I made 4 big mistakes when starting my last company—all of them more than once. But I’ll choose the “half full” perspective and say that these are 4 lessons I learned. Yes, there were more, but these have been on my mind today.
Lesson 1: Don’t feel compelled to hire people as full-time employees until I really need them full-time. As an employer, I always felt compelled to offer full-time employment. But some of my best workers ended up being people who worked part-time, or on a consulting basis.
Lesson 2: Delegate. It took me years to get even halfway good at this…my tendency is to do too much myself. Learning to delegate (either internally to employees or externally to freelancers, consultants, agencies) was very hard for me. It still isn’t easy. But I need to be vigilant about this.
Lesson 3: “Over communicate.” Too often, especially the first few years, I assumed that if I said something or wrote something, the message was received. Personally, I get annoyed when people tell me the same thing twice…and 3 times about drives me over the edge. So for me, whether giving directions to an employee, setting expectations with a client, whatever…I figured if I write it, or said it, it was clear. But I learned the hard way that many people need to get information—especially important information—multiple times and in multiple ways (spoken, email, memo, etc.) before I can assume they not only received it, but actually “got it.”
Lesson 4. Be frugal. Actually, I was pretty good about this, and it served me well during the inevitable economic ups and downs. For example, during the tech boom, other business owners were spending money on fancy office space, $300 desk chairs, and elaborate employee benefits (pinball machines and pool tables, fancy catered lunches, and such). I never was comfortable with that type of excess, so when the bubble burst, I was in good shape. We had money in the bank. Some of my competitors hadn’t been as careful, and went out of business. BTW, here are some good, recent articles from other blog sites about this topic: A) From ConceptCurry.com and B) from the Bootstrapping blog (this one is about looking large on a budget, but it’s the same theme).
As I prepare to launch the new biz, I think I can score myself so far as follows:
Not hiring FTEs until necessary: A. So far, I am only using agencies and freelancers.
Delegate: B. I could be using a freelancer to do more, so I’ll try to correct this ASAP.
Over-communicate: B. So far, OK. But I could be doing a better job with one of the freelancers working on a project for me.
Be frugal: A. So far, I am far under budget. And given the current economy, I intend to remain hyper-vigilant about this.
Filed under: Business strategy, Hopes & Fears, Running a virtual company | Tagged: economy, start-up, virtual business
