One of the best pieces of advice I ever received in entrepreneurship came from my dad. When my Co-Founder Brendan and I first started Wistia from his living room, we dreamed of becoming a $60,000/year business, guaranteeing each of us a $30,000/year salary. That sounded amazing to two fresh college grads. Our #1 goal at the time? Freedom. I remember proudly telling my dad all of our plans and that I thought we could get there. His response stuck with both of us for a long time. "Make sure you prepare for success," my dad said. He believed in us and warned us that if this really did work out, we needed to prepare for the consequences. We hadn't thought about what would happen if we hit our goal. We were haphazardly barreling into the first turn of a long road trip. My dad was right. We're often trained to think about what will happen if we fail and rarely trained to think about what will happen if we succeed. It may stem from our human need to survive before we thrive. Whatever the reason, if things do go right, and your company takes off, you could be working on your company for many years ahead. You need to be ready. Success means dealing with hard HR issues, feeling financially responsible for all employees, deciding on company strategies that will impact everyone, and handling customer issues. You'll have to live with the consequences (both good and bad) of your decisions for a long time. Prepare for success tomorrow by making good decisions today. Thanks to my dad, we began thinking differently about growth and how we should be driving the car that was our company. It ended up taking just two years to reach our original goal. That was 17 years ago. I'm glad we took my dad's advice. What's the best advice you ever received as an entrepreneur?
This wasn't advice, this was learning through experience. "It doesn't have to be perfect, just enough to move you forward." When I launched my first SaaS business back in 2008, my co-founders and I got hung up on the customer onboarding piece and decided that the software wasn't ready for broader release because we couldn't skin the sites automatically. The business eventually closed, and 4 years later I was working at HubSpot. There I discovered that this emerging giant of the tech world also couldn't skin the sites automatically. Light bulb moment. Never let your vision get in the way of your progress. Take a small step forward and learn from it to see what your bottlenecks actually are. Anything else is what Kevin Kelley calls "thinkism," the idea that you can figure things out in advance by thinking about them. Doing is what leads to learning—and progress—most of the time.
Great advice:) Also fascinating to hear more of the Wistia timeline. Best entrepreneurial advice I have received is pretty simple, but very powerful - don't go to it alone. Cultivate a network of mentors, supporters and friends/family who you can trust throughout the various stages of your company's successes, failures and growth.
I love that advice! The best recommendation I’ve ever received was to find the right partner. Ideally someone you’ve worked with in the past, someone who has been in the trenches with you when work was a struggle and you survived and thrived together. Someone who has a skill set that has a little crossover with yours, but not too much.
OMG Chris!! What a Fresh perspective on the thing we all crave SUCCESS.
Hey it was me that told you that!
What a fantastic story, and your dad’s advice is indeed golden. And I love how you phrased this “Prepare for success tomorrow by making good decisions today” — Going to hold onto that one.
I love that! I lean into the mindset of 'what is the best that can happen' you have the power to make massive moves!
Previously co-founder at Unbounce.
1yWhen I was starting my career (as a C developer in London - a far cry from what I do now), my boss Daniel Irani would say something to me whenever I hit a roadblock. As a primarily self-tought programmer back in 1997, I lacked a lot of the fundamentals or real core skills, but I always managed to find a way to solve the problem no matter how complex it was, and it was always due to the psychology of the phrase Dan would tell me. He’d listen to the problems I was having, and then simply state “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.” And largely left it at that. 100% of the time, that little piece of wisdom and his belief that although I was struggling, I had what it took to succeed, was what motivated me to dig in harder and figure it out. I don’t think it would work for everyone, but for me it was the perfect catalyst for success and I think back on it almost every time I find something difficult. Hugely appreciative for his patience, listening, and that brilliant stem of wisdom.