11 Quick Reflections from Entrepreneurship

It's my 5th year being an entrepreneur and my 3rd business, here are some quick reflections growing CuriousCore for fellow founders and aspiring entrepreneurs.

1. Correct a poor money mindset especially about debt and resourcefulness

I remember texting my mentor when we took our first business loan which tied me as the personal guarantor sharing my concerns. At that time, the amount was 70% of our annual revenue and my mentor warned me to be very careful.

All businesses require some form of capital to grow so raising it through equity, debt or profits have its own pros and cons. While cheap capital doesn't replace resourcefulness and the virtue of frugality, good founders should understand how their own personal money mindset cripples them from doing what is right for the business.

We took that loan and grew 4X.

2. Don't be the team's bottleneck

I like what Jeff Bezos said about Type 1 vs Type 2 decisions and how some decisions are reversible while some are hard to reverse. I try to delegate as much easy to reverse decisions to the team and anticipate when I become the team's bottleneck in getting something done. The business should be able to operate on a day-to-day basis without the management slowing down execution velocity.

3. Keep a rigorous hiring process even if you are small

The Singapore government gives plenty of incentives for hiring mature workers and I bought into free grants and the hype of experienced candidates who held senior titles and worked for good companies and skipped a few steps in our hiring process. I learnt that hiring and promoting without a meritocratic process is usually a bad idea. Relevant experience increases speed to execute strategy.

4. Don't blame people, improve communication skills, processes and culture instead

A business is a system and the late Dr. W. Edwards Deming mentioned that mistakes are a result of a system failure 94% of the time. As leaders, we can always ask ourselves how we can improve communication, processes and culture before blaming someone in the team.

5. Pay attention to customer feedback and share it with the rest of the organisation for action

We happen to be in the business that advocates customer-centricity to our clients and are one of the few training organisations that practices the customer feedback loop we share with our coaching and training clients. It's not good enough to be aware about customer problems without corrective action applied consistently.

6. Invest in people and tools if it means better productivity in 3 to 6 months

I learnt early on that very few people had the privilege to work with good leaders and worked for good companies that have a structured career development program or tools that help save time. If their earlier employer did not make that investment, someone has to make that investment and the organisation that does it first will be the first to reap productivity and innovation gains.

7. Bring the right legal, insurance and accounting partners as early as possible

There are hundreds of scenarios that could potentially kill a business, don't let poorly structured legal contracts, insufficient liability cover and bad cash flow management be one of them.

8. Long term and thoughtful decision making seems to be underrated

Making consistently good decisions with a long term view is one of the hardest things to do as a founder. There is always the temptation of shortcuts, quick fixes and making a quick buck.

A business trajectory can be determined by good quality decisions made by a group of thoughtful individuals. That requires discipline.

9. Assume that your time gets more expensive as the business grows

Founders tend to underestimate how expensive their time gets as the business grows. Every year, I delegate the functions I'm kind of good at to people who are actually good at it. I try to stick to my zone of genius as often as possible and assume my time is worth $1000/hr.

10. The first million dollars in annual revenue is about maximising distribution with product-market fit

I did not appreciate how important it was nailing product-market fit until being in a competitive space with more well funded and experienced competitors. Sales and marketing requires consistent effort and investment and it makes a huge difference how fast a business makes a breakthrough in its first million dollars in annual revenue.

11. Focus more, do less

It is easy to get sucked into the hype of doing more and trying different things without thoughtful experimentation. I think founders could benefit from doing less and only focus on the things that would really move the needle. "What are the things I should be doing this week to move the needle?"

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Good tidings fellow founders and aspiring entrepreneurs.

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@daylonsoh