Entrepreneurs Need to Stop Doing These 10 Things, Right Now

Being an entrepreneur is hard. It's really hard. There isn't a playbook, instructional manual, video or biography that can possibly provide you with enough information to make it easy.

 

While the difficulty is just part of the deal, there are a number of things that founders often find themselves entangled in that, without question, make it harder. Let’s take a look at a list of the things that you, as a founder, need to stop doing -- right now.

 

1. Lying to yourself or others about your traction

 

It’s awesome if you’ve had 70,000 downloads for your new app in the first three months or that you generated over $1 million last year in revenue. It’s not awesome if you only have 2,000 monthly active users or actually lost $2 million overall. These are numbers that you are hiding behind, lying both to yourself and everyone else as you shout them from the mountaintop. At some point, you’ll begin to believe them -- then you’re in serious trouble.

 

2. Focusing on too many things at once

 

Guess what? You only have 100 percent of your time to split up between your professional activities. If you do too many different things simultaneously, you’re just splitting up your 100 percent into pieces that ultimately resemble slivers of poor performance. Instead, spend 100 percent of your time and focus on becoming excellent at one thing.

 

3. Working yourself to death

 

The concept that you need to work grueling hours to be an entrepreneur is not a rule, it’s a choice. Technology has advanced to the point where you can get inexpensive help with literally anything. If you’ve chosen not to learn to use the wealth of outsourcing and automation opportunities that would allow you to have a life and a normal night of sleep, that’s your fault and nobody else’s.

 

4. Following shiny objects

 

There’s no quicker way to drown your new enterprise than chasing too many opportunities. Yes, it’s in our nature as entrepreneurs to notice new opportunities and look for solutions to them, but you must remain focused on the task at hand. The best entrepreneurs in the world remain unshakably focused, and you must too.

 

5. Building terrible "lean" products

 

The "minimum viable product" (MVP) concept has a lot of value, in theory, but doesn’t always translate to production-level quality. So stop using the lean startup methodology as an excuse to put out crappy, underdeveloped products. You’re only wasting your own time.

 

6. Using the word "I"

 

Humility is important, particularly when your company begins to grow and bring on outside team members. There is no better way to disenfranchise them than to take credit for everything that comes out of the door. Stop being arrogant and replace “I” with “we.”

 

7. Building companies with no revenue

 

If I hear one more pitch where the entrepreneur says, “we’re not worrying about revenue until X happens,” I’m going to poke my eyes out. You’re starting a business, not a hobby, and the likelihood of you building the next Snapchat is fantastically low. Instead, create something that provides users with this magical thing called “value.” If you’re lucky (or smart) people will be willing to pay for it.

 

8. Asking investors to sign non-disclosure agreements

 

If you’re doing this, you’re screaming, “I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing”, which doesn’t typically bode well for potential investment. Here’s the thing, investors are investing, not stealing ideas and building companies. On top of that, it can take quite a long time to build your brand and networks as an investor and I can assure you that if they were indeed stealing ideas, it would fly through the startup community like wildfire.

 

If you’ve found the secret to creating nuclear fusion and are truly worried about it, be sure to work only with known and respected investors.

 

9. Thinking that you're the only company in your space

 

When you claim to not have competition, you’re either being dishonest or ignorant. Here’s the problem: competitors aren’t always direct replicas of your business -- think Walgreens and CVS -- but can be other larger companies with potential interest in your space -- Apple or Google -- that have huge amounts of cash to throw at the problem you’re trying to solve.

 

10. Building photo sharing and mobile dating apps

 

Sorry to break your heart, but those ships have sailed. You need to stop building companies that are incrementally, or 10 percent, better than what already exists. Instead, be creative and build your business around new innovations, ideas and even industries.

 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243324

 

How To Grow A Business To $100 Million In Sales, From Someone Who's Done It Twice

Zeta Interactive CEO David A. Steinberg has lived through remarkable success and failure alike as a serial entrepreneur and executive. In his 20-year career, he's learned hard lessons that have made him wiser, more effective, and especially more prudent, he tells Business Insider.

