Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Rebelion and curiosity go hand in hand - Greig Jansen
Greig is the founder of PURA Soda and in this episode, we discuss curiosity as a matter of nature or nurture, how creating the future is the best way to predict it, how curiosity is like a muscle, once you start you get better at it and become more curious about more things and how PURA pushes a curious corporate culture.
Other topics we cover and quotes from Greig:
Greig discusses the idea of living in continuous discontent.
How he conducted market research - started with family and friends.
How the sporty fraternity wanted a healthier drink alternative.
His curiosity is hereditary and is also a result of the environment he was brought up in.
We discuss the Created Future - The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.
Greig believes that rebellion and curiosity go hand in hand.
“You need processes and procedures in place to accommodate for growth, that could kill curiosity if you're not careful.”
"Curiosity is like a muscle, once you start you get better at it and become more curious about more things."
As a startup having created a new product, curiosity is built into his business.
"Widen your network and widen your curiosity"
"Failure is simply a previous attempt at success"
Think like a Founder - Important Habits You Should Adopt
If you are launching a new venture, starting a side hustle or thinking about making a big shift in your life then you are probably considering what it takes. What does it take to start something new? What does it mean to your life to commit to building something and succeeding?
I have been a founder many times over the past twenty years and I surround myself with the best founders, business builders and leaders out there. There are some things that business founders do that I think are imperative to your own success if you are starting something new. Here’s a breakdown of what I think founders do that other people should adopt when building something.
1. Obsess
There are problems everywhere. That means that there are solutions waiting to be turned into money everywhere. My favourite founders choose to work on problems that they are obsessed with.
Talented people can work on just about any problem and can likely make it a success of some kind. But it’s when founders obsess over the problem or the solution that they really turn up the heat.
It’s perfectly OK to obsess for one day a week or one hour a day. Your obsession can start out slowly and come up in a nagging sort of way. If you are obsessing then you want to work on the business or venture wholeheartedly. If you’re obsessed with food and eating the right kind of fuel, you’re likely to be a fit and healthy person. If you don’t really care too much about what you eat and how it affects your training then you’ll probably struggle to get into the best shape of your life.
The best founders obsess and that’s a good place for you to start: What are you obsessing over and is that what you are working on every day?
2. Focus
You can’t build multiple side hustles at once. You think you can. Other’s will tell you they did. You’ll really want to but you shouldn’t.
Saying “no” is an indication of obsessive focus. The more you say no to, the more you can focus on the thing you are obsessed with.
If you try to take on every opportunity then you’ll lose out on all of them instead of capitalise on the most lucrative or unique one.
Start saying NO more often, even if it feels like you might be losing out on something.
If you consistently feel like you’re losing out then maybe you’re working on the wrong thing and it’s time to rethink your obsession.
3. REVENUE
Early on in a startup or side hustle every action should lead to revenue. If it isn’t something that will take you a step close to earning money then it shouldn’t be your focus.
Sales and revenue matter more than just about anything else.
This means that if you need your product to improve to make a sale, then that’s a focus. If you need your YouTube channel to hit 100 000 subscribers before revenue, then that’s your focus. Figure out what your triggers are for revenue and then double-down and focus, obsess on hitting revenue.
4. Deliver
Don’t faff around trying to make whatever it is you’re working on perfect. PERFECT DOESN’T EXIST. You are never going to get to perfection and if you think you will, you’re in lalaland and need a hard reset in your thinking.
Stop. Assess what you have. Launch. The first thing you launch is never going to be the best version of your vision but at least it’ll be out there in the world. Deliver something to someone and listen to what they have to say. Put your work out into the world, it only counts when other people can use and critique it.
Many have said it before me: Ideas are fucking worthless, execution is everything.
5. Listen
It’s easy to start something new or make a change when it’s just you on your own. You essentially run your own little dictatorship of one. You decide what to build. You decide when to build it. You decide how it works, what it costs, where it lives and when you make changes.
Then you launch.
And then everyone has an opinion.
It’s difficult to take on every opinion you hear but the best founders listen and know how to curate who they listen to. You can’t take on everyone’s opinion but often when users are telling you something it wont just be one person with one opinion, it’ll be multiple users reporting the same feedback and that’s when you listen and then follow steps 5 and 6 below.
Build, launch, listen, iterate, adapt.
6. Iterate
The first version of whatever you’re selling is going to be good enough to get out there but not good enough to use forever.
Deliver the next feature. Add the next service. Upgrade the product. Listen to feedback (see point 6) from customers and implement the most relevant and practical suggestions.
The faster you can create a flywheel of iteration the better your product will be and the happier you’ll keep your customers.
Build something. Release it. Gain customers. Watch how they use your product. Listen to their feedback. Build the next version. Release it. Repeat.
That’s a simple flywheel that most founders I know use.
7. Adapt
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Mike Tyson’s famous quote applies to the start of something too. If you think you know how people are going to use your product you are sorely mistaken. You have no idea what’s coming at you until you release your baby into the wild and see if it can survive as you planned or if you need to adap, change and rethink the plan.
