Four Hard-Won Lessons From My
Early Years As An Entrepreneur
Use this serial
entrepreneur's four biggest mistakes to help you up the learning curve as a
first-time startup founder.
When I started out as an entrepreneur, I made plenty of decisions
without knowing what the outcome might be. I still do. But back then, I didn't
have the same level of experience to guide me. Looking back, these were four of
the toughest but most critical lessons I learned during those first few years
when the learning curve was the steepest.
A huge chunk of change can actually put you right down at the
bottom again if you don’t manage it properly.
You only need to have enough of
the product available to help your customers with a problem or issue they're
having.
When I sold my first company, I made what I
thought to be a small fortune. True success, it seemed, had finally arrived.
Little did I know that this money would actually be the start of a string of
problems that led me to end up with less cash than I'd had before I even
started the business. Because I misunderstood what had led to those initial
earnings, I wasn't able to manage them appropriately. That meant I didn't put
them into a new business that I could actually go on to grow.
Looking back now, I should've worked with a mentor or money
manager to determine how best to save and use that revenue as a springboard to
make even more. Sometimes you've got to lose what you've got in order to know
what it was really worth.
Being new to internet marketing, I
was afraid to ask anyone
for assistance because I saw it as a sign of weakness or worried it might
compromise the personal brand I was trying to build.
This was a mistake. I realized only much later that it took me a
lot longer to get up and running because I didn’t go out and get the contacts
that could help me make short work of some key steps. Instead, I chose to
reinvent the wheel—and paid the price. It would've saved money and ramped up
profitability more quickly had I just reached out for help.
Many entrepreneurs know they should find mentors or advisers that
can guide them, but they're too slow to do it. There are lots of experienced
people who can help walk you through the process of navigating a new industry
and building a business from the ground up.
Like many startup founders,
I’ve always been
a perfectionist, so I spent way too much time on my first product than I needed
to. Later on, I realized I'd wasted a lot of time and money again, plus lost
the opportunity to start making money sooner. I had no idea that people don’t
mind if a product isn’t perfect—or that getting their feedback is how you learn
how to make it better.
In reality, you only need to have enough of the product available
to help your customers with a problem or issue they're having. That's a lower
bar to clear than many entrepreneurs set themselves for a product launch.
Ideally, when you get the product or service out there, you can beat any
possible competitors to market, and that's ultimately much more valuable than a
"perfect" release.
With my subsequent startups, I’ve
rolled out my product and then tweaked it later—after hooking
customers with the initial product that gave them just enough to start seeing
benefits. Later on, the other enhancements were just the cherry on top, but by
that point we'd already figured out we could give our customers something they
really wanted and turn our attention to doing it even better. Listening to
their needs actually cemented those relationships and helped attract new users.
Early on, it felt easy to stay just in internet marketing because
it’s where I got my start and had become my comfort zone. The only problem was
that it only would only take me so far as an entrepreneur.
When I realized that there was
limited growth, it dawned on me that I could take what I knew from that field
and apply it to any other industry that interested me. Once I did that, I really started
making money—because I'd taken away the barriers I'd set up for myself by
thinking I should just stick with what was familiar.
In most industries, the same fundamental
rules apply for growing and running a business.
There's something to be said for domain expertise, but it can
limit you, especially as startup founder. I didn’t know much about online
invoicing and business payments before I started exploring that space,
but I studied the industry and looked for where I could make a difference.
Then, I started using everything I knew about internet marketing to grow my
business in that industry.
It doesn't require glossing over their differences to realize that
in most industries, the same fundamental rules apply for growing and running a
business. It hit me much later that I'd stayed too long in my comfort zone and
could have launched into multiple industries sooner if I had just known that
was possible. The truth is that you can probably bridge business niches even if
you start out with a limited knowledge of those areas.
In hindsight, there were more than just these four things I
could've done differently, but I learned the most from these experiences—enough
to implement these lessons in all the ventures I've pursued since my first
startup. And hopefully, they can help you save a ton of money up front and
start succeeding much sooner than I did.
JOHN RAMPTON
https://www.fastcompany.com/3064153/lessons-learned/four-hard-won-lessons-from-my-early-years-as-an-entrepreneur
No comments:
Post a Comment