AS YOU REACH THE END of the Idea phase of your entrepreneurial journey, you will have already accomplished some major goals: your E-Formula looks good; you have an innovative, compelling idea, and you are ready to pour all of your desire, effort, and abilities into launching it; your situation is right, and you are ready to seize the opportunity before you; you’ve moved past your fear of failure and scaled the walls of your Risk Box. Now, you’re ready to begin the next leg of your journey, the Startup phase.
Get ready, because this will be one of the greatest periods you’ll experience while owning your business—far better even than hitting your first-million-in-sales mark. In the Startup phase, you turn your attention away from the fears that may have held you back in the past in order to focus all of your energy and attention on following your passion in pursuit of what you want in life. Whether your venture succeeds or fails, you’re already a winner; you went for it, and that in itself is a tremendous life accomplishment that few experience. How cool is that?
For all of its glory, the Startup phase is also the most demanding of the entire entrepreneurial experience. In the months ahead, you’ll take on several critically important tasks, and both you and your new business will pass through a series of defining moments as your idea evolves into a functioning business. Your first job is to position your startup for success, by preparing to avoid the common pitfalls that so often trap first-time entrepreneurs. Next comes the detailed planning; in this stage, you’ll be creating a mission statement, writing a business plan, generating leads, and refining your business processes as you gear up for the long haul of running your new operation.
As part of this preparation, you’ll have to address what is perhaps the most important, and frequently overlooked, aspect of long-range planning for the entrepreneur, your exit strategy. As you’ll learn in this part of the book, planning how you’ll leave your new business or venture is as important as planning how you’ll get it up and running. Without a clear idea of your ultimate destination in this journey, you run the risk of becoming sidetracked—or maybe even hopelessly lost. The Startup phase also involves finding the funding you’ll need to launch and sustain your entrepreneurial endeavor, and choosing the partners, advisors, and other human resources who will help you in your work.
As I told you at this book’s opening, one of the things I really enjoy in life and that I hold a personal passion for is the outdoors and nature. I am especially fascinated with the behavior of sea turtles. I mention them here because, in many ways, their determination to survive reminds me of the entrepreneurial struggle to bring an idea through the Startup phase, despite all odds and obstacles.
Consider the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, for example, which is known to nest on one single beach in the world. Regardless of what humans or other animals are on the beach at the time, and no matter how far development has encroached upon the shore, these turtles rise up from the sea and move forward, in the darkness of night, to deposit their eggs. The turtles bury up to 200 eggs in one night, in order to get them under cover before predators discover their location. Those eggs that escape predators’ attention incubate under the sand for 45–70 days. Then, the newly hatched turtles spend several days digging their way to the surface. Most emerge at night (again, an instinctive timing to avoid predators), then struggle to make their way across the beach, enter the ocean, and feverishly swim for an estimated 24–48 hours to move into safer waters. About 10 percent of the original egg cache will survive through this stage, and go on to grow into mature animals, measuring four to six feet in length and weighing almost 200 pounds. At that point, their survival rate improves dramatically.
Both turtles and entrepreneurs have to be tough in order to make it to maturity. Entrepreneurs who hatch new business ventures follow a grueling journey as they struggle to survive. Many “predators” can take down an entrepreneurial idea. Whether due to a lack of funding, resources, confidence, or any other number of factors, a high percentage of businesses don’t make it through year five. Even though the reasons vary greatly, the odds against a new business reaching safe waters are daunting. But like the sea turtle, given the right balance of determination, skill, planning, effort, and good fortune, the strongest entrepreneurs will make it through the treacherous waters of their early days and on to safer shores. In these chapters, you’ll find the tools and advice you need to guide your own fledgling business through the Startup phase of your entrepreneurial journey, with its positioning, planning, and resource management challenges, so you can take it successfully on to become a mature and thriving organization.