This is why point 4 above is so important. You have to get over your need for perfection. You need to overcome your fear of what other people say. Founders don’t give a shit what their critics say. They build, deliver, release, listen and adapt.
If you are afraid of making small tweaks, tiny pivots and slight adjustments as you go then you’re likely going to cling on to a sinking ship and drown.
Obsessing is great but do not obsess over the perfection of your initial idea or product. Be prepared that whatever you are building or launching is going to change, even slightly, over time.
8. Be You
In a world of infinite information and personality-overload it’s very easy to find someone to copy. We see the success of the Kardishians of the reality TV stars of the people who do nothing, contribute nothing but have a personality and we think we can do what they did.
You can’t be a better version of Kim Kardashian than she can be. You can’t be a better version of Casey Neistat than Casey. You can’t beat Jordan Peele at his own game or take Trevor Noah on at being Trevor.
But you sure as shit can beat them with your own brand of insanity, skill, dedication, obsession and focus. You can beat anyone in the world at being the most version of yourself that you can be. Founders know this intimitaly and it’s a hidden super power. Everybody reads about Steve Jobs being an asshole and the founders I know who tried to be like Steve - even I did for a brief and devastating period in one of my businesses - suffered greatly because we’re just not built like Steve was.
You need to figure out who the fuck you are and want to be and then you need to be that person as much as you can be.
Be yourself, relentlessly. It will pay off.
The Three Questions Every Business Owner Needs to Answer Right Now
Photo by Jason Wong on Unsplash
There is a lot of panic out in the world right now and rightly so. It’s a new world. It’s a strange and uncomfortable world. It’s a world that no business owners could have prepared for but all of us wish we had.
Now that this world is upon us it’s time to jump to action and begin planning for the next 12 months of your businesses and lives. Whether you want to admit it or not it’s a bad time to be a small business in almost every industry or vertical. People are holding on to their cash and waiting to see what happens in the world.
One thing is for certain, we will emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. To make it through to the other side, I believe that businesses of all sizes need to be thinking solely on the following three things:
How deep is the damage to your business?
How long will the bleeding last?
What does the recovery curve look like?
This seems simpler than it is for most businesses.
Let’s work through these three questions slowly and clearly.
How Deep is the Damage To Your Business?
Is your business or business model dead?
Have you lost 30%, 60% or 90% of your revenue and customers?
Can you operate at all for the next 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months?
Will your staff stay if you pay them half salaries for a few months?
Can you start again in 2 months if your staff don’t stay with you?
Will your debtors give you a break on what you owe them and if so, for how long?
Will your landlords give you a break on your rent for a while?
Right now, every business owner and entrepreneur should be doing triage on their businesses. If you’re not, it’s time to get serious and get started. Even if your business is booming in this crisis you should still be thinking about what the world and your business will look like over the next 12 months.
The above questions are just the high-level, light touch questions to get you thinking. What you really need to be doing right now is assessing every expense, every income source, every employee, their skillsets and making copious notes on each item to allow you to make informed decisions in the coming two phases of your planning.
This is how you assess the damage and begin to retool your business for the new world. It’s unlikely that you can expect your team to continue to do the same jobs for the next few weeks or months. If they’re great people then you need to start to find them new things to do in your new business.
Once you have the information you need you can then start to think about how long the bleeding will last. But if you can’t find the wounds then you can’t stop the bleeding so dig deep and map it all out. Every inch of your business needs to be carefully analysed. Leave no stone unturned and no spreadsheet empty.
How Long Will the Bleeding Last?
This point in the process requires you to step back and take a macro view of your business and the world.
Is your industry under fire or is it going to kick back into action as soon as the lockdown ends and COVID-19 is under control? Is it going to kick back in immediately or over a period of weeks, months or years? Be honest and ask colleagues or even competitors for their views.
If the bleeding is going to last longer than your cash on hand can maintain then you have a serious problem and some tough decisions to make urgently.
I don’t think that the lockdown is going to be over in a matter of weeks, we’re looking at many months (if not many years) before anything begins to approach normalcy again on a global scale. India has put 1.3bn people on lockdown. No country recovers from this level of action in weeks.
It’s imperative that you form realistic scenarios that you can plan for. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. The next step requires you to start laying out the different scenarios you’re facing.
What Does the Recovery Curve Look Like?
If you think that your business is going to start back up at 100% when the lockdown ends then you are sorely mistaken.
Your business is under siege, the global economy is under pressure like our generation has never seen and it’s going to take time to rebuild.
The Recovery Curve is a way for you to estimate how dramatically your business can recover in the months after economies open back up. Is it a sharp curve from 20% back up to 100% in a matter of days? If so, you’re lucky. Unfortunately, it’s more likely a slow curve fraught with sharp rises and steep cliffs over a two year period. Yes, I’m serious, the global pandemic has more than likely taken your business back two years. Get your mind around this and start planning on ways to change the curve or patiently brace for the long Winter ahead.
Be honest and think about when the lockdown ends, can your business can operate at full speed immediately? What do you think your revenue will be in month one post-COVID? 50% of normal? 40%? 20%?
Plan out three scenarios; The best, the likely and the worst scenarios.
