The Big Mistake New Business Owners Often Make

By Scott Vollero

Most people love to please. Making others happy, or at least convincing ourselves that we’re making others happy, is a fundamental human desire. As a social species, we’re hardwired to demonstrate our value to other humans, whether to attract potential mates, earn the protection of a stronger rival, or simply to generate a little companionship in an unfriendly world.

Natural Born Pleasers

The hardwired drive to please compels some folks to try to be everything to everyone. They’re perennial pleasers, willing to say or do almost anything to engender a positive response in their foil.

Back when everyone lived in small, nomadic hunter-gatherer bands, it wasn’t too difficult to be everything to everyone. After all, “everyone” was probably just a few dozen people, most of whom did pretty much the same thing for a living.

In super-complex 21st century societies with hundreds-strong professional networks and razor-thin divisions of labor, everything to everyone is a pipe dream. People who seriously try to please everybody all the time are more likely to please no one — and they may face the temptation to take shortcuts or make ethical compromises that threaten the quality of their work, the integrity of their personal relationships, and the strength of their reputation.

Not a Good Look for New Business Owners

Entrepreneurs are particularly prone to what sociologists (probably should, but don’t) call the “everything to everyone fallacy.” When you’re doing your all to get a new company off the ground, it’s natural to try to build relationships by giving, giving and giving some more.

But even more so than individuals, businesses can’t be everything to everyone. That’s not how the market works, after all. There has to be some give and take. Inevitably, that means there have to be winners, losers and sore feelings.

Here’s how to avoid falling into the everything to everyone trap.

1. Hire the Best and Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

New business owners often have trouble letting go of things. They live by the mantra, “If you want something done, do it yourself.” That’s good advice under the right circumstances, but it’s simply not realistic for most business owners. The single best way to avoid being everything to everyone — and to avoid doing everything yourself — is to hire a trusted team and delegate as its members prove they’re able to handle increased responsibility.

2. Play to Your Strengths & Value

By the same token, it’s important to stick with what you’re good at. Don’t delegate the mission-critical tasks that you either don’t trust others to do at all, or don’t trust anyone to do as well as you. When you devote more time to your strengths, you strengthen your business by default.

3. Set Boundaries & Don’t Budge

When you’re starting out, it’s tempting to build bridges to vendors and customers by offering great deals that you can’t actually afford to sustain. It’s okay to make such offers, as long as you’re clear that they’re available only for a limited time and won’t be repeated. Continuing to offer unrealistic deals devalues your brand and increases the likelihood that you’ll be seen as a pushover, weakening your hand in future negotiations.

4. Work Off a Timeline

When you have 20 tasks in front of you, all of which needed to be done yesterday, you’re liable to try to be everywhere at once. Use a timeline with hard deadlines and regular status milestones to carve some order out of this chaos, and take on only those tasks that you know you can complete by the proscribed dates and times.

Are You Trying Too Hard to Please?

Trying to be everything to everyone probably isn’t the biggest mistake you can make as a budding entrepreneur, though it’s certainly in the running. More to the point, trying to please everyone all the time can lead to big headaches down the road — even if it’s tempting in the short term.

If you suspect that you’re trying too hard to please, step back and evaluate how you approach your business’s employees, customers and vendors. Ask a trusted advisor to provide unvarnished, unbiased advice about how to shape up. And, once you’ve diagnosed the problem, don’t be afraid to step up and break a few eggs. You’ll be better off for it in the long run.

Here’s How to Manage Your Company’s Explosive Growth

You’ve launched your business and things are going well. ...Maybe too well.

Near the top of any rational business owner’s list of “good problems to have” has to be explosive growth. If your sales are shooting up faster than you can hire, scale and expand, you’re liable to run into some serious problems — and, if events break the wrong way, could become a victim of your own success.

How do you ensure that your company doesn’t get too big too quickly? That it doesn’t swell its britches to the breaking point, and then blow right through? (No one wants to see that.)

Steve Cody at Inc Magazine has some thoughts on how to address the semi-problem of explosive growth. Here’s how to manage your company’s success and turn breakneck momentum into something more sustainable.

