Six Secrets to Startup Success: How to Turn An Entrepreneurial Passion Into A Thriving Business

Here are some helpful tips, I learned from reading John Bradberry's Book, "Six Secrets to Startup Success: How to Turn Your Entrepreneurial Passion into a Thriving Business."

Being motivated is a thing many struggle with, however there is a subset of individuals that are overly motivated, and talented enough to actually be wildly successful. They have the unique mentality that failing is not an option, and are willing to sacrifice their time, personal relationships, and money to make it happen. Entrepreneurs get their ambition from dissatisfaction in the system. This dissatisfaction goes through phases. First, they experience that they are dissatisfied with. Second, they have a eureka moment when realize there is a way within their control to avoid the dissatisfying outcome. Third, the entrepreneur reaches a tipping point and their dissatisfaction becomes the impedes to act in order to avoid the dissatisfactory outcome. Those individuals are entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs fall into passion traps, because they tend to get excited about a lot of different subject areas. Entrepreneurs sometimes find themselves doing everything but the important things, because they over got excited about a lot of opportunities and overcommitted themselves. Hopefully these six thoughts will help you avoid falling into a passion trap as you set out to solve the world’s problems through entrepreneurship. 

(1) The Passion Trap: How Attachment to An Idea Can Sabotage A Startup

The passion trap, tunnel vision, or cognitive bias is the self-reinforcing of beliefs, choices, and actions that lead to critical miscalculations and mistakes, because of a circular self-proving rationalization. Entrepreneurs fall vulnerable to passion traps, because they typically have Icarus qualities (Confident/Optimistic; Desire to be Successful; Independence; Creativity/imagination/resourcefulness; willingness to take risks; and can follow through with their focus). The Passion trap occurs in four interdependent steps. First, the entrepreneur gains an attachment to the idea. Then they begin investing money, time, and efforts to accomplishing their idea. Third, they begin receiving feedback or results through various sources. Finally, they fall into the trap when they bias their interpretation of the feedback, market data, and results, because of their attachment to the idea, and not the realities of the market. Mistakenly falling into some passion trapped entrepreneurs to six negative outcomes:

I. founder misalignment;

II. missing the market;

III. overly optimistic planning;

IV. an unforgiving strategy, which eliminates all options;

V. a distortion of reality; or

VI. the evaporating runway effect. 

(2) "Fail to Plan, you Plan to Fail" - Are you Ready for the Entrepreneurial Journey?

A founder’s readiness makes a huge difference on the probability their venture will be successful. No founder is a perfect match for their startup, because in order to be successful and scale. Every founder must build a team to satisfy all of the venture’s needs, and overtime the business’s needs constantly change. In order to be most effective founders should learn to understand, connect, and strengthen their passions to direct their efforts towards the work in which they are most effective, and enjoy. Founders should use these five techniques to improve a founder's readiness:

(1) Clarify the organization's goals and reasoning behind them.

(2) Understand your own role, the role of co-founders, and the desired roles of employees based on entrepreneurial personalities, and where they naturally fit within an organization.

a. What role does this person play? Founder? Funder? Growth executive? Inventor? Engineer? Sales?

(3) Map skills and experiences to achieve the right fit for a role. 

(4) Leverage relationships, and resources to gain valuable advice.

(5) Position the organization in an environment to best balance on work performance, health, and relationships. 

a. Usually this is a place of perfect tranquility. 

(3) Attach to A Customer’s Needs - Not A Market

  Many successful founders find that their first concept is not their final concept. They reinvent, adapt, troubleshoot, and improve a product or business design over and over again to stay competitive. Businesses should be constructed from a customer oriented perspective emphasizing customer experience at the forefront of business strategy and considerations. A business must both invest in customer acquisition, and fully understand the users experience. In order to understand and execute on a products desired market, the founder must bring the product to the market, learn from the market, and then make choices dependent on feedback. 

  Entrepreneurs can focus on the customers, while avoiding an unhealthy attachment to the market make the most impact on the market, because most tasks, learning outcomes, and decisions focus on the value the product provides customers. John Bradberry recommends going “beyond untested confidence” before taking the plunge to fully commit to a venture by figuring out:

• Who is the core customer?
• What need does a product address? or What is its value proposition for customers?
• How realistic is the market opportunity given the resources currently available?
• How can the business expand its market share using multiple methods of monetization? 
• What is the businesses’ competitive advantage? Why is the product unique?

(4) Chart the Phases Along the Path to Breakeven and Beyond

  Every business plan should be correlated to the phase a business will go through over the next three years. Businesses progress through phases, and the venture’s financial projections should reflect this. Financial Projections should indicate the various phases of the Startup progress through – not a flat line budget of immediate implementation of all programing without taking into account realistic scaling of the venture. A plan need both an organizing logic, and numbers to match – one without the other is simply half the picture. This plan needs to demonstrate a clear path to financially breaking-even through a detailed application of the current capabilities and resources to implement a specific strategy, model, and definition of success. 

  The right financial plan will always take into consideration long term views, understand controlling needs, true value of a resource, and the business’ current limitations. When raising money and more importantly spending it correctly, a founder should always appreciate the money’s source, and opportunity its intended purpose provides. Most importantly - raising money is not dispositive of spending it. There is a tremendous value in raising more money than is minimally required, because the additional cash equates to financial security, and more flexibility to embrace pther options then those initially presented.

(5) Execute with Startup Agility: Focused Flexibility

  Even a good plan is not a sure thing, because as John points out “there is no such thing as a sure thing.” He advises entrepreneurs pursue very specific and detailed goals in the short term, and looser more adaptable goals in the long term. The plan is always to preserve options, and agility. Early stage companies should not be getting into long term contracts, or commitments in order to preserve the ability to adapt as better information becomes available. When a company needs to change directions being agile is crucial to successfully achieve consistent, and sustained levels of growth. 

  John Bradberry recommends starting with a minimal viable product (“MVP”) in order to receive market feedback from observing how customers respond and interact with the MVP (without fully committing to a final product). Many entrepreneurs find improved success when they start listening to the market and begin adapting their ideas in response to the new information learned throughout the process instead of an afterthought. Bradberry advocates leaving important decisions until the last responsible moment, and I agree whole heartedly that entrepreneurs should take in as much information as possible without make a decision in case a material fact or defining perspective changes. As the information changes, openness to changing the identity or design in order to be suit the customers’ needs will only make the product better. 

(6) Communication: Without it, A Startup Will Implode

  Communication seems so fundamental that it is unnecessary to discuss, yet it is consistently an issue in both Startups and Fortune 500 companies. Over communication is always recommended. Effective organization communication requires these three elements: (1) Openness; (2) Clarity; and (3) Reliability. 

Openness – requires the truth, and direct communication of the party’s differences or points of contention early on to properly set expectations. Sometimes conversations will be more difficult, but in the long term it is important to avoid the feel good bubble by being direct and straightforward many problems can be prevented. about things improves the seaworthiness of a venture. 

Clarity – requires over communicating, and organizational standards of communication. A company’s standards of communication are set by the CEO, founder, or leadership. When a leader in an organization communicates a clear direction to the managers, they in turn can re-communicate clearly the desired outcomes to employees. Like a game of telephone, if a message deteriorates as it passes through the organization structure, then the communication lack clarity.

 Reliability – requires the individuals to be readily and dependably available when needed. It is important to have reliable communicators that can answer questions, and keep up with the fast paced of Startup success.