The Best Scenario
If you look at the world with optimistic eyes and all of your plans and preparations work out perfectly, what does your revenue look like in 6 months? Will you be up to 60% of where you were pre-COVID? Then, two months post-COVID are you up another 10% to 70%?
Now that you’re at 70% of your pre-COVID revenue, what does your team look like and how do you plan to bring them back on board? Will they come back? Will they feel safe and trust you?
The Likely Scenario
You have made plans, you are cautiously optimistic but you are still planning for difficult times and very slow growth back to normalcy. You’ll likely have to lay off half of your staff and cut the size of your business by at least half over the next short while. Your suppliers will suffer but you’ll survive and grow new revenue streams once you have made it through the worst times.
Do not be overly optimistic with the likely scenario. Try to pull in people who know your business and industry for some perspective here.
The Worst Scenario
This is the easiest scenario to conceptualise because humans can easily rush to the worst case. The worst-case scenario looks something like this:
The COVID-19 pandemic takes at least 12 months for humanity to contain. In this time your business is unable to operate, the world is in and out of lockdown constantly and your team struggles to make ends meet. The government subsidies are slow to move and only delay the inevitable.
How do you begin to retool your business and your team today? What do you do change the perspective of the world about your business? What will it take to either shut it all down or pivot what you have? Which is more intense, brutal and harsh on you and your team?
This might be the easiest scenario to imagine but is definitely the most intensely difficult to execute on. Lives will be impacted across the board. Suppliers will shut down, staff will lose their homes and you will lose sleep, hair, money and time that you will never get back. It’s tough out there but it could just be your Phoenix moment.
One of the ten Nicisms that I live by is: Sometimes you have to burn it all down and start again.
Once you have your scenario planning complete you need to communicate these scenarios to your team, your customers and your suppliers. Let them know what you are thinking and how you are planning.
By involving your team you give them a sense of ownership over the outcome and you help them plan their own lives accordingly. Bringing your suppliers in shows them a level of respect and trust that most businesses don’t offer in times of distress. They’ll thank you and if they don’t, keep in mind that they are fighting for their own survival, so give them a break.
Nothing about this is meant to be fun. Nothing about this is going to be easy. However, this is the new world that we find ourselves in and unfortunately there is a lot of waiting that needs to be done. There are decisions that will be made in the next three weeks that you have no control over and will directly impact your next move.
Plan out your scenarios and have your next moves mapped and ready for the next big shift in the landscape. Trust me, there is a lot of change afoot and this is the new normal.
The DO. FAIL. LEARN. REPEAT. Entrepreneurship Course
After many, many years of building businesses, learning, failing and getting up to try again I have finally launched an online course.
The course is built off the back of my debut business autobiography titled DO. FAIL. LEARN. REPEAT.
In the course you will learn how to deal with failure, how to kickstart your ideas and everything inbetween. I’ve learned the hard lessons so you don’t have to.
If you have been thinking about building a business or a side hustle, if you are looking to build some extra income or just really have an idea that you have wanted to turn into reality then I suggest you sign up for the course asap!
What Is the One Metric That Matters to You?
Photo by Harry Sandhu on Unsplash
Have you ever thought about the one measurable thing that matters most to you?
I read a tweet recently that asked the following questions:
The question caught me off guard in its simplicity and clarity. I often think about my own “victory condition” (hat tip to Rich Mulholland for introducing this concept to me) for certain scenarios in business but very rarely do I hear people talking about this in their personal lives.
Life is a big experiment. Every day we do things that we aren’t sure of. We make statements that could end well or badly. We get into a car that is statistically likely to end up in an accident eventually. We fly in planes, exercise, eat, drink and are merry. We experiment.
But experiments are only effective if they have a desired outcome or are being analyzed. I don’t think that we analyze our experiments (life) often enough.
We plod along eating what we eat, doing what we do, living the life we live without much introspection or review.
When I invest in or consult with startups I often ask them for a single true metric that represents their business. It could be revenue, it could be a viral coefficient, it could be user retention, staff retention or any metric that moves their needle. Most often the startup has no idea which single metric matters most to them. This isn’t unusual at all but there is a definite correlation between clarity of thought, execution and understanding a single true metric that matters in a business. Thinking about your daily work right now, do you have a single metric that you can look at come the end of the day to decide if your day was successful or not?
I believe the same can be said for your day to day life. What one true metric matters to you? It’s OK if that metric is something simple or complex or if other people scoff at it or copy it. There are no right or wrong answers here.
I’m more interested in the existence of any answer in my life.
I value time.
Time is the one metric that matters to me.
Do I have the time to do the things that I want? Do I have the time to enjoy the thing I am doing right now? Or am I rushing off to the next meeting/event/sight without taking it all in? Do I have the time to spend with the people that matter to me most? Do I have the time to sit and think about the things I want to think about?
From this one true metric, everything else emerges.
To have sufficient time I need to have sufficient resources. To have sufficient resources I need sufficient experience to gain the resources. To have the experience I needed to take the time to learn, experiment and gain experience. It all comes back to time for me.
I’m not sure if this will always be my one true metric, but for right now it makes sense.
A friend of mine, Rob Hope, replied to the above tweet with a pretty simple answer that I loved: Freedom.
