Natural Temptations For Entrepreneurs
Running a business is really tough.
Some of this is due to external factors beyond our control.
Then there are the self-inflicted challenges, the things that entrepreneurs do that make their own lives harder.
I call these Temptations, because in the moment they seem like such great ideas – the right decision or an action that comes from a good place.
They all start from a valid feeling or genuine personal experience, but then lead to unhelpful habits and responses.
These are tough to acknowledge, and incredibly valuable to study.
I am either guilty of these myself, been startup teams that have fallen into these traps, or been a trusted advisor to entrepreneurs who are dealing these issues.
Some might sound familiar, others might not, all of these can help you or your friends stay out of trouble.
“I can shortcut the learning curve”
The Good Story: Time is precious, and a lot of instructional guides are full of filler.
If we can skip to the essential parts, we can outrun the competition
The Reality: John Wanamaker said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”.
The same goes for your learning curve, be it in product development, branding, user testing, price setting, forecasting, or creating different versions of your menu.
You can turn your nose up at the “wastefulness” of these processes, but you’re likely to miss out on the benefits and insights they generate in the long run.
“I can solve my problems by throwing long nights and weekends at them”
The Good Story: Entrepreneurs are people who put in the hard yards, so that they eventually reap the immense rewards of their work.
If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.
The Reality: While this approach does resolve your problems at first, it’s hard to hand the reins back over to your team.
If your response during stressful times is to shoulder the work on your own, you’re probably going to continue doing this as the business grows.
This is a short term solution to a problem that’s not going away.
A better question is; do you have the right support around you?
And are all of your tasks of vital importance?
“I am above average at recruiting”
The Good Story: You have an eye for good people, and it’s allowed you to spot the hidden gems that other people miss.
You don’t need systems or processes, you need to eyeball the candidates and trust your gut.
The Reality: This is a great way to hire your foundational team.
It doesn’t scale, because you don’t scale.
Yes you’ve got a good eye for talent, but you also had the ability to shape people, either through direct interactions or by having them learn via osmosis.
That changes as you grow – you won’t get to see everybody on a daily basis, won’t spot the red flags as they start to emerge, and won’t be able to take corrective action early enough.
You might be above average, but your business is another story – it needs systems and processes to replicate your strengths.
“Let’s spend time getting this one perfect”
The Good Story: If I put my work out in the market, it will be judged harshly.
Better to keep it a secret until it’s perfect.
The Reality: There’s not going to be a day when it’s perfect.
Seth Godin said “while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship”.
This is the power of a deadline – it sets an end date for your perfectionism.
By all means you can edit, tinker and improve it before the deadline, but there has to be a time where you push anxiety to the side, temporarily, and put your work out into the world.
You probably will be judged harshly, but not from your customers, and their opinions are the ones that really matter.
“My work isn’t as good as those in the market”
The Good Story: You made your brand, products and services at home.
You created it yourself.
That makes this a homemade business, not like “a real one from the shop”, so you set lower expectations for your audience.
The Reality: Perhaps your prototypes were homemade, but soon you become “real” in the eyes of your customer.
There’s a good chance you’ll never feel comfortable raising your prices or your promises, but it’s worth doing anyway.
A great way of assessing this is to study how your customers engage with your products compared to your competitors.
Seeing them choose and enjoy what you’ve created is a great source of inspiration and validation.
“Someone didn’t like what I made, so I should stop”
The Good Story: This negative feedback is a blessing, and it’s telling me to stop what I’m doing.
It’s called self-awareness and it’s important.
The Reality: Who was the criticism from?
Taking negative feedback from your customers is valuable, but negative feedback from strangers is not.
Dita Von Teese said “You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches”.
For this reason, not all opinions will have equal value to you – some need to be politely tuned out.
You are not everyone’s cup of tea, but you want to be some people’s favourite cup of tea.
Seek out their opinion, rather than accepting all criticism at face value.
“I don’t want to test it, because it might make me not want to do it”
The Good Story: You have a calling, a vision, and no time to lose.
Why waste time on setting up tests, when you can use that same time to build it?
The Reality: Entrepreneurship is full of stories of people who did this and found great success.
We call this the Survivorship Bias, because all of the people who tried this approach and failed didn’t end up giving talks or writing books.
If your idea is based on valid assumptions, a quick and cheap test will confirm this to you and your supporters.
It will make it easier to find funding, partnerships and staff.
On the other hand, if there’s a faulty assumption in your idea, when do you want to find out?
Now, or once you’ve sunk huge amounts of time and resources into it?
You’re right to want a quick test, but not so quick that it glosses over the issues.
“I know what I want to do and will use this test to prove that it’s a good idea”
The Good Story: You know in your gut that this is a great concept, so let’s run a trial to show everyone what’s already obvious to you.
The Reality: Your gut is not flawless.
Making large bets based on your gut is not an investment strategy, at least not for long.
Experiments need objectivity, in order to confirm your suspicions.
If it’s a good idea, it will stand up to a fair trial, not a biased trial.
