🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

Having a really solid business plan and knowing your competition. Doing a competitive analysis. Figuring out every business model. Having strong advisors and having a good team. Those are all really helpful. It's not just an idea; it has to be well thought of before you actually go and spend years and hours of your life in it.

Set up an advisory board of people that you can talk to along the way immediately. Two days after you start your business. In fact, you should probably, before you start your business, get one or two people that you can really trust and run some of your ideas by them. Not that you're going to listen to everything they have to say but having people around you with diverse backgrounds and experiences makes the process much easier to go through.

Education and research are always key. If there is something you want to learn more of or get on, double down your efforts on the understanding of what it is you are trying to do. I always say that is the best way. Sometimes the right information can be a game-changer. It's out there and, it's about locating it. It's about getting it into your hands and minds to use outwardly. That could be a mentor. That could be a business strategy coach. That could be anybody. It's just about getting it and applying it. Get the knowledge and then apply what you are learning to your business.

I think being a ravenous reader is great. I think that you know I've learned a lot from books on how to build a business, culture, and whatnots. I think really reading a lot, especially about a particular start-up. Or if you are starting up just from people that are in your industry is important. The same part is really putting yourself out there to reach out to people that are in your industry. Or get a mentor essentially.

Invest in yourself. Invest in yourself, whether that is reading a stupid amount of books or hiring a coach. Bring in someone to help and encourage you. This can go along with that last one. Know that you are worth it. You have the ability to do this but there are so many things that you probably don't know. Take some of your funds or set aside some of your funds and invest in yourself.

Get really clear on what it is that you want. I'm in the position now where I work with hundreds of business owners. Most of them have gotten lost on the journey and forgotten why they started in the first place. The truth is that we usually tend to overcomplicate what we are doing. We usually tend to add on more than we want and make it more expensive than it needs to be. If you really get in touch with what is the result you want? What is the lifestyle you want? And you build your business around that you'll avoid a lot of detours that are unnecessary. The last thing you want to do is build a successful business 20 years from now, look back and say I don't even like what I built, or even like where I am at. That's what a lot of people are on the path to do.

That's kind of my struggle. What to do? Whether to stay with my current lifestyle which, I really like. Coaching businesses and maybe writing books and tinkering with things. Or I should switch gears and try to go for it. I am always thinking of Ray Kroc. I think he was 53-54 when he started McDonald's. So maybe it's not too late for me to do this if I really want to. Try to make a huge impact with the 1.5 million companies that start for the solution that maybe I could provide.

Get a mentor who already has a lot of experience. When I joined Polar, for example, I got a lot of support and trust from one of the co-founders. I got promoted very fast to a very big position. The thing I learned the most is and would recommend to anyone is to learn a lot and in the best way possible to just get a mentor a see how he or she works.

Think about distribution. Think about who also speaks to my audience and how could I potentially partner with them? How can I find a win-win-win solution for the potential customers, the partner, and myself? Distribution is the shortcut to business growth. For us, we really did not do too much marketing at all. We focused on distribution which got us our early customers and still several customers at the moment through these partners that we have established. It's a long game but, distribution is your shortcut.

Start small. Be methodical with your purchases. You might think you need XYZ to do your job. How can you go about doing that with what you have? Let's say it's a small business that once to start doing website design. You don't need adobe creative suite. You don't need this five hundred dollar a month piece of equipment to do stuff. How can you figure out how to do it with a text editor? How can you figure out how to do it with what you have on your computer? Or what can you use the trial for? A lot of companies give you a trial for a month. Try for a month.