8 years at Omniconvert. 8 lessons learned

I have started to build companies "accidentally."

When I was young and foolish, the only reason was to escape poverty.

The first company was a hit and reshaped the way I interpret reality: suddenly, I wasn't just a poor student with no perspective but an entrepreneur that makes things happen.

The most important outcome from the first company: that I can do it. I can create something meaningful.

The second company vacuumed all the money plus a loan. It was a b2b company, and the hunt for customers drained all my energy, resources, and trust. I have ended up struggling for survival, having to let go 12 employees and keeping only 3.

I re-learned to be humble, rational, and resilient thanks to that experience.

The third company was about accumulating wealth. I was 26 and teamed up with a customer that had a courageous dream. In a few years, we ended up being the category king on the Romanian online insurance market.

However, my partner and I had different perspectives about how a company, an employee, and a culture can grow.

So, we parted ways.

I learned that destination is far less important than the company.

And by company, I mean the company of the ones that you share the road. 

Omniconvert was about learning more and teaming-up with inspiring, determined, bright, and warm people.

It was created to achieve the freedom to decide.

To create something meaningful for the global market.

Here are the most critical 8 lessons that I've learned in the last 8 years at Omniconvert:

1. Who you are ≠ what you achieve

During a burnout that I haven't even noticed, I let my attention slip.

I started to wrongly think that I'm a fraud, a loser if I'm not going to make the company thrive.

It was a vicious circle: I couldn't achieve the results I was after as I thought I'm not valuable and don't deserve them. I lost deals, colleagues, opportunities, and time due to this bias.

If your internal story about yourself is that you're not worthy unless you're getting the results you're after, you will broadcast it to everyone.

It doesn't matter what you say to them, it matters what you say to yourself.

So, to end this vicious circle, you have to begin by accepting the fact that you're simply great, and that your results may come or not in the external world, but you owe it to yourself to try until your last drop of blood.

The other side of the coin is that many entrepreneurs and successful professionals stop learning and growing because of the same bias: they think that if they reached a certain level of safety or wealth, they can now stop because they reached the end, and now they can indulge themselves. Or, they exaggerate and pour all of their hearts into their work, but they are suboptimal partners, parents, or friends.

2. Don’t trade direction for speed

In 2017, I felt lost.

After raising money, we poured too much into a sales experiment without validating it completely beforehand.

Why? 

Attachment leads to speed. Speed leads to accidents.

I hired people too fast, without investing enough time to validate the sales manager, the sales process, the sales playbook, and the ICP needs.

There are many reasons why that happened, but the most important thing was the pressure to demonstrate, to scale, to achieve growth faster.

Eventually, I had to let go 25 people due to that bet.

So, we ended up with a broken culture, low trust, no enthusiasm, and a damaged cashflow. That single mistake has affected us for 2 years.

3. If you love them, let them go

When you start a company, you'll team up with generalist people that will believe in you and your mission.

As time goes by, some of them will grow, some of them will not grow. The fact is that the company will require specialists. Even though some of them will try to do their best, they will not be fit for the new level where the company has got.

You're harming their potential, your relation, and your company's performance if you keep them further.

Even though they've been with the company from the very beginning, not all of them will be with your company until the end. 

9 of the employees that we hired in the first phase of our company were great and competent, but not for the next phase that the company was in. 

All of them are now doing great, despite my struggles that I will ruin their careers by letting them go :) 

4. You're in the game of giving, not getting 

After a streak of bad months on the red, I have started to feel the urge to be profitable, which led to becoming money-hungry, instead of aiming to deliver value.

So, I ended up focusing on what we're getting, not what we have to give to our customers. 

That made the game change. 

We weren't innovating, we weren't focusing on the value we had to give, but on maximizing the profit. That made us less empathetic and heavily affected the innovation level.

The consequence: soon, we needed to run for survival, not to build something sustainable and meaningful.

Once I realize it, I turned the ship around.

Entrepreneurship is a bit like a love relationship.

You have to constantly give what you're seeking for.

You will not get affection only because you ask for it, you have to provide that affection first.

I see many young employees doing the same mistake: they are after a raise, but they don't grow and don't provide enough value. 