Freedom is a fantastic true metric to align your life to. However, jumping back to the victory condition, you can only be free if you have defined what freedom means to you in your daily life. Take the time to think about what matters to you and how you define victory in your day, week, month, year, life.
Then answer me this question: What is your one true metric?
Nic Haralambous is an obsessive entrepreneur and keynote speaker. You can book him for your next conference, sign up for his newsletter or follow him on Twitter.
An Honest Conversation with Aisha Pandor, SweepSouth co-founder
I am obsessed with getting the real, honest story from smart people building difficult and interesting things. Last year I hosted a series of conversations with a variety of people. Below is the conversation that I had with Aisha Pandor, the incredibly smart and talented co-founder of one of South Africa’s top startups, SweepSouth.
Aisha is one of those rare finds, an Expert Generalist who has studied microbiology, biochemistry and a has a PHD in human genetics. She then decided to build a business. She has a wide breadth of knowledge and a deep set of skills that make her an impressive startup founder to listen to and learn from.
Ten Years of Business Lessons From a Startup Founder
I spend most of my time thinking about businesses, building them, engaging with people who build business and think about them. I am entrenched in the world of building things and I absolutely love what I do. But it’s fucking hard. It’s meant to be hard. There are real, brutal lessons to learn at every turn.
Ten years is a long time, but actually not very long at all.
I started my first business when I was 16. I had no idea what I was doing. I barely knew that I was starting a business if I’m honest.
That was almost 20 years ago and since then, I have continued to build businesses. Over the past decade, I have taken my entrepreneurial journey very personally and dedicated my life to building businesses.
I spend most of my time thinking about businesses, building them, engaging with people who build business and think about them. I am entrenched in the world of building things and I absolutely love what I do. But it’s fucking hard. It’s meant to be hard. There are real, brutal lessons to learn at every turn.
I have failed more than I’d care to remember but the past decade has been an incredible ride. I have learned many things but below are some of the most important business lessons that I have learned.
Raising money is not hard
I have spent so many coffee meetings talking to entrepreneurs who believe the world doesn’t understand them and their amazing idea or business. I’ve heard about fundraising difficulties in every format, industry, vertical and market. I mostly hear about fundraising difficulties from founders who should be struggling to raise money because money isn’t free.
“VCs are idiots.”
“Money is dumb.”
“I have to move countries to raise funding.”
“My startup is worth more than this offer.”
These are typical statements from startup founders.
Here’s the hard-hitting truth: If you can’t raise money, it’s probably your fault, not the investor’s.
Reasons that you’re struggling may include:
You have no traction.
You have no revenue.
You have no track record as a founder (this is a tough one).
You are lacking a good network to provide warm introductions to investors.
Your idea is bad.
Your execution of the idea is bad.
Your market is too small.
Money is not hard to raise. Good partners are hard to find. The right partners are hard to find. But raising money, any kind of money, is not hard.
Building a business is difficult. You do not deserve funding. Investors don’t owe you anything. You need to prove that your business is worth investing in and if you do that, money is not hard to raise.
As a parting note; my last few businesses have taught me that more than raising funding, founders should be improving sales. Selling is the best kind of funding. If you can’t sell your product and generate revenue then you shouldn't be able to go out and raise funding either.
Finding a partner is incredibly difficult
Often a business partner is someone you know already. Perhaps from childhood, school, university or a colleague. You fall into this relationship out of convenience, comfort, and safety. You likely did not specifically seek them out, interview them and then decide to build something together. You just knew them and that they were right for you at the time.
I have never met a business founder who doesn’t have a difficult, often gut-wrenching cofounder story to tell.
This relationship is often overlooked as one of the most important in your life. You will spend more time with this person than with anyone else. At a startup, you work very hard and for very long hours in high-pressure situations that can blow up at any time. You will engage with your cofounder more than your partner, kids, family or best friends. You better fucking like them! And if you don’t like them, you better respect the hell out of them because you are going to become them and they will become you.
It is with a heavy heart that I can confidently tell you that at least one of your business partnerships is going to get messy. It’s inevitable. There are precious few cofounder relationships that don’t end in someone losing out. History is littered with cofounders who are broke while their ex-partner cashes in.
Choose your next business partner very, very carefully.
With that said, building a business alone is more difficult than building one with someone else. So take your time and get to know people before you jump into a startup with them.
Perseverance and resilience are everything
Here’s something that very few bright-eyed, aspiring startup founders understand or believe: You are going to fail.
You’re going to fail every day and at every turn. Most of your failures will be manageable and small so you’ll be able to withstand them. Building a business is going to be difficult. Long periods of consistent fun are hard to find when you’re building something new on the cutting edge.
There will be months and maybe even years where at the end of the period you’ll feel like it was mostly good. And that’s amazing. There may even be periods where you thrive on the excitement and things feel amazing. I am sure that in those periods you will just have adjusted to the hardships of startup life.
The key skill that I realized I needed to refine was perseverance. You can’t be a “one and done” kind of person to be a successful entrepreneur.