 

Zeta Interactive CEO David Steinberg

 

Steinberg jumped into the growing cellular-phone industry a year out of college, founding the retail chain and business-to-business provider Sterling Cellular in 1992. He then founded the telemarketing company Sterling Communications, which he sold in 1999 along with his retail business, starting online cellular commerce and business-to-business company InPhonic that same year.

 

At its height, Steinberg says, InPhonic was bringing in approximately $400 million in revenue. In 2004, it was named the fastest-growing private company in the US by Inc. magazine and went public that same year. By 2007, however, it was in bankruptcy due to mismanagement and a host of other factors.

 

He quickly moved forward, founding the digital marketing firm that was rebranded this year as Zeta Interactive with his business partner John Sculley, former PepsiCo president and Apple CEO. Steinberg tells us that Zeta brought in revenue of $90 million last year and that it's already passed $100 million this year. He projects year-over-year growth of 90% and says its operating margin is in the mid-teens and rising, meaning that Zeta is on a healthy, fast-growth path.

 

Here are some powerful growth lessons Steinberg says he's learned from being at the top to being at the bottom and how they are helping him today:

 

Set Up People and Processes for Sustainable Growth.

 

One of the reasons InPhonic ultimately failed is because it grew too quickly, Steinberg says. It went from offering 100,000 phone rebates to customers to offering 1 million in the span of a year — and the company simply wasn't ready to handle it, both in terms of manpower and technology. Customer service began to suffer significantly due to the inability to adapt, and Steinberg tells us that rebate turnaround times increased from one month to six months.

 

Looking back, Steinberg says he should have eased the company into a more manageable direction, in addition to replacing certain employees that were not good fits for a new direction. "The people who got you to where you are won't always get you where you need to go," he says.

 

At his current company Zeta, Steinberg says he has chief information officer Jeffry Nimeroff focus on making sure that the company's technology is always able to handle Zeta's growth. By using a data-based growth strategy, Steinberg is able to avoid unnecessarily risky initiatives that the company may not be able to adapt to.

 

Hand Off Responsibilities.

 

"It took me 20 years to realize I'm not the best at everything," Steinberg says, laughing.

 

For example, he says that 15 years ago he wouldn't have been able to effectively manage his current chief operating officer, Steve Gerber, because he wouldn't have been able to hand off day-to-day management decisions to him.

 

Steinberg says that he's learned that to increase your chances of developing leaders within your own company, it's necessary to hire very intelligent people for your team. "You can teach smart people to do almost anything," he says.

 

Pivot Every Six to Nine months.

 

Steinberg thinks that a high-growth company needs to constantly reinvent itself to stay relevant, and that doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to go in a radical new direction.

 

Zeta started in the education sector before pivoting over to big data marketing solutions, and it's worked out well.

 

He says that as head of InPhonic he should have acquired an outside wireless company to keep InPhonic interesting and able to handle accelerated growth.

 

Never Put Yourself in a Situation You Can't Get Out Of.

 

On that note, Steinberg says he made the mistake of setting self-imposed limitations on what InPhonic could be. Part of this had to do with his former obsession with getting press for InPhonic when it was still young, which resulted in excessive coverage of certain initiatives he should have dropped when they stopped working.

 

This time around with Zeta, he focused on finding what worked before reaching out to the media. He says that today it's "the biggest tech company in New York that no one's heard of." It's better to figure out a growth strategy under the radar than limiting your ability to change course, he says.

 

Don't be Afraid to Let the Market Come to You.

 

"Most startups wait to start in a time that's hot for their industry," Steinberg says, but that's not necessarily the best option. If you sit on an idea and wait for the market to open its arms to it, then you risk reaching an opportunity for scaled growth at a time when that particular market cools.

 

If you happen to have a great idea, Steinberg recommends building a company regardless of what the market is doing. And if that great idea turns out to be a great company, then you can still find an audience.

 

Similarly, Steinberg says, he's never started a company with an exit strategy, as some serial entrepreneurs do. "The exit will find you," he says.

        
http://www.businessinsider.com/david-steinberg-how-to-build-million-dollar-company-2014-9?IR=T