Success and failure are not as far apart as people like to think. In fact some of the most well-known brands around the world have had flops of epic proportions, and the traveling Museum of Failure is there to prove it. Building a business designed to overcome and learn from mistakes is how the biggest brand names became what they are today. By building outwards from what you uniquely have to offer, your business can grow authentically and successfully.
Stay In Your Lane
When you think Colgate, you think toothpaste, but few remember their short-lived line of frozen dinners. Everyone Loves the movie Back to the Future, but very few people remember the colossal failure that occurred when the DeLorean Motor Company tried to build the famous time machine and sell it as a luxury car. When it comes to your startup, focus on the spark that inspired you and build your business from there. Stay true to your vision and build your company, and your team, with that in mind.
Headlines blair with how many small businesses fail, but every year many succeed as well. Wal-Mart started as a mom and pop shop, and seemingly every successful tech company began in some cramped garage. All billion dollar companies started somewhere. When building from an idea to a business, entrepreneurs must keep the bigger picture in mind. Only with such a roadmap can you forge a path to profitability. If you cannot show yourself how you can make money, you won’t be able to find investors willing to bet on you.
The Time Is Now
If you are waiting for the perfect time to start a business, that time will never come. Such hesitancy has no place in the startup world. Many struggle turning that exciting spark into a full business. It takes more than a great idea and a strong economy. This does not mean throwing caution to the wind, but any entrepreneur must know how to take a calculated risk. Few risks will be greater than that first leap. The past few years have shown that even the most well informed economists can get things wrong, as the economy looks headed for a soft landing while inflation creeps down.
I say few risks will be greater than the first leap, because growing your business will require leaps that to you may seem greater. As the business grows you can not do it all. Many entrepreneurs struggle with letting go, struggle to build a team they are comfortable delegating to, and entrusting with elements of their business. While such hesitancy is common and understandable, it must be overcome. For an entrepreneur who has held onto an idea or a vision, it can be difficult to surrender complete control. However, seeking to maintain control over every aspect of your business is simply unsustainable. It will lead to burnout, lead to oversights, and in fact increase the chances that your business will not succeed.
Instead, just as you had to chart a path to profitability, you must build a reporting system with built-in metrics and accountability. In addition to a pathway for profit to guide yourself and your investors, you must build strong guardrails that enable you to entrust business to colleagues and confidantes. By constructing guardrails in which those helping you grow your business operate, you can overcome the ‘bandwidth crunch’ faced by startup heads who try to do everything themselves.
As you build your business from the ground up, you must ensure that the quality of your idea, the quality of the business, is never diminished. If you do this, you can build a business able to consistently deliver for your clients as you scale upwards. Once you have a strong vision in place, and a team in place to help you carry it through, you must not forget about the fundamentals of building your business. Just as you need a roadmap to profitability for yourself, you must use it to diversify revenue sources as much as you can. Only while maintaining awareness of all possible revenue streams, and with a system in place that enables you to manage costs while ensuring quality control without stretching yourself too thin can growth continue apace. As mentioned before, the initial leap may be the biggest risk, but nearly all stages of growing your business will require assessing the risks and rewards of any number of courses of action.
You, Your Team, and Your Customers
Last, but certainly not least, is the customer. Many have heard the cliche that the customer is always right, but you must have the capacity to elicit and respond to customer feedback for customer input to help you build and grow your business. This requires even further building out the system of accountability. From how you brand and market your product, to how the different arms of your business communicate with each other, yet again you can not be everywhere at once. By building a business infrastructure centered around communication and collaboration, your team can help each other help the customer, ensuring all energies push the company in the right direction.
With over 15 years of dynamic experience at the crossroads of finance, entrepreneurship, and sustainable growth, Zahra Yarahmadi excels in strategic financial consulting. Passionate about mentoring startups, she has aided over 100 ventures in securing $200 million in pre-seed and seed funds in the last four years. Her unique perspective, gained from working with both venture capital firms and startups, provides a deep understanding of aligning goals for sustainable business success. She is the founder and CEO of BG Financial Consulting.