You have to an “onto the next one” kind of person. You hit a wall, bash through it, climb over it or walk around before you figure out that there actually was no wall to begin with and then you hit the next wall and do it all over again.
The key is to do it all over again. DO. FAIL. LEARN. REPEAT. This is my business mantra. As Dory would say: “Just keep swimming”.
I also realized that people love to say “no” to startup founders doing crazy and new things. You’re going to hear the word “no” more at a startup than you ever thought possible. When I was building a mobile internet startup almost ten years ago, I went out to raise a second round of funding. I met with nearly 40 different investors in six different countries and guess what? They all said no. Every single one. But I pushed on continued to build.
If a single “no” can knock you off your feet and send you spinning then you’re in trouble. If it’s important, it’s meant to be difficult. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Luck and timing are real variables
When I was at university I built a social network for students in digs. It launched shortly after Facebook launched. It was an unabridged failure. There are many variables at play when something succeeds or fails but two that are undeniable are timing and luck.
You don’t really have control over either of them but you can use both to your advantage if you are experienced and aware of the world around you.
Practice is a key component of improving your luck. The harder you work, the luckier you get. The golfer, Jerry Barber coined that phrase and I think it’s true. There is no such thing as a shower moment for someone who is not an expert in their field. That’s not the kind of luck that exists to me.
If you spend ten years refining your skills, working hard and practicing it is possible that you will one day hit the jackpot while taking a shower. Only with dedicated work and consistent practice will you “stumble” on a solution to a problem that you’ve been contemplating for a year. This is the kind of luck you can control. You put yourself in a position, through hard work, where luck matters.
Timing is an entirely different kind of variable that can make or break your business and brain. Launch a year too early and you miss a trend. A year too late and the trend has missed you.
I’m a firm believer in “done” being better than “perfect” for this reason. You can capitalize on a trend with a product that is out in the market whether it is perfect or not. You can iterate and make the most of your luck and the timing available to you.
Tied into this is the ability to look up and recognize shifting macro trends in the world. While building Nic Harry (a sock company I used to own) we started aggressively opening physical stores while the world was experiencing what we now call the “retail apocalypse”. Stores and malls across the world were closing while I was opening a new store every 3 months. Insanity that could have been avoided if I had just taken a month to breathe, look up and research the world I was living in.
Cash flow vs Revenue vs Profit
Over the past decade, I have explained this simple concept to so many entrepreneurs that I feel like I should tattoo the phrase to my forehead:
“Cash flow vs revenue vs profit: Ask me about it!”
Believe it or not, your business can be bringing in massive revenues and go under the next month. If you are reading this and wondering how then you don’t understand what cash flow is.
The simple version: Money going out of your business (expenses) VS money coming into your business (revenue). If the expenses are due sooner than the revenue is coming into your account, you are screwed.
If your revenue is high, expenses are low and the money lands in your account often but leaves infrequently then you have time and cash flow to keep your business afloat. The flow of cash is an incredibly important and potent concept that most entrepreneurs just don’t grasp effectively.
Not enough businesses aim to be profitable consistently. This is the holy grail for a business owner if you haven’t realized it yet.
If you can build a business that consistently has more money coming in than going out you are profitable and sustainable. That’s the dream!
Hiring is more important than you think it is
We all talk about how important hiring is but when you are scaling a business you just need bums in seats doing work. Often you bend on your criteria when you’re in a rush and up bringing in a sub-par team member.
Take it from me; the bad eggs rot from the inside out and the rot spreads faster than you can manage it.
Hire slowly. Fire quickly.
When you are just starting to build your team, remember that you will become the five people you spend the most time with. Even darker, I believe that you will inherit the worst parts of the five people you spend the most time with. Make sure that their worst parts are better than the best of anyone else.
These first five hires will also very clearly define your company culture. Don’t underestimate how important this is.
One of the most important lessons I have learned around hiring and firing is that sometimes your best performing team members are assholes.
You have to fire the assholes immediately.
One person can destroy your culture far more detrimentally than the work they do or the money they bring in.
Remember: Hire slowly. Fire quickly.
It’s OK to walk away
When you start building something it’s usually because the business is important to you. You are trying to solve a real problem that matters in the world or your world at the very least. This emotional commitment to your idea or business is a silent happiness killer.
We marry our ideas but we forget that half of marriages end in divorce.
Don’t marry your business or idea. There are lots of businesses to be built and lots of ideas in your head. There is a lot of time for you to start something new.
If your business makes you unhappy, if you hate going to work every day, if you can’t get up in the morning, if you are unhealthy, fat, tired, drained, fearful, stressed out and suffer from panic attacks, do yourself a favor and consider walking the fuck away.
You may be embarrassed for a short time. You may feel depressed and sad but I can tell you now that you’ll get over it. You’re an entrepreneur and we are survivors, builders, thinkers, and opportunists. We make it through.
No one ever tells us it’s OK to walk away so I’m telling you right now; It’s OK to walk away and burn it all down if you have to.
Failing is integral to succeeding
I have never met a successful person who has never failed. The smartest people I know embrace failure, they seek it out and work towards it as a goal. They aren’t shy about making mistakes.
