10 things I wish I knew earlier about starting businesses.
Photo by Aaron Fernando on Unsplash
It’s easy to look back at our mistakes and wonder how things might have gone differently, if only. There is only so much value to be had in that mode of thinking. The moment has passed, the decisions were made and paths were taken.
What does remain is the learning, the residual growth that can, if treated non-judgementally, can be the route to future success. The only thing to do with a good failure is to appreciate it and milk it for all its worth. Move over ego, I’m mining this failure for all its worth.
My current work of exposing the paths of business builders' journeys to their First 10 Customers has forced me to examine my own path to this point and the many things I’ve learned along the way. Most of these things were learned the hard way, but all of them have taught me things that now are a part of my subconscious judgment when making decisions. I don’t need to wonder why this decision feels right, past experience has taught me that the “other” ways didn’t get me where I needed to go. It also saves me time. Rather than chasing possible futures, I can immediately ignore the ones I know from experience won’t work for me.
What I’ve found interesting in speaking with founders on The First 10 Podcast is that some of these missteps seem to be universal, and crop up again and again. “Easy decisions, hard-won” is the term I give to this class of knowledge I’ve gained. In future blog posts, I will detail the little trips I made with previous ventures that didn’t work out.
Here is a list of 10 things I’ve learned along the way that might help you improve your decision-making process.
1. Figure out what the market needs
The statistics on failed startups aren’t pretty, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore them. Their truth is an important warning to us when we start out to build a business. Knowing that most new businesses fail because they don’t address a need is the only motivation we should need to make sure that we don’t fall for the same trap. I once started an online repair service for broken headphones (scratching my own itch — see below). After 2 sales in 3 months of promoting it heavily, I canned the whole idea because it turned out that the market was telling me an important message about their needs. It’s ok to scratch your own itch but find out if there are enough other people who have the same itch.
2. Build strong relationships
When I think back to any success I’ve ever had in business, it’s been mostly because of who I met, and not the thing I produced. That sounds weird to say because, in a lot of cases, I was providing a thing, such as a product or service, but always that thing was in service of a person. Whether it was the customers I was selling to, the clients I collaborated with, or the partnerships I got involved with, the people make it happen, make it real. In the background, I’ve written an unholy amount of emails, proposals, landing pages…you name it, but at the end of the day, it’s us endlessly fascinating humans that made all the difference. Doubling down on your relationships, or understanding what makes people tick, is time well spent.
3. Find your Minimum Viable Audience
Minimum. Viable. Audience. I learned this idea waaaaaaay too late into my career. Figuring out the smallest number of people you need to make your business work is essential in making progress. It works on a couple of levels. Firstly, it helps you to focus on the match between what you are offering and what your customers need (see above, and below). Secondly, it helps us avoid the delusions of grandeur that can quickly overtake our thinking leading us to make “something for everyone”. Thinking deeply about your MVA enhances everything from your story to your impact.
4. Get involved in things you think you’re not interested in
I’m always open to collaborations (see “The Relationships Rule” above) and putting myself out into the world has been a fun and enjoyable way of getting new ideas out into the world. But in the early days, when I had more of a scarcity mindset, I found myself saying yes to collaborations on ideas that I had zero interest in. An online Home Insurance platform? Sure! Oh no, wait. A collagen-based health supplement company? Let’s go. Actually. Let’s not. Saying no has served me far better than saying yes. Just ask Oliver Sacks.
5. Get out there and talk to your customers
Steve Blank said it best when he coined the term “Get out of the building”. His advice for startups was to get out and meet their customers as much as possible to get the vital feedback that could help them find the elusive product/market fit. He wanted them to leave their laptops behind and have actual conversations. I realized only recently that a side benefit of doing this was that you also escaped Anchorman Syndrome. This is when you brainstorm a new idea, and quietly in the background, groupthink sneaks into the room sets in. Suddenly everyone agrees that the new idea or approach is the best one, simply because we all agree it is. It’s easy and comforting to agree with our colleagues and friends that this is the best way to go, but the reality is that “we” constitute an exceptionally small sample size.
