The start-up world has glorified the ‘fail fast, fail often’ ethos to the point that many young entrepreneurs still think that a trial by fire is the only way towards success. Not only that, but they view repeated failures as a linear narrative rather than an exponential process of learning and evolving.
The problem is that when you become laser-focused on rushing your next big idea to market, you end up spending a lot of time fixing mistakes. You become so bogged down that you never have time to look at the bigger picture for your business or your life. You risk missing out on the genuine benefits of entrepreneurship:
- Doing what you love
- Working with people you love
- Having time to pursue other passions
- Making an impact and being well-compensated
The unromantic truth is that lifelong entrepreneurs are much more risk-averse than most people think. They’re masters at handling risk because when you have 10 employees whose families depend on you, you can’t move too fast, and you can’t break too many things.
That’s not to say seasoned entrepreneurs never fail. They try things that don’t work out, but they take the lessons from those experiences and use them to make exponential leaps forward. They understand that “fail fast, fail often” is not a road map—it’s a recipe for disaster and burnout.
The idea that you must shoulder everything yourself and slog through one failure after another is unsustainable.
Instead, here are healthier ways to build a successful business:
1. Create a life plan.
The first step is figuring out how you want your life to look. One helpful exercise is to imagine attending your own funeral. Who is there, and what are they saying about you?
This exercise can be illuminating because it shows you what you value most and how you’d like your life to look. From there, you can create a wish list for the next 10 years. What do you want for your career and relationships? How do you want your finances to look? Once you have your 10-year personal targets in mind, break those down into smaller goals for the next one to five years.
2. Integrate your life plan with your business plan.
It’s essential to understand how your vision for your life integrates with the practical realities of your business. If your life plan revolves around freedom (Working 25 days a year and having a $300million business), that’s going to be difficult to achieve. You must understand how the 10-year targets for your company align with your targets.
You must have a clear view of your value proposition, the problems you need to solve as a company and your marketing strategy for the next one to three years. Only then will you be able to bring your business realities and personal goals into alignment.
3. Obsess over delegation.
Leading from a higher level starts with self-awareness: You should understand your strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes. When you start focusing on what you love and what you’re good at, you’ll always be doing your best work, and you’ll be able to do more of it.
To put this into action, you can draw a chart with four quadrants. The top left quadrant is for things you love. The top right quadrant is for what you like. The bottom left is for what you are good at but don’t enjoy. And the bottom right is for things you don’t like and are not good at doing.
4. Surround yourself with people who are in your 10-year vision.
Once you know how you should be spending your time, prioritise your hiring. When you find people whose strengths and desires are the inverse of yours, you’ll be able to remove the tasks that sap your energy and pursue the things that energise you.
By being honest about what you’re good at and how you want to spend your life, you’ll be able to move forward with clarity. You’ll be able to put a team in place to achieve your goals so you can spend less time breaking things and more time building your business.