Foster a Healthy Corporate Culture from the Very Start

Corporate culture is akin to your garden’s soil: If it doesn’t have the right mix of nutrients, ample moisture and plentiful sun, it’s not likely to be very productive.

Your company’s culture might not need moisture and sun — although, to be fair, a day at the pool never dampened anyone’s morale. But it does need a firm foundation that prevents internal rot from taking hold. Tips for instilling a healthy culture include:

• Lead by example: Your employees are always watching you. Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want them to do.
• Lay out ground rules: Put your company’s bylaws in writing before you even have a company, then update them as needed. Your employees will appreciate the fact that you’ve spelt everything out, and written rules make it easier to discipline and terminate problem employees.
• Have zero tolerance for malfeasance: When everyone is guilty, no one is guilty. Don’t let problem employees hide behind one another or pass the buck. If someone’s doing something seriously wrong, investigate quickly and terminate or discipline as needed.

Hire for the Company You Want, Not the Company You Have

In retail and foodservice, operations managers are often told to “staff for the sales they want, not the sales they have.” In other words, if you want to attract customers, make it worth their while to come back by providing superior customer service.

The principle is the same in higher-end industries, too. If your sales and revenues are rising geometrically, chances are good that you’ll have to revise any long-term projections you do make. Instead of taking a strictly by-the-numbers approach to hiring and staffing, assume — know — that, as long as you continue to execute, your company is going to grow into its hiring.

In other words, go big early. If you hire the right sorts of people and make sure they feel welcome, you’ll have no trouble absorbing them.

Make the Right Hires

What do “the right sorts of people” look like? The answer varies by organization, of course, but a few archetypes in particular are likely to serve you well:

• Entrepreneurs: These folks are a lot like you — smart, driven and just a tad myopic. They’re willing to think outside the box, implement creative solutions and (perhaps most importantly) fail. As your organization scales, install these types as team leads, senior managers and boardroom-dwellers.
• Go-getters: These people are passionate about your organization and its success. They’re willing to come in early, stay late, work weekends — whatever you need to get it done. They’ll happily work for equity, too, which makes them cheaper to attract and retain (at least at first).
• Fast learners: As your company grows, the demands its employees face are likely to change many times over. Seek out generalists who already know a little about a lot and demonstrate a willingness and aptitude to learn new skills in a hurry.

Welcome New Ideas

As upstarts evolve into market leaders, they often ease back into — and eventually rest on entirely — their laurels. Don’t let this happen to your company. Even after you’re an established player in your field, make sure you’re hiring and promoting folks on their basis of their ability to surprise and engage you. Never accept a yes-man or -woman when you can turn to a fearless iconoclast who isn’t afraid to tell her superiors what they don’t know.

Encourage Internal Collaboration, Not Competition

As organizations grow, they tend to become more complex. That’s understandable and, to an extent, unavoidable. To reduce the negative aspects of operational complexity, take steps to promote teamwork, collaboration and cross-departmental idea-sharing. You can do this by:

• Holding frequent whole-company meetings, with non-HQ employees Skyping in
• Schedule lots of extracurricular programming — happy hours, sporting events, retreats, volunteering sessions — and pair teams or individuals with people they rarely interact with at work
• Schedule inter-departmental “pitch days,” where teams present what they’ve been working on with coworkers in other parts of the building

In other words, break down the barriers that hinder communication between disparate divisions and teams — or, better yet, prevent them from being built in the first place.

Planning Makes Perfect

Starting a business involves a lot of legwork. Even the most organized entrepreneurs are bound to find themselves stretched thin at points. Like any stressful situation, there’s no way to know exactly how you’ll react when faced with a crushing order backlog, impossible deadlines, or the general pressure of a company that feels like it’s rapidly spinning out of your control.

Still, you’re more likely to meet these challenges — and come out personally and professionally stronger — if you put a comprehensive plan in place well before you’re faced with a do-or-die moment.

It might not be wise to count your chickens before they hatch; even the most numbers-oriented business owners abhor a jinx. But the alternative — falling before you’ve ever really taken flight — is much worse.