6. Be specific, clarity is kindness
When I first started coaching, my pitch was basically “I coach people to do things”. Oh man, was it an uphill struggle. After a while, I bravely refined this to “I coach business people to change their corner of the world”. Hm, slightly better but still, not great. Too broad, too watered-down (see “MVA” above). I really struggled to find clients, always thinking that I needed to improve my sales skills, get a better website, buy another marketing course. It was only when I hit on the messaging of “I help business builders find their First 10 Customers”, that all of a sudden, I heard people say “Oh right, got it!” and I became really busy. Being vague not only did me no favors, but it also wasn’t generous to those I was trying to serve. It was putting the onus on them to try to understand how I could help them instead of being clear and fearless about what I was offering. Clarity is kindness.
7. In the specific lies the universal
Related to the above “Clarity is Kindness’ point, early on, being vague was also a case of me trying to throw a big marketing net out there, to see who I could reach. Most people passed right through the net. I attempted time and again to narrow my offering, but an underlying fear of going so specific, or niche, that I wouldn’t be able to find anyone, always scared me. What I found when I landed on the “First 10 Customers” idea, was that within that one simple idea, lay a plethora of options. Podcasts, blogs, Workshops, sprints, coaching engagements.…so much suddenly became available to me that I’m no longer stuck for ways to provide value for those I serve. Only when we focus on the atom, can we see the constellation inside of it.
8. Understand why your customers buy
Doubling (tripling) down on the “Market needs are your fuel” and “MVA” points above, I have to say it again. Know thy customer. In a conversation about understanding customers with my friend Ian Scott, he advised me to “find someone with a first name and a blood type—a real person you can build for. This way you can solve for actual needs and get direct feedback from the people you seek to serve. That way, instead of building it for some generic persona, you build it for a genuine person: ‘This solves X for Samantha’”. We can spend all day thinking about demographics and psychographics, but the realization that I never, ever buy something because I’m between 40 and 50, a homeowner, or because I have 2 kids and work for myself was a lightning bolt moment for me. It may be a correlation, but not causation. The reality is that I (and you) buy things to make some sort of progress in our lives (i.e. to get a job done). Understanding this helped me on the road to truly understanding the same in those I sought to serve. A key to this is understanding my customer worldviews, and how, in appealing to those first, and not the fact that they are a homeowner, enabled me to truly step into their shoes.
9. Get comfortable with uncertainty
Working for yourself, no 2 days are the same. The cliche is true. As much as you need to get used to this idea, you also need to get used to the fact that this is often portrayed in a positive light (imagine, the fun!) but the reality is a constant feeling of spinning plates, juggling tasks, and a vague sense of uncertainty. In seeking the freedoms that most self-employed people are after, being comfortable with uncertainty is a necessary skill. In the context of a day filled with tasks of varying priorities and content, that can mean putting aside any feelings of what the day should look like, and tackling what the day actually is. Yes, eat a frog first. Yes, GTD. Choose your productivity weapons, but most importantly, spend a little time creating a plan for dealing with the overwhelm that will show up.
10. 3,2,1…Go!
Related to the “Start over” point above, this one trick has often gotten me through the “I-know-I-need-to-do-this-but-I-don’t-want-to-do-it” tasks. If I start the day and see a task that I had pre-planned to do, that now looks either boring or difficult, I give myself a 3-second countdown to start it. That's it. 3–2–1. Go! I’m not entirely sure why this works, but it does and that’s good enough. Try it!
Of course, the learnings don’t stop here! What should be obvious here is that none of the failures behind these lessons were game-enders, merely waypoints on the journey.
If you got this far, you probably realised that of course there aren’t just 10. Keep an eye out for some more clangers/learning experiences coming this way soon!
Helping you find your First 10 Customers is what I do, so pop over to this page to read more about how I can help you get yours. Make sure and sign up to my mailing list there to get your free First 10 Customers checklist.