“An investor will make my life so much easier”
The Good Story: Your cashflow situation is causing you to lose sleep, so by solving the money problem you can focus on the more important parts of your business.
The Reality: The money problem is often a symptom of the more important parts of your business, and an investor will detect this immediately.
It’s really tough to attract money into a struggling or unproven business model, so your investor is likely to bring unfavourable terms or tricky questions.
There’s a good chance that what you really want is cashflow assistance, and it might be better to look for customers and pre-orders, which offer financial sustainability as well as market validation.
“Bringing in investors will give me support and teammates”
The Good Story: You love Shark Tank, and can imagine how great it would be to have a shark in your corner.
They would offer so much support and assistance, since they have a large stake in the business.
The Reality: Yes, this is the best case scenario and it’s a good one.
However, investors can soon feel adversarial, provide advice that feels irrelevant or remove you from your own company in the name of “shareholder interests”.
Why not look for support and teammates?
They don’t have to be the same people as those who own equity, there are other ways of putting skin in the game.
Perhaps what you really want is an advisory board, a few mentors and some friendly freelancers?
“I don’t understand this, so I’ll bring in someone to do it for me”
The Good Story: Why waste your time on a skillset you can hire?
You may not be strong on written content or bookkeeping, but you can outsource these roles.
The Reality: You can outsource 90% of each of these roles, once you understand them.
Every entrepreneur needs to know how their numbers work, and should be involved in the content their business is publishing.
By all means outsource the legwork and the details, but you can’t expect other people to make important decisions on your behalf – at least not well.
“I have 50 goals and genuinely believe each one of them is realistic”
The Good Story: Don’t you tell me that my goals are unrealistic, I know exactly how to do each one of them.
Pick one and I’ll tell you how doable it is.
The Reality: Yes, you could do each of them, but you can’t do all of them.
Your energy and attention is the limiting factor, so you need to choose which 40 out of 50 you won’t do.
Strategy is all about saying no to good things, in order to say yes to the best things.
Most entrepreneurs find this painful, since they have to wave goodbye to a do-able goal.
To spare that pain, they take it on as an additional project, and soon find themselves overwhelmed by do-able tasks.
“This new team member will fix everything”
The Good Story: Just you wait, we’re bringing in someone special.
Their talent is going to finally take us to the next level.
The Reality: This is so easy to envision, and so hard to get right.
Firstly, one person will struggle to change an entire team, at least at first.
There’s so much inertia to overcome, or momentum to redirect.
Secondly, it’s hard to get team members to take ownership of something they don’t own.
It’s not their business.
Thirdly, there are some things you can’t outsource, especially when it comes to culture.
It is not the responsibility of a new hire to reset the culture of a team, that must come from you.
They can magnify whatever the leaders are bringing to the table, but they can’t compensate for deeper issues within the business.
“A CRM platform will boost my sales and revenues”
The Good Story: If we start using a CRM system like Salesforce or Hubspot, we’ll boost our revenues and grow the business.
The Reality: Yes these tools are useful, but they give you clarity instead of progress.
A hungry team can generate sales with their phones and notepads, a team without hunger can’t be helped by a flashy platform.
Sales meetings without buy-in from the team are generally ineffective, and lead to resentment from all sides.
“I tried social media/that approach, it doesn’t work”
The Good Story: You hear a lot about new tactics, but when you’ve tried them for yourself you remained sceptical.
It’s probably just marketing fluff and buzz.
The Reality: This is like doing one yoga class halfheartedly, seeing no change in your flexibility and claiming that yoga doesn’t work.
Did you actually follow the recipe, or did you make a series of compromises and adjustments to the recipe?
If you cut corners and expect immediate results, you’re unlikely to experience the same results as those who have invested themselves in the new approach.
Yes there will always be hype and exaggeration, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get huge benefits from new strategies and tactics.
“I feel like a fraud, and everyone sees me as a fraud”
The Good Story: You know how tenuously your business is held together, and it makes you uncomfortable.
Everyone can see it, and their silent judgement feels awful.
The Reality: Imposter syndrome is very real, and it can make you abandon great projects out of fear.
Guess who said this:
“You think, ‘Why would anyone want to see me again in a movie? And I don’t know how to act anyway, so why am I doing this?’”
Meryl Streep.
If Meryl Streep has imposter syndrome, the rest of us are unlikely to be immune.
What’s more likely is that your business looks like a normal business to the rest of the world, and their silence isn’t judgement, but rather boredom or acceptance.
98% of the market is not as critical as the voice in your head.
Some people may remain sceptical, but they probably weren’t ever going to be your customers.
You will probably feel like a fraud no matter what, but the idea of everyone seeing it is a fabrication – please don’t let it shut down your projects.
There’s a pattern that links these temptations – good things become harmful when they’re overdone.
Delegation is good, over-delegation is harmful.
Shortcuts are good, shortcutting everything is harmful.
Optimism is good, over-optimism is harmful.
Growth is good, growing too quickly is harmful.
Hard work is good, too much pressure is harmful
Each of us gains a great deal of clarity when we pause and ask: am I using “good things” as a way of avoiding the real issues?