The moment I decided to talk openly about failure I realized that everyone I know wants to talk about it too. We’re all neck-deep in imposter syndrome trying to feel OK about ourselves and our failures.
The more frequently we engage in conversations about our failures, the more we’ll all learn from them and accept them as normal. If you hide your failure and try to protect yourself from it you never become battle-ready and resilient.
The more you fail, the better you get at recognizing when you’re on the cusp of failing. As soon as you see the signs you can pivot, bob and weave and try something new. If you spend your days trying to avoid failure then the impending failures will just get bigger and bigger until one of them crushes you.
Failure will eventually catch up with you and hurt your business. It’s just a part of building stuff. The first lightbulb wasn’t the one that we use today. The first social network didn’t live forever (and I doubt FACEBOOK will either).
Lots of little failures are manageable, aim for them, seek them out, recognize them and kick them in the ass!
Your network defines you
Relationships are really difficult to build and maintain. Most people have a core group of people and are set for life. This has been true for my immediate network of people that I rely on day to day but isn’t true of my broader network of people that I trust and that trust me.
I’m a 50/50 kind of guy. 50% of people really like and trust me and I have a feeling that 50% of the people I have met dislike me immensely and probably wouldn’t work with me if they had the choice.
I like these odds. I don’t live to placate the people around me. I don’t live to make everyone happy. But I do respect people even if I don’t like them and I hope that people who encounter me respect me because I tell it like it is.
Early on in my life, I realized how important making and retaining relationships would be. I may not be the best friend to everyone but I have always stood by my way of life and am consistently the same person with everyone.
If I don’t like you, you know it. If I respect you, you know it. If you do something I don’t appreciate, we’ll have a conversation about it. This is how I maintain my network; I’m honest and I am who I am.
I take very seriously who I choose to spend time with. Time is literally the only asset that we cannot make more of so I am extremely careful with who I spend my time with. This is why I curate my network so carefully.
I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and engage with them to figure out if we can help one another. But I don’t abuse my network of friends and colleagues. I nurture it, I add value, I provide an ear when they want to talk and connect people that I think can and will do amazing things together.
As my network has grown I receive requests for introductions. I once read about a double-opt-in introduction rule; you can only introduce people if both parties agree to the introduction. This is now my default rule. There is nothing worse than forcing a friend who trusts you to engage in a useless connection that you haven’t vetted properly and isn’t beneficial to both parties. Give the parties the ability to say no without any awkwardness.
Growing and maintaining a wider and more important network of people is a difficult task and requires dedicated attention. Don’t neglect it and then expect help one day. You have to nurture and grow with and for the people around you. Add value and then ask for help when you need it.
Sleep can make or break you
The older I get the more I want to ensure my sleeping routine is right for me. Early in my entrepreneurial journey, I worked through sleep cycles and ignored the damage that sleep deficit was doing to me.
Staying awake until 3am and coding, writing a business plan, hustling, grinding and pushing through the wall of doubt is destructive and frankly very naive.
If you are dumb enough to think that you are special and can survive on 3 or 4 hours of sleep then that’s your choice. I am not that person. I like to wake up fresh and well-rested.
You’ll probably ignore me on this one but remember reading these words in ten years when you’re exhausted and realize that you actually do need 8 hours of sleep.
If you are interested in figuring out how much sleep your body needs to survive then try this:
Go to sleep relatively early for a week, around 9pm and don’t set an alarm. Make a note of the time you wake up naturally. Do this for 7 days and you will figure out your body's natural requirement for sleep. My minimum is 7 hours and max is 9. If I sleep for more than 9 hours I am a mess.
Here are some simple tricks I’ve learned to help me with my sleep:
Meditate in the morning or the evening. It teaches you to calm your mind.
Don’t look at your phone before you go to bed.
Don’t watch TV in bed (duh).
Try to watch less TV overall.
Exercise.
Don’t check your email (duh).
Turn off all notifications 30 mins before bedtime.
If you can’t sleep because your mind is racing: Count your breaths to ten and then start over until you fall asleep (there are lots of this kind of trick).
Mental health matters
I spent my early twenties ignoring my mental health.
I ignored the physical manifestations of my severe mental tension, stress, anxiety, panic, imposter syndrome and fear.
I ignored it when it gave me a stomach ulcer. I ignored it when it ruined my relationships. I ignored it when it sank my businesses. I ignored it because the world told me that men don’t have mental health issues, they are strong and it’s not manly to admit you need some help and mental coaching. I ignored my mental health until my mind broke.
Eventually, I saw a psychologist and took my mental health seriously and I have never looked back.
Now I meditate multiple times a week and whenever I can, I talk to people about how I’m doing and how they are doing. I talk openly about mental health being as important as physical health.
Learn from my pain; take your mental health seriously and if you feel like anxiety and stress are overwhelming you then talk to someone.
None of it means as much as you think it does
You think that your social media widget thingy is the most important thing in the world when you’re building it. The truth is, none of it really matters that much. Yes, it’s good to be passionate about what you do and yes your business is important to you at the time you’re building it, but it’s likely going to fail and you’re likely not going to die when it does.
If it literally isn’t going to kill you, it isn’t the most important thing.
