Running a startup is like driving a car: understanding how to do it is essential; however, execution is the real core of driving.
You’ll find this article useful if you consider building a startup, feel you lack experience/skills in managing your undertaking, or understand you’re driving your ‘car’ in a wrong direction.
Here are our 6 tips on how to execute your startup successfully – make sure you read them up to the end 😉
1. Define Your Execution Strategy
This is what you should always start with in any business. Do not try to do everything at once, trying to network with as many people as possible, promote your product everywhere, and offer both a great brand and low-cost services.
Pick one strategy and stick to it, bearing in mind that you want to arrange regular meetings with your board of advisors to improve the business strategy and look for more options on what works/doesn’t work together.
Besides, understanding your strategy as well as clearly conveying it to your employees are the key to smooth communication and eventually productiveness within a team.
2. Have a Strong Team of Decision Makers
Running the whole company alone is a tough task. Very often, you’ll lack some skills, more often – a good piece of advice, and obviously you’ll feel some lack of emotional support if you run your startup solo.
We’d recommend that you build a team of several decision makers and have your board of advisors in place. Brainstorming new ideas and their critical analyzing, seeing the larger picture, and making final decisions are easier and more productive when done in a group of people.
3. Build Your Business Roadmap
In any startup execution, as in driving, going in a random direction is like driving somewhere you do not know without a map. It’s senseless. You need to develop your plan (a business roadmap) split into milestones to see what your points of destination are and this way measure your success. If you have been building your startup for years and can’t evaluate what exactly has been achieved during this time, you must be not tracking your progress. Measuring your progress is essential not only for understanding where you stand, but also for motivating your team to move forward. This is where a roadmap comes in handy.
4. Find Your Mentors
In <Building Your Startup: How to Make Your Startup Go Live>, we’ve already talked about the importance of forming a good team since those are the very people who develop your product. When building a team, make sure it does not finish with developers. A smart CEO always thinks of having a couple of good advisors and/or mentors as a part of a team. Advisors are people who’ll help you create an effective business strategy and consult you in making important decisions. Mentors, on the other hand, are like your private coaches: they will help you grow as a personality and a company leader.
5. Establish Your Corporate Culture
Your corporate culture defines those values that (ideally) are shared by all your team members and sets up the working environment they work in. You shouldn’t underestimate this point since it’s always hard to both communicate, motivate, and manage your team if the employees are not on the same page in the context of work ethics and team engagement. Even if a person is a good specialist, still toxic to your culture, do not hire them. The employee who’s hard to work with will cost your business more than the salary you pay them.
6. Know Your Life-Work Balance
Again, let’s refer to the car driving analogy. A tired driver is worse than no driver. A tired CEO is a no-CEO. As a company leader, you are in charge of tens of responsibilities, like hiring, managing, and communicating with the whole team, building connections with partners, promoting your product, etc. Very often, it’s impossible to avoid sitting up late, but this is what you should learn to minimize if you want to keep driving. Find your happy medium between work and family not to face burning out in the future. Besides, if you feel unhappy with your work, this is not likely to motivate new employees/partners to join your team. 😉
Final Thoughts
Having a great startup idea is only a good start for building a successful business. The most time and importance go to its implementation (besides, very often, the process of your startup execution tests how good or relevant the startup idea is).
As in driving, a skillful startup running depends on practice. However, mistakes made in business will definitely cost you more than buying a new car. Hope, those six tips help you avoid those costly mistakes and add to building your company.