know what you’re doing.
You then have the option to either intensely focus and figure out a way to make it through the trail, or else slide or walk down the rest of trail. If you choose the former and make it down on your skis, even if sloppily, you’ve passed a threshold of control.
This same fear is common among entrepreneurs who suddenly find themselves in charge of both a rapidly growing team and millions of dollars. Running a scaling company can seem like the black diamond slope for a founder who feels comfortable running a successful small startup.
There are many factors, including luck, that determine whether a company can achieve long-term sustainability, but a crucial factor for success is the founder’s ability to determine their threshold and push past it. “Courage isn’t that you’re not afraid, it’s you’re scared sh–less but you decide that you’re going to focus on what you’re here to do versus on what you fear, and you push yourself,” Robbins said.
I think it’s human nature to look for big solutions to challenges—the silver bullet. Unfortunately, in most situations, I’m not convinced there is a real silver bullet. I think this is particularly true for creating an efficient business. Most of the time, business efficiency is a combination of relatively small and incremental steps that cumulatively have a significant impact.
With that in mind, here are six relatively simple things you can start doing today that will help you amp up your personal efficiency as well as create an environment where your employees can be more efficient too.
Look for ways to simplify and automate business processes: This is easier said than done, but creating business efficiency is a worthy effort. Michael Gerber, author of the E-Myth Revisited, suggests, “What you do in your model is not nearly as important as doing what you do the same way, each and every time.”
In other words, look at your most successful practices and find ways to make them repeatable. A documented employee manual could be one of them, but if there are places you can automate those processes to ensure consistency, even better. Whether it’s something as simple as automating the way you pay your bills or something more complicated like ensuring that all your customers get the same experience regardless of who they talk to, automating the processes that make sense is simply a good idea.
Instigate a daily standup: In the software development world, some groups conduct a 10-15 min standup every day to review what was accomplished yesterday and determine the goals for today. It’s called a standup because it’s intended to be short, and standing up makes it difficult for 10 min. to turn into 30 min. or an hour. You don’t have to be a software company to take advantage of the daily meeting. In fact, you’ll likely find everyone takes more ownership of their individual tasks and is more efficient if they know they are going to be accountable tomorrow for what they’re supposed to be doing today.
Establish interruption-free time blocks: This is another one that might be easier to talk about than do. If you’re regularly interrupted with impromptu meetings, emails, chat messages, or other distractions—making it difficult to focus and get things accomplished—it’s likely the same is true for your employees. Depending upon the nature of the role, it can take several minutes to get back on task after a random interruption, making you and your employees less efficient.
For example, if you tend to get the most done first thing in the morning, turn off your email alerts, shut your office door, or otherwise create an interruption-free work environment. Years ago, I had an employer who gave us all a multi-colored light box we were to use when we were working on a project that required uninterrupted concentration. If a colleague had the light on, we avoided interrupting him or her until they were out of the “zone” so they could stay focused on the work at hand.
Discourage multi-tasking: I know people who claim they are able to successfully multi-task, but the preponderance of the research (as well as my personal experience) convinces me that the ability to skillfully multi-task is a pipe dream. If you are a great multi-tasker you might be the exception, but most people can really only focus on one thing at a time. Many years ago, Charles Emerson Winchester III, one of the surgeons on the television show M.A.S.H. said, “I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then I move on to the next.”
Although the nature of most roles today require some form of multi-tasking, creating a work environment where your employees can focus on the task at hand will help your employees be more efficient.
Call it a day at the end of the day: Too much overtime or regularly requiring heroic effort to accomplish your mission is a warning sign that something’s wrong and negatively impacts business efficiency. What’s more, in addition to fostering a culture of burnout, in roles that require creative problem solving, too much overtime reduces your, and your employee’s, ability to creatively approach and overcome challenges. Late nights, poor eating habits, and the associated stresses experienced by employees who have no release from work, introduces more mistakes and is actually less productive.
Take an hour to think: Let me share one of the best pieces of advice I think I’ve ever heard. You might not think this could impact business efficiency, but I’ve seen how it can. I met Dick Cross, author and nine-time turnaround CEO, after he’d written his first book, Just Run It! He’s spent much of his career as the guy they bring in to turn a company around and make a flagging company profitable and healthy. In all of my conversations with him, I found him to be a brilliant business strategist who has the experience and knowledge to build a successful business.
He suggests the role of a business leader is not only important; it’s critical to the success of any business. He advocates taking at least an hour every week to think about your business, where your at, where you want to go, and how you’re going to get there. He also says it’s very hard to carve out an hour a week without the interruption of the phone, email, or other distractions. It might even feel awkward to sit quietly and just think, but you might be surprised at the result. He counsels business owners to step away from the day-to-day tasks that often take up so much time and do some thinking.
