Recipient TidBit: Life Lessons

As part of their participation in the Business Vitality Seed Fund, we asked each of our recipients a series of questions to get their view on entrepreneurship, the Seed Fund process, and other entrepreneurial related TidBits. The following is their answers to the question: What are some life lessons you learned while starting your business and participating in the Seed Fund?

Five by Five Tonics

"I guess the biggest lesson I am learning is time management. Once my company started to take off, it became all-consuming and I found myself constantly working “in” the business. I am working through how to move to working “on” the business by managing my time and delegating tasks that don’t require my time to others. Other than that, I suppose that I have learned to roll with the ups and downs that happen in a new business. One day everything is peachy and then the next it feels like imminent doom. The very next morning you might be on top of the world. Seems like I do better if I let the goods and bads roll off my shoulder a bit."

For more information on Five by Five Tonics, please visit their website or find them on Facebook!

Upper Park Designs

"The biggest life lesson that we have learned since starting our company is estimating time frames. Always overestimate the time something will take to accomplish. Underestimating will always hurt you, and trying to be exact is a huge gamble. It is better to aim beyond your expected date and deliver earlier then kill yourself trying to deliver on the date you said you would. Learning to give your customers a good time frame can make your business look fantastic, especially when your company is product based. If a customer is expecting to wait 4 months for a product and receives it early or even on time (if unforeseen things happen, which they will) you will still look good in the eyes of your customers and save you potentially hours of time apologizing, refunding, and trying to rebuild your company image.

It’s simple. Things happen that are out of your control. When you are giving a time frame to customers who have preordered or are awaiting a release, it always pays to plan for longer then come up short."

For more information on Upper Park Designs, please visit their website or find them on Facebook!

Social High Rise

"Many entrepreneurs will say that starting a company requires a tremendous amount of resilience to adversity. I have learned that to be the absolute truth. It's been a little over a year since Social High Rise was formed, and we have had our share of challenges. There are two things that stand out to me as lessons learned which have had the greatest impact on me personally. 

The first is to hire great people and get rid of the ones who aren't great. As an entrepreneur, your company is so fragile that you can only afford to bring on individuals who will not only do the job they're given, but will fight as hard as you will to push your company to succeed. Anyone without that mindset will only drag you down. In the early months of Social High Rise, I had to replace a few people who were not a good fit at the time. Some were not a good fit, period. I learned that if I had the wrong people working for me, they didn't just perform below expectations, but they exponentially drove the company closer to failure. I found that a large chunk of my time, energy, and emotional capacity was spent on managing these people who were not a good fit. In turn, I was far less effective and could not focus on what mattered most.

The second lesson I've learned is how important it is to focus on the things that will drive your company forward. It's extremely easy to get caught up in the day-to-day minutia of running your start-up, and you can quickly find days and weeks passing by without any measurable steps in the right direction. Answering emails, tinkering with your website, researching your competition, or crafting the perfect power point presentation are all things that may seem important at the time, but will usually not result in closing more deals or increasing retention; at least not when your company is young and small. If you focus half your time on the 2-3 most important things that will actually drive your company forward, and have the discipline to not let yourself get distracted, you will be amazed at how quickly your company will begin to move forward in the right direction."

For more information on Social High Rise, please visit their website or find them on Facebook!