Category: entrepreneurship

don’t do

What’s your favorite dish? The best movie ever made? Your alltime number one hit record? Answers to trivial questions like these aren’t usually straightforward. There might be multiple answers.

Sometimes, approaching the problem the other way around might help. What’s your least favorite dish?

With limitless possibilities, knowing exactly what the next best thing is, isn’t always easy. Determining which initiative to launch, or which adventure to embark on is challenging with so many valable options.

Sometimes it’s more helpful to know exactly what not to do, rather than the other way around.

certainty bliss

In a world, where many of us seem to agree on the fact that it appears to be spinning increasingly faster around its axis. Where the only constant is change. With thousands of decisions to be made everyday. Certainty is hard to come by. Having faith in a decision, or better yet, the lack thereof, is energy consuming.

Establishing certainty is a fantastic feeling. When you do, cherish and enjoy the moment.

growing unknowingly

Not understanding why your company is growing is equally bad as not knowing why your company isn’t growing.

Of course, when a company is just starting, it’s hard to express facts empirically. Not enough time will have progressed, and sample sizes for surveys will be too small to come up with any solid conclusions.

However, as time progresses, this level of uncertainty has to be removed. After counting their blessings, business owners have to establish why their companies are growing, so “luck” becomes less of a determining factor.

no growth zone

Maybe the movies are to blame for portraying startups and startup life as something mythical. There is nothing glorious about it. I repeat, nothing glorious about it whatsoever.

Hypergrowth isn’t necessarily a goal in itself. Companies that have grown organically for years shouldn’t suddenly change course and jump on the hyper-scale train.

They must, however, have a plan on how to maintain that organic growth. Nothing lasts forever (in the cold November rain).

Entrepreneurs shouldn’t be shamed for moderate ambitions. Slow and steady wins the race. Up until somebody comes along who is fast(er) and steady. That’s a risk one has to be willing to take.

defying rationality

Sometimes, it all comes down to one thing. One person who is willing to risk it all and leave everything on the table. One person, who, even after their entire entourage made it clear they stopped having faith, refuses to give in. One person who simply doesn’t back down.

Even after all of the numbers have been crunched, KPI’s reassessed, and targets extrapolated. At a time when every fiber screams, don’t do it. When it becomes blatantly obvious that, from a rational point of view, survival chances are zero to none. That’s when this person rises to the occasion.

Clinging on to hope. Trusting that, when one or two things click in their place, it’ll be all right. Those are the ones Steve Jobs referred to when he said: “the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Cherish those heroes.

planning flexibility

A plan is only as good as its flexibility. Without considering any shortcuts or detours, a plan can become obsolete in an instant.

Sometimes plan b should be plan a. What’s entrepreneurship if not tenacity and perseverance? If something comes up en route towards the goal, the route should be recalculated instantaneously, similar to a GPS.

Plans should contain fixed goals, but the trajectory should be changeable.

puzzled

Building a business is (kind of) like solving a puzzle.

You have to know what it’s going to look like before you even start. You need the photo on the box. Without it, guessing becomes the best approach. Making it significantly harder and slower to solve the puzzle.

loop to hell

So much work to be done. Sleep is one of the first necessities to get sacrificed. Either go to sleep later, or wake up earlier, or both for advanced users. Once sleep goes, food is next. Meals with increasingly less nutritional value. Meals that take as little time as possible to prepare. Next, come the snacks. The third and final part of the entrepreneurial loop to hell trifecta is when relationships start suffering.

Every entrepreneur has been there. Even those who’ve been to the loop to hell might still end up revisiting.

Being surrounded by a strong network of people is an incredible blessing, but depending on other people to steer clear from the loop to hell is dangerous.

Detecting the entrepreneurial loop to hell signals to avoid it altogether is a lifelong struggle. A beautiful struggle.

routine contingency

Some people take comfort in routines. Others find it predictable and perhaps even dull. Regardless of the routine’s schedule and frequency, knowing what lies ahead facilitates planning.

For a business, predictability is desirable. Intelligent decisions can be based on estimations, preferably as accurate as possible. Peeking into the hypothetical future allows companies to decide how to allocate resources better.

The issue with routines is this. It’s hard to build them up. It’s easy to destroy them. A simple cold can break a fitness routine that took weeks to establish.

Routines need fallback scenarios. What should happen to the routine if, for some reason, something comes up. Try again later?

Map out contingencies for routines and approach them in an “if this then that” manner to ensure continuity.

business grand prix — sportsmanship

You win some. You lose some. Ideally, both are done with dignity. Nobody likes a sour loser.

Finishing second or lower is sometimes hard to understand, especially after a prolonged super natural performance. Even with the maximum amount of planning and preparation, many things can happen. Maybe a racer performed better, but their car is slower than their competitors.

In races, as in enterprises, so many things have to go right. A plethora of different aspects to master, many of them which are hard to control.

In a grand prix, when a racer falls behind, the only option they have is to play catch-up. Too much focus on the car in front almost certainly results in copying their mistakes. When the racer, who is under attack, feels pressure, they might miss their braking point only by a split second, causing them to miss the turn. At all times, a racer must drive their own race.

To compare is to despair. Focusing on why a competitor appears to be “luckier” has no value. Focus on improving your business, with dignity.

This is the ninth and final part in the business grand prix series.