When you are a one-person startup you don’t have a team of specialists to help you out when things don’t go according to plan. You are just one person trying to defy gravity and the laws of economics with a Canva free-trial account and a ChatGPT subscription.
Yes, it feels nice to call yourself the Chief Everything Officer. But it also means you have to strategically burn through your energy, focus and motivation across the multiple stages from idea to business.
Getting that right will be the difference between things going according to plan and your business going nose-first into the nearest waterbody.
The Planning stage
A group of scientists don’t land up at Houston on a Tuesday and decide: ‘Let’s send something to the moon today.” They spend years calculating the many ways they could fail before someone gets to say T-minus 10. Starting a business requires the same amount cynical pessimism.
Take your idea into a small room, shine a harsh light into its face and ask:
Is there anyone out there losing sleep because they don’t have what you are selling?
Are they free-trial parasites, or people with a functioning credit card?
What is your plan to get seen by these people?
Will you have any money left each month after paying people to keep your business running?
Don’t shortchange the time or effort this stage requires.
If your answer to any of these questions is ‘we’ll see’, you are not launching a business, you are pouring lighter fluid on your savings and playing with matches.
The Building stage
This is the time when things start to get real. Business plan, brand name, logo, legal registrations, website, investors, vendors, and clients; there are a million and one things that need to be done. However, prioritising these tasks will help you avoid overwhelm.
Do not give in to the temptation to do a half-arsed job here. All the decisions you take now will come back and bite you just when you think you are ready to take flight.
Does it really matter if it’s <.tk> at the end of your website url instead of <.com>?
Yes.
Obscure TLDs like .tk, .ml, and .ga are cheap but also the digital equivalent of selling PRADUH bags outside the bus terminus.
Talk to people who have done these things for years. They will help you understand the repercussions of each decision. Your business must be a perfectly calibrated machine designed to reach its destination. One faulty component (a bad line of code, a brand name you cannot copyright, or a broken link) can turn the most brilliant plan into a dumpster fire before or during liftoff.
The Liftoff stage
If you survive the building stage, you’ll level up to your launch. This is when you’ll find out whether all your calculations and assumptions are grounded in reality.
Is your messaging getting the correct response?
Is your website popping up when people ask questions about the pain point you are solving?
Are visitors able to buy your solution without your website crashing?
Is your Shopify account linked properly to your payment gateway?
And that’s just week one after you have gone live. So whatever you do, don’t think you can push a Launch button and drown yourself in whiskey sours.
Make sure you recharge yourself before you launch. Because once that baby is in the air, it is going to be a while before you can do anything but run the business.
Boosters disengage
Let’s face it. Till now, you were running on adrenaline, caffeine and a vague hope that things would work out. But all that ‘booster’ energy will get used up a few weeks into the launch. If you don’t have the right people, equipped with the right SOPs in place, things will fall apart when you fall asleep at the controls. (Trust me, that will happen.)
Delegate the smaller parts of the day-to-day running to people who know better, or at least the time to do it.
Maybe this is a developer on UpWork.
Or a social media consultant.
Or a fractional CFO.
Essentially, you are looking for someone who has more experience than you at a job that you suck at. Trying to do everything on your own only guarantees one thing: you will fail faster.
Don’t listen to the people who say, “Oh… just use AI or this software and do it yourself.” Everything comes with a learning curve. And guess what is NOT happening while you are learning how to apply Tailwind to your React components’ JSX or some such BS?
The listening to customer feedback.
The making sure your vendors are paid.
The ensuring you are stocked up.
The refunding of a dissatisfied customer.
The planning of version 2.0 of your product.
In other words, the actual business of running your business.
Listening for signals
If you have reached this stage, you are already in the top 10% of most startups. You have a business idea that has survived first contact with the real world.
Now comes the easy part really hard part. Your rocket is aimed at the moon, and it is on course. You can’t keep staring at the monitor and micro-managing every task. You will have to lift your head from the daily grind and start planning for the next stage.
As soon as you have a regular income and a growing base of loyal customers, start planning for the remote, hands-off phase.
Every business sends signals about its state: falling revenue, meetings that go nowhere, bad customer reviews, and promising leads disappearing are just some of them.
Which ones will YOU react to? Which ones will you delegate?
What is the plan for when a very specific mini pandora's box hits the fan at 2 am on a Sunday?
Houston, we’re A-okay for now
Getting a startup up and running and turning it into a successful business isn’t a single, explosive event.
It is a multi-stage process that will ask a lot from you. It is important to know which phase you are in and to spend your finite founder energy wisely.
Because a startup, unlike a rocket, never lands. It just keeps flying till the next part breaks.
