Some Epiphanies I Had When it Comes to Building a Business
I was struggling this past week feeling overwhelmed. There is just so much that’s needed to build a business. It’s impossible for someone to get good at everything, let alone build something of high caliber. I was so bent on having perfection that it started slowing me down doing everything. My decision-making was keeping us stagnant. I was overwhelmed feeling like I had to do everything even though it wasn’t something I fully enjoyed.
I’m not the most creative type when it comes to design and drawing. I can do it but it takes up way more brain power than I would like and it drains too much energy. I was trying to do everything myself; design, packaging, marketing, web design, etc. It’s frustrating when you want to create an incredible business but you just don’t have the time or ability to do everything with excellence.
My Epiphanies Were Two-fold and They Got Me Unstuck
- First epiphany – I can’t do everything myself if I want to create a great brand business. I need to focus on what I enjoy doing and where I can add significant value. I realized I like working on bigger-picture things. I don’t enjoy doing creative work in the sense of drawing, photography, UI, etc. But I do enjoy seeing data and making decisions based on that data. My realization is, I need to focus on the bigger picture things like marketing strategy and have an eye on all our marketing channels using data. This will drive my decision-making. Then everything else, I outsource. I focus on making smart decisions and hiring great contractors and employees to do the things I don’t do well.
- 2nd Epiphany – Building a business without outside funding comes in steps. You can’t go from nothing to a world-class DTC brand or any business for that matter without scaling up quality in steps. It requires money to scale up and that’s why startups tend to raise a lot of funding in the beginning because they can hire the best. When you build without outside funding and you don’t have a lot of savings, you have to use your skills and lower-level talent to get the business going. After that, you can reinvest into your business to hire the right people with the talent level you want.
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