They don't learn faster, they're simply stuck and blame the company, the boss, the environment for their own mediocrity.

The principle I got is that you have to create outstanding and undeniable value before asking for money.

This is why we have given away our latest product, Reveal, completely free for a whole year: to understand what's valuable first, and then be able to charge from customers that are actually happy to pay us.

5. Eyes on the road, but mind the final destination

We started with the vision to help midsize eCommerce companies level-up their games thanks to our technology and knowledge.

The first product that we’ve built helped companies optimize their websites by doing AB testing and surveys. 

In 2017, we realized that what we offer is not that valuable anymore, so we decided to investigate and realized that CRO is not enough. 

While our customers thought they needed more conversions, therefore better customer acquisition, what truly made them thrive was customer retention. 

So, we turned the ship around and decided to create a new category around customer value optimization. We could have ended up being a follower in a red ocean, but we chose the opposite. 

The lesson:

Begin with the end in mind, and keep it fresh in your mind to update that as you learn and understand more about the game you're in.

It is exactly like in your personal life.

It doesn't matter how talented, sustained, and resourceful you are: if you don't set a clear destination and update it constantly, according to the environment, you’ll ruin your chances.

6. Get out of your team's way

I once made an honest assessment of my particular abilities. The question is what can I do that very few people I know can do.

I realized which is my unique ability:

It is to attract and inspire people around a common goal and help them reach their full potential while reaching for that goal.

That made me aware that I need to take a step back and allow my team to exercise and grow.

There is this trade-off: you sacrifice the immediate results, but it pays off in the future.

Allowing your colleagues to think with their heads, giving them the power to decide, and to suffer from their own mistakes without blaming them, is the way to go.

Is not like I am mastering this game, but is fulfilling to see people like @Maria, @Sorin, @Juliana, or @Raluca outperforming me after years of working together.

7. It’s all in your mind

While I was traversing a pain period, I got an A-Ha moment while I was writing in my journal:

I am depleted because I forgot my biggest dream.

I am chasing survival mode instead of living my wildest vision.

I have lost my way and forgot what I aspired to do in the first place.

The harsh reality is that you're solely responsible for your decisions to play the game you play and you must decide how far you will go.

The winner is always alone.

Think Olympics.

Will you go all the way, despite this ABSOLUTELY NORMAL pain period?

Sometimes to go further means to stop digging your own grave.

That means to get rid of the toxic thoughts. Work on the inside.

Your mental universe is generating your external conditions.

You can't afford to be depressed.

Life is too short and you're too smart to choose this, in such a great moment of your life: the moment when you have the real chance to grow.

There's no risk in trying; the real risks are:

- to live a boring useless 9-5 life

- to waste your creative talent

- to be too stubborn to notice that you're in the wrong direction

What do you want to create?

Envision it and then keep your eyes on the target.

Too many entrepreneurs postpone the reward because that’s how their inner game works. Motivated by a brighter future, they tend to become attached to a future image they envision in their head. 

Even if they achieve that brighter future, they become trapped in their own game, constantly changing external conditions. 

That leads to missing the human game while winning the entrepreneurial game.

From where I look at life now, we can win the inner game only by taming our mind and emotions, accepting what it is living in the present moment, aware of how our mind works. 

8. $$$ is not the real scoreboard 

In entrepreneurship, you need to be data-driven.

You have to capture the reality by using numbers, setting goals, and following them tenaciously, by monitoring what is versus what you planned.

Even though that’s certainly the way to achieve business success, it is not the same when it comes to life. 

We’re human beings that have a reason, but also feelings and emotions.

No matter how many milestones we will reach, no matter how many numbers will match our expectations, we’re still going to evaluate our success based on the joy, love, and authentic relations we have with the ones around us. 

In my case, I have gone the entrepreneurship route as a way to achieve financial freedom. Still, once I did that, my intention was primarily to express my potential and create something meaningful surrounded by intelligent and caring colleagues.

 If we afford the luxury to have a sincere scan of what drives us further, maybe we can find that we’re not after numbers, but after words:

after the kind words of the ones that matter to us.