Leadership + Culture

Running a successful business takes a lot of heart and hustle, not only for small business owners, but startup founders as well. Once you’ve established your company and developed products and services that fit your target market, working in and on the business tends to come at a furious pace. Balancing the ongoing work and managing the company takes discipline. As growth happens, scaling often goes by the wayside. Here are five questions you need to ask yourself throughout the year to help reduce burnout and promote a healthy work cadence. Do we know our Core Values? Core Values are at the heart of every company. They are more than just empty words but rather they are part of your foundation. What does this mean? When you create Core Values for your company, they serve as the frame that holds your company up to make it stronger. Your Core Values help…

Tips for allowing creativity to surface during the challenges of startup life Recently I was discussing a potential pivot for a founder’s company and we got on the topic of failure. Yes it is true that many startups fail. The biggest reasons are attributed to not achieving product-market fit and the next can be bundled into execution problems. The startup world is full of people who have failed. Those that go through the rollercoaster ride of a startup and the necessary pivots will likely have gone through many failures before a success breakthrough occurs. It’s part of the process. What do you do when you hit walls in your company progression, product idea or growth goals? We’ve all been there. Here are some tips for moving forward and turning failure on its head. Don’t Fear The Reaper In the US we talk about failure as a common part of startup life, while…

Wanting to start your own business is a worthy and compelling goal. Knowing that you want to start a business and actually doing it, however, are very different things. As anyone who has braved this path can tell you, figuring out how to work on the business and in the business at the same time can be a tricky endeavor. There are many paths to entrepreneurship and not all require great levels of risk-taking and start-up capital. In fact, getting started is easier than you think!

Too many organizations spend too little time iterating, testing and validating before building products. As a consulting firm, we are often engaged after a client has had several costly product launch failures. These clients were simply moving too fast without a strategy and learned too late that their biggest opportunities would be revealed only after some analysis occurred. We feel compelled to share some lessons learned to help you avoid similar pitfalls.