Belief #1: Make a decision and go!
This was one of the first lessons I learned when
starting my first business and it was extremely hard to get used to making a decision and then taking action on that decision.
I was so afraid I was making a mistake. Since then I’ve learned that
making a mistake is not a bad thing. You actually learn from those
mistakes, which helps you make better decisions down the road.
You will struggle with hiring and firing people, project budgets,
office space and advertising creative. When you first start off in
business you will take days and even weeks to answer these questions.
This core belief actually came back to me when I lost a million
dollar client. They were happy with the service I was providing, but
they wanted to know what else I was going to do to take their business
to the next level. I had a few ideas, but I didn’t make a decision on
which idea I was going to act on. Long story short, I took too long to
make a decision and I lost a $1.2 million client.
Belief #2: Show passion, not perfection
It’s a lot easier to work on a project for closed doors for years
until you get it perfect and then ship, but that just won’t work these
days.
Often when I talk to young entrepreneurs who are “working” on a
project behind closed doors I realize they are afraid to ship because
they don’t want to be ridiculed. But I always encourage them that what
people don’t want a perfect product…
what they want is a passionate person behind the project.
If you can show people you are passionate about
creating a perfect product
by releasing it, then getting feedback and iterating…then people will
jump on board…especially if the product solves a real-world problem.
Don’t try to perfect anything because if you perfect something that no one wants to use, you will just end up wasting money.
At
KISSmetrics
we created 2 other versions of our product that are no longer live. We
spent over $500,000 on the first version, trying to perfect it, instead
of just getting it out there. Since then we have scrapped that product.
If we used the minimal viable product approach instead of trying to
create a perfect product, we probably would have saved that money.
Belief #3: Avoid the ugly baby syndrome
One thing that entrepreneurs are in the habit of doing is falling in
love with their ideas…even if it is a bad idea. This is like parents who
fall in love with their new baby, even though everyone knows newborns
are ugly.
You need to be objective in your business, with your plan and your
product. Everything on the table needs to be up for debate if you truly
want to succeed.
Seek out mentors to help you, and get advice from them on a regular
basis. Listen closely to what they are saying. Listen closely to what
your partner is saying and more importantly your customers.
This doesn’t mean you have to surrender every idea, but sometimes you may have to make drastic changes.
The CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz,
tells a story
about how they were going down the wrong path and brought in the
founder of Costco, Jim Sinegal for advice. Jim said, “You know, I don’t
want to be rude but this is exactly the wrong thing to do.”
Schultz listened, realized Sinegal was right, and shifted their strategy.
One way to protect yourself from falling in love with your idea is to
train yourself to fall in love with solving people’s problems. It
doesn’t matter what you create to solve their problems, but as long as
you do it in a simple, easy, and ideally an affordable way, you will be
fine.
Belief #4: Find the sweet spot, then scale it
Once you have reached
product market fit, there will come a time when you need to figure out how to scale your product.
If you scale your product before people fall in love with it, you’ll
tarnish your brand. What I mean by this is that people won’t be happy
with your product so they will say negative things about it. This will
cause churn, a decrease in sales, and a bad brand that will be hard to
fix. Once people think negatively about your product or brand, it’s hard
to change their perception…
even after you fix your product.
When I first started
Crazy Egg
we spent thousands of dollars on marketing before we launched the
product. We had a ton of churn in the beginning, as there were a lot of
product issues we faced when we launched. The marketing spend had a
negative ROI and if I had to do it all over again, I would scale the
business once I fixed the major product problems.
Belief #5: Don’t think about taking a leap, just take it
Speaking of perfection, there is never a perfect time to
become an entrepreneur. Though being young and without a family is certainly a better time than when you are older and have a family.
Once you take the leap though…
you are committed. You need to
quit your job and become your new business. That’s a huge risk for
sure, but if you don’t take the risk what’s to encourage a partner or
investor to take the risk on you?
This commitment needs to infuse everything you do…and
never
think of minimum amounts. Never think that you need to secure just 4
clients a month to succeed or you just need to make 200 calls before the
money pours in.
That never happens. Your projections will more than likely fail. This means you need to have a mantra that says there is no failure…
just wild success! So stop wasting time and take the leap.
One of the
most common emails I get
is from people asking if I would invest in their business idea. When I
ask them how far they have gotten, most people tell me that they are
still at the idea stage and don’t have the time to go further as they
have a full time job. If you can’t take the leap into entrepreneurship,
investors won’t fund you because it shows that you don’t believe in what
you are doing if you aren’t willing to quit your job.
Belief #6: Entrepreneurship isn’t a war, it’s about solving problems and turning a profit
Some entrepreneurs treat business like it’s a war that you need to
defeat and destroy your competition. But even if you can actually do
that and become number one in your market, you will still fail if you
aren’t turning a profit.
For instance, at
KISSmetrics we don’t focus on killing our competition even though they
copy our features and steal our designs, instead we focus on solving our customers’ problems and growing our revenue.
The truth is that if you can find a way to differentiate yourself
from your competition in a meaningful way, your revenues will go up.
Plus if you are in a new market that is big enough, it doesn’t matter
what your competition is doing, as there is enough room for both of you.
Belief #7: Hire slow, fire fast
The single most critical part of running a successful business is to hire the right people…and fire the wrong ones fast.
A lot of people spend a lot of time and energy trying to select the
right person based upon past performance, but I’ve often found that what
you learn in an interview with somebody doesn’t equal good performance
down the road.
I like to see people get their hands dirty and how they adapt to
stressful situations. When I interview people, I rarely talk about what
they have done or even look at their resume, instead I ask them
questions related to what they would do for my company and how they’ll
get that work done in a timely fashion.
And if you happen to hire a few bad people, keeping them hurts your
business as it will probably do more damage then good. Mark Zuckerburg
famously fired people who were loyal to him but couldn’t handle the
growth. And Zappos even paid people to leave the company if things
weren’t working out to make the transition easy.
Belief #8: Learn from your first, earn from your second, give back with your third
If you are a serial entrepreneur…or you’re on your first business but
think you have two or three more in you…then you will likely get a lot
of experience, business wisdom and wealth out of those ventures. It will
take years before you get there, but if you keep at it, sooner or later
you will do well.
Your first business is going to be full of mistakes and lessons learned…
that’s a good thing!
You can apply those lessons learned to your second where you should get
it right and become successful. Then on your third business you can
give back.
You can give back money to other startups but you can also give back
experience and help out other entrepreneurs or volunteer for charities.
Don’t ever expect anything in return, but instead just give back like
your mentors did with you.
Conclusion
Now, do you have to have all of these core beliefs in place on day
one as an entrepreneur, you are going to become extraordinary,
right?
The answer is no. The thing about starting and growing a business is
that you will grow as a person yourself…and that is one of the best
educations an entrepreneur can get!
So take a minute to re-read the core beliefs I shared above, then
print them out…and start working on becoming the next Bill Gates or
Larry Page.
What other core beliefs do you believe that extraordinary entrepreneurs have?
Neil Patel