You think that you need to answer that email at 10pm. You don’t.
You think that you need to wake up and get straight to work without exercise or meditation. You don’t.
You think that if you don’t make this business work your life will be over. It won't.
Your business is going to fail, trust me. It’s going to happen.
You know what happens tomorrow if your business fails today? Not a whole lot. You may have debt and that sucks, but you can work your way out of it. You may have some pissed off staff or suppliers, but they’ll get over it.
Something only matters as much as you give it relevance and weight.
You can choose a different reaction. You can choose a different feeling. You can integrate your work with your life and vice versa. It’s not a zero-sum game.
The biggest lesson that I’ve learned as a startup founder and entrepreneur is this:
Life is not a zero-sum game and nor is business.
Sell, sell, sell and other startup stumbling blocks
I was fortunate to be invited to mentor a group of startups at the 88mph work space. I sat with each startup for 20 minutes (timed) and asked them about their businesses, the problems they were encountering and the help they thought I could provide.Here are some of the main issues that came up.
Sell
Almost every startup I spoke to out of the nine were battling with one common issue - sales. It seems as though we're hellbent on building tech and improving it forever without focusing on either the business model or the selling of the business model. I was no different in many of my first startups but eventually you realise that your product is good enough to sell (not perfect) and that you need to go out and do this.Selling is scary for a few reasons:
- What if I fail and no one wants what I'm selling?
- What if I succeed and actually have to start building a business?
- The embarrassment of the hard sell - this is an South African issue, we're too polite to tell people how amazing we are.
- No understanding of sales tactics and/or sales cycles.
Once you understand the issues they are easy to overcome because they are simply not issues. If you don't know how to sell, learn. How do you learn? By selling. If you are fearful of failure you get over it by trying and failing or succeeding and vice versa for success. You wont be afraid of success once you are succeeding.Being afraid to hard sell your product means one of two things: You don't know how to do it or you don't think your product is good enough to sell. The best founders sell their products in their sleep, they just don't know it's called sales. If you love your product, if it's solving a problem and if it actually works, it's an easy sell for anyone.
Launch
The myth of the MVP is one that I am seeing pop up all over the place. Many entrepreneurs believe that an MVP is the worst possible acceptable version of your final product. This is sort of true but ultimately incorrect in my view. An MVP is the minimum viable product that you can put into a specific (and forgiving) market like early adopters that will allow you to gather valuable data and insight into the next iteration of your product.In short an MVP needs to help you deploy, learn, analyse and iterate. It's not a shittier version of your final product. It's a learning tool helping you move towards your final product.So what you need to do is plan and launch.
Growth
There is a buzz-phrase floating about the infamous tech blogs abroad and that buzz-phrase is "growth hacking". This is a painful phrase for me to hear. This phrase and concept is misleading and over simplistic leading founders and entrepreneurs to believe that growing a customer base is simply a matter of hacking, spending, developing and repeating.This might be true when you've got 10 developers, R1m to spend on marketing and A/B testing set up already but getting those things going takes time and effort (let alone money).Growth can occur in many ways with many different affects on your business.
- Rushing growth can destroy your service and flood it with spam, errors and server issues.
- Growing too slowly can tarnish the reputation of your community and stagnate growth further.
- Faking growth by buying users on advertising networks can provide the short-term illusion of growth but long term closure for your business.
- Growth without a plan, scaling in place and a revenue model will upset you, your investors, your customers and leave them searching for an alternative service.
I am a firm believer in organic growth especially if you are looking for those users to pay you for a service. It's tough to advertise blindly and expect a customer to pay you for something they've only seen through marketing. Organic word of mouth and peer-endorsement is often the best way to create viral growth. Although this type of growth requires a fantastic product and time to evolve. I met with nine startups who all believed they were fundamentally different to one another when in truth their problems were almost all the same. Business is business and problems persist no matter what business you're in. Learn to share your weaknesses and strengths and learn from the businesses around you. The best way to learn is to observe those around you.
20 Things 2011 taught me about my business
2011 has been one of the most intense, fun and challenging years of my business life. I've had my fair share of insane highs and crushing lows.Speaking to people in the last few weeks I noticed that many of my thoughts begin with, "And another thing I learned this year is...". So here is a list of 20 things that I learned in 2011 as a startup founder and now the CEO of Motribe.1. Hire slowly, fire quickly.2. Trust your gut about: People, deals, businesses and contracts.3. One deal can break your company.4. One deal can make your company.5. Don't scale your staff with one big client. They will leave you (staff and client), eventually.6. Cashflow, cashflow, cashflow. Startups worry about revenues, entrepreneurs know the value of cashflow.7. Be transparent with your team, they know when something is going on.8. If you have to, work on a public holiday, your biggest deals could happen after hours. Great business minds don't keep office hours.9. Don't listen to people who like to talk, listen to people who like to listen and have achieved.10. You know best more often than not. Trust your instincts.11. Avoid people-politics and games where possible.12. Be honest, open and transparent. If you aren't happy, tell someone.13. Fire bad clients.14. Be picky about who you work with.15. Don't do business just for the money.16. Do whatever it takes.17. No one knows your business like you do, fight for it.18. Make the best decision you can at the time with the facts at your disposal.19. Say "Fuck it", and take the risks necessary for great success.20. Have a co-founder or business partner who you can rely on. When shit gets heavy you need someone to back you up.It's hard to pick the most important lessons from the list above but for me I think that number 6, 16 and 20 are right up there.What lessons did you learn about your business in 2011?
