–Lysten’s Mini Blog Series–
As an entrepreneur and first time, solo founder of a tech company. I’ve learned a thing or two about starting a business. I’ve been successful and I’ve failed. I’ve had weeks where I’ve kicked major a** and weeks where I haven’t. It really is a roller costar of emotions and feeling of achievement and disappointment. But here are a few things that I’ve learned to accept along the way.
- Mistakes Will Happen:
I had to understand that building a company is trial and error. I’m going to be honest; I had no idea what I was doing and for many of us, we don’t know anyone else who has gone before us, in our industry. At least I didn’t, which made things a bit more challenging to navigate. I just know I had a vision; a dream and I went after it! I failed, I did things completely backwards, upside down and inside out. I kept running into roadblocks and hitting brick walls. Eventually, I started to understand my industry better, actively learned and understood what needed to be done to get me where I needed to be and as time went on, I got better. Although, mistakes still did and still does happen, I’ve learned to be okay with that. I had to understand that I’m not going to be perfect during this journey and I learned to roll with the punches and take whatever is thrown at me.
2. Be your Own Support System:
In the beginning stages of Lysten it was hard to find people who believed in the idea of a community to connect the way we envisioned. Believe it or not I got laughed at by a company I was hiring to work with us – talk about an ego killer, and still I proceeded. Just because someone else didn’t see my vision didn’t mean that it was not valid. It just wasn’t theirs to perceive.
3. Building a Product is Hard, But Selling It Is Harder:
The easy part is creating the product, however once you have the product others must find value in it too. Creating a product without an audience is just a hobby. Creating a product and selling it to an audience is a business. Learning how to market your product is vital to the success of your organization. Play around with a few ideas and then execute, but “Build the Product and they will come” mindset is a recipe for disaster.
4. Creating a Community Is Essential:
If I’ve learned one thing it is finding people and building connections are essential to not only the growth but the validity and accomplishments of your business. Receiving adequate feedback, suggestions and support helps validate the idea and find real customers.
5. Stay Committed:
This is by far is the hardest part of the game. When you flop it’s easy to stop because you didn’t reach your goal, that’s practical. But when you fail and decide to keep moving forward, fall and get back up again, now that’s difficult, that’s tough and that builds character. I became more resilient and learned how much I’m actually built for, which is a lot more than I expected. “Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of it”.
Overall, this journey has been nothing short of surprises. I’m still learning, still failing at some things and succeeding at others. I’ll let you all know when I really figure it out.
Sincerely, Lysten