Lock your office door and start with 20 or 30 minutes if that’s all you can carve out in the beginning, but build up to at least an hour and you’ll be surprised at the insight and inspiration you’ll discover. I’ve tried this and it works.
Running an efficient business is a goal many small business owners share, but it doesn’t just happen. It requires sustained, strategic effort along with an understanding that sometimes small, incremental changes that positively impact productivity are often the solution.
Growing your startup in the early stages can be tough. It’s difficult to market your business when you’re a new entrepreneur and aren’t sure what strategies will work.
However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in multiple entrepreneurial ventures, it’s that there is no guaranteed roadmap for success.
Growth hacking is the perfect fit for startups because it throws out the traditional marketing playbook and encourages pursuing users and growth through testable, trackable and scalable methods. Anybody can growth hack like an experienced entrepreneur if they embrace extremely focused and inventive methods that have the potential to snowball and create self-sustaining growth.
While there are no strict rules for growth hacking, I have learned three valuable tips:
Tip 1: Reach Product-Market Fit
Marc Andreessen, the entrepreneur behind Netscape, Opsware and Ning who also sits on the board of directors for Facebook, eBar and HP says:
“Do whatever is required to get to product/market fit. Including changing out people, rewriting your product, moving into a different marketing, telling customers no when you don’t want to, telling customers yes when you don’t want to, raising that fourth round of highly dilutive venture capital — whatever is required.”
This is the most important lesson an entrepreneur can learn: You will never be successful trying to growth hack a product or service that people don’t want. Even a good product can fail if there is no market or demand for it, or if your product doesn’t meet the specific needs of that market.
Learn when to tell customers “yes” and “no.” Andreessen talks about an important aspect of achieving product-market fit when he mentions telling customers saying both things when you don’t want to. This comes back to going after the right customers and the right market. Early on at ComputerSupport.com, we lost our largest client and I thought it was a death sentence. It turned out to be the best thing for our business, because that client wasn’t a good fit for us and we may have been tempted to change our services just to keep them around. Instead, we refocused on the clients that were a good fit, said yes to their needs, and ended up growing the company by 50% over the next year. Tailor your product, say “yes” to the customers who are in your ideal market and say “no” to the rest.
Collect customer feedback. Basing your company’s growth on customer demand requires you to have a very good indication of what their needs are. At Unigma, we created a public roadmap to collect suggestions for product improvements and share the improvements currently in progress. This allows us to collect specific ideas from our market and prioritize improvements based on which ones have the most demand.
Tip 2: Go Guerilla
It’s important to understand that there are no guarantees of results for entrepreneurs trying to growth hack on their own. I’ve had many growth hacking successes and even more failures. The key is to invest in many inexpensive growth hacking strategies and only continuing with the tactics that you see a measurable ROI from.
• Look for unorthodox marketing opportunities. Traditional marketing is not only crowded; it’s expensive. Look for niche sites that nobody else is advertising on, up-and-coming social networks and unproven methods of pulling in your ideal audience.
• Be creative and spontaneous. In our daily standups, we welcome any and all ideas, whether they seem outrageous or not. You never know if something will work until you try and test it. Be open to trying outside-the-box ideas, and be quick to jump on opportunities as they present themselves.
• Sell into your network. Your first and best customers aren’t going to come from any advertisement or marketing gimmick. Both of my companies started with me personally reaching out to people in my network that I knew would be great fits for the product. These people will be the most receptive to adopting your solution, and more willing to advocate for your brand.
Look for other startups to sponsor or partner with. One of the best, inexpensive ways to extend your network is to partner with other startups that offer a complementary product or overlap with your market. As long as their audience is a good fit for you and vice versa, you can both benefit from cross-promotion.
Tip 3: Build Virality Into Your Product
When Airbnb was first starting out, they coded a set of tools that allowed renters to seamlessly cross-post their Airbnb listing on Craigslist. This gave them free distribution on one of the most popular websites in the world.
The most important aspect of this tactic is that it allowed existing Airbnb users to share the platform without requiring any additional work or investment from Airbnb. Growth hacking shouldn’t just be a set of marketing tactics you test to try to grow your users. It should be baked into your product and everything you do: This is the best way to turn your initial users into brand advocates that will help you reach even more users and so on.
There are many ways to build virality into your product. Here are a few more examples to help you start thinking outside the box:
iPhone and Android include “Sent from my X phone” at the bottom of emails sent through their phone.
Spotify integrated with Facebook so users could share what they were listening to.
Dropbox offers free storage space for every friend they refer
Each of these tactics requires no marketing budget and allows your existing users to beget more users.
While growth hacking like an experienced entrepreneur when you’re new may seem like a disadvantage, it’s actually a strength. Throw away any preconceived notions about marketing and instead go after new, scalable ideas that you can see real growth from.
Lucidity SBM 