Is South Africa not good enough for Vinny Lingham?
Vinny Lingham has recently secured $5m dollars in Venture Capital investment for his startup, Synthasite, from Compagnie Financière Richemont’s subsidiary, Swiss-based Columbus Venture Capital.He is making waves internationally, he is doing a great job of building an empire. Unfortunately that empire is moving away from it's home.Vinny is moving. Now most of you wont think twice about this, good for him making something of himself and moving on to bigger and better things. But I have an issue with all of this and trust me, I am not the only one.Setting up a fund for local companies to pool resources from (commonly known as Venture Capital - VC) is great. But taking these companies to a global market, removing them from SA and garnering credit from an international market with no emphasis on the South African nature of the product is not on.If Synthasite is anything for us to go by we can expect all of Vinny's "investments" to up and leave SA for greener, better, larger, more profitable markets. Which makes sense I suppose. But the nature of our market is one that needs nurturing and growth from the grassroots up and the inside out. Vinny could've been our man but it seems as though profit and power motivate more than development and growth for SA.Don't misunderstand me, I am not berating Vinny's success. It is marvelous that the man is set up for at least the next well, forever. Investments are great but how about giving something back?Vinny has the opportunity to hire local developers, train local people to become great innovators, developers and business people. He has the chance to make an impact. Instead he is fleeing SA for San Francisco. The money is greater, the market (I mean USA when I say "the market") is more appealing for him and SA is left in his wake. Sad situation if you ask me.He claims to be a VC but to date Lingham Capital seems to have invested in SkyRove and that's it. In fact, for someone with a site that builds sites (Synthasite), Lingham Capital's own website looks pretty dismal to me. The homepage is barren, the featured investments are empty, there hasn't been a single blog post and it seems as though the site never even got off the ground.
Some might say he's been busy raising $5m for Synthasite but that's hogwash. Yes he raised the $5m but then why bother even making a massive announcement that he would be investing in companies locally?Speaking of local investments, it seems as though Vinny has no interest in investing locally unless there is massive global focus. Vinny has openly stated in the past that he's not interested in the South African money - the market is too small. He did so on David Bullard's blog where he only spoke of dollars and pounds because his company, Incubeta, only generate about 5% of their R60 million turnover from SA.Eve Dmochowska has a great post wherein she chats about a meeting with Vinny, Justin from Afrigator and others. Here's a quick excerpt:
This is how the situation panned out. Try to keep up.Vinny cannot invest in Afrigator, because it does not have immediate global appeal, but Triumph cannot invest in Synthasite because it does not have enough local focus. Unfortunately, even though Afrigator is all about local focus, Triumph wouldn’t invest because there is no cash flow. Blue Catalyst might be able to put Afrigator in touch with angel investors who might provide the capital necessary to get Afrigator to a positive cash-flow situation, but the fact that Afrigator’s creator has only had one failure behind him (and not at least five) puts him at a disadvantage in all the VCs’ eyes. Go figure.
Damned if you do and damned if you don't. I am sure this is how Vinny is going to feel after reading this post. Unfortunately I am one of those people who believe that it's not someone else's job to make change happen. It's my job, it's your job and it's the job of whoever can actually make a difference.Vinny has openly said that he wont invest in Afrigator because it is too local. Why would he not want to invest now and help them mould their company in to one that is locally based with global appeal? Why must profit = global alone? Why can an African website such as Afrigator not make it in a VC's mind? Short sighted and naive in my opinion.South Africa needs heroes, captains of industry and leaders. Not Capitalists who flee when things get tough and the market is more lucrative somewhere else.
Working From Home
It's hard to work from home. There are distractions all over and reasons not to work keep popping up. Is it wrong to watch a movie when you should be working? Is it? I think it is but sometimes I just can't help myself.I overcame the early mornings (I am now awake at about 7:30am every morning) and have overcome the breakfast issues (I now eat breakfast). The next hill to climb is gym.I think the best alternative is to get offices. WiredWorks is going to need offices, soon. I think that it is important, not the most important, part of a new company, offices. The corporate identity and brand that offices offer are invaluable. In spite of being an online media company I think that real world organisations like to see some sort of professionalism in small to medium size enterprises and start up companies. Offices, in my opinion are a helpful way to create this identity.There are others ways to achieve this of course, but I think that for me right now, I need to get out of the house.[techtags: corporate identity, startups, branding, marketing, image]
Interesting Facebook Stats
This sort of growth is phenomenal, but what I would like to note is that it DID NOT happen OVERNIGHT. In fact it happened over years. Yes, there might be close to 20 million active users and something like 30 billion pageviews per month but it took time. And yes Facebook is said to be the largest photosharing site in the world, but again, that took time. So to all you startups out there, breath, take your time and grow your product, Facebook was not built in a day, nor was Rome apparently.