🎙 Inventive Journey | Real Stories From the Startup Survival Club

Don't give up. No matter how hard it gets and how many lows you have, just get back up, ignore everyone else and keep going. Do not give up ever. No matter what, don't give up.

For me and, I think for most people is understanding who you are, understanding your personality. Understanding what type of things you are going to fit well with. Some people just grind through it. It does not matter what it is they; are just going to outwork and fix it that way. And for me that is torture. I can't imagine just pushing. I don't enjoy that. I am much more of the work smarter, not...

People have million-dollar ideas every day. If you don't have the experience, or networking, or the know-how to get it started and up off the ground or maybe even motivation. There are so many times that people have these million-dollar ideas that, I think, it's really valuable to write those down. Then maybe nine months later when your friend texts you and says: hey there are desks for sale or wh...

Commit. Commit to what your goals are. Commit to what your visions are. Then find the right partners. Find your right co-founder. Find the right resources because it is very hard to build something alone compared to with a team. I think the chances of success and the timeline gets much shorter when you have a co-founder and a team that complements the skills that you have. That is the number one p...

Just listening really well. We have an internal rule that if you hear something three times from three different people, three different conversations should peak your interest cause now that not just someone's wants or desire. That might actually become an industry-wide need.

My team and I recently discovered, as a few months ago, called Notion.so. If you are looking for a creative, quick way to store and capture your processes, look into that tool. It is basically a wiki that, unlike Dropbox or google drive. Yes, you can document all of these things. But what I find is you are using some of these platforms, even SharePoint or again google drive, Evernote, tools like t...

Be sure of yourself and reframe your thinking to where it's not trial and error but, it's trial and inevitable success. Once you have your focus on what you are doing and your goal for your business or start-up, that conviction will allow you to see whatever error or mistake you make along the road as a lesson to be learned towards that inevitable success. If I was speaking to someone I would let...

Get out of your way. When I get out of my way and, I actually open myself up. I have a business coach we use now. I actually open myself up to allowing someone else to give me some advice and say; hey Sandra this is right. We really need to go down this route, hold back from this, do this. It really opens me up for great things to happen. That's really what has been happening for us now with Tidy...

Do all of your research up front. You can't do all of your research up front. You are always learning new things every single day. But, do your homework. No idea is had in a vacuum. If you have an idea, make sure you look at the lay of the land. Look at all the competition that exists out there. Make a spreadsheet even. Get out your whiteboard and look at all the ways that your business is differe...

Try to control the expenses and don't spend on things that are not beneficial and stand on the ground. Don't look at the unicorns and all this. Now yes this is the target but, stand on the ground. This was a mistake that I did and so much was spent was acting as a startup concept that you read about every day and spend a lot based on that but at the end of the day it comes by steps.

Ask for help. It's something that took me a while because I have a lot of pride and think I can teach myself anything, which might be true but, it might take years, and that's not very smart. Every time I have asked for help, it's always led towards more progress. And faster than I would be able to do on my own. And most people want to help you succeed.

And so I think on the lower side, on the block and tackle side, make sure you have your information in excel format or Quick Books so that you can manipulate your information and get it clean. Then on the other side, make sure you have someone to talk to. Whether it's someone like us or whether it's an investor or advisor to talk you through things like profitability and questions that you will ne...

My biggest fear has been producing an inferior product or a product that won't pass muster. What that has done is it has really shown and taught me that first of don't release something unless it's at least minimally viable. Don't release a crappy product. If you do release one, you are going to have to deal with it in the future. That is what I have learned over these last few months.

This is a very hard lesson I learned. Be careful in how you spend your time. We always are going to get a very rewarding feeling from being busy. And it is going to be answering emails, taking phone calls, and doing marketing. But, if you do not actually evaluate the impact that all this busyness is having on your return on investment (ROI) and what the income is. How are you actually making progr...

I can't tell you the power of networking and reaching out to people and just asking for things directly and not beating around the bush. I think we really underestimate the power of being super direct with someone instead of just sending in your resume and hoping for the best. Find the side doors. That's not just for starting a business and getting your dream job. Find the side doors for everythin...

Constantly believe in yourself and your product. If you feel like your product has value, you will have a lot of people who will dismiss it or say that's really cool, but that's as far as it goes. And you will have a lot of days where you are thinking, maybe this was a mistake and maybe I shouldn't be doing this. Then you will have a lot of times where your doubtful but, I would say just continue...

The biggest piece of advice is just get started and don't get crippled in revision mode and, oh, I have got to have a business plan and, it's got to be perfect. Just right the business plan and get it out there. Get started working so that you can figure out all the answers to your questions. I guess the saying is, fail fast.

Get your website up and figure out your sales process. I think that has been the hardest businesses to work with is when they don't have a clear sales process. We can get you all the web traffic you need and want. We can set up ads and do everything organically that we know-how. But, if you don't have a way to close, then it's all for nothing. Figure out your sales process, figure out how you clos...

Before you go into the fun stuff like, what is the design of my logo going to look like, really figure out what transformation you are going to take your potential clients through. They are here and, you want them to be here. Figure out what those places are and how you fill that gap. Without that, you are just going to be spinning your wheels you are going to be pivoting a lot as I did. Figure ou...

You have to invest in yourself. A lot of people say go and talk to everyone else but you have to know your weaknesses. And you definitely have to work on those. That's one of the things I have done. Still to this day, I have a book in front of me and, I write down listen before every meeting that starts right on top. Because when you are starting off a business, you think you know everything. One...

You are the authority. You had touched on it a little bit just thirty seconds ago. You have to drive the ship. If you are a startup, a CEO, an owner, or a director, that's your job. You need to steer the ship But, the funny thing is the captain says go that way there's a helmsman crew actually steers said ship. There is an engine crew that's driving the engine and maintenance and mechanics who are...

My advice is going to be from the perspective of the entrepreneur who is bootstrapping their business. It is to crawl before you walk and walk before you run. I think it's really important to not grow too fast and keep a gradual pace. Growing a business is about figuring out how you can sustain the business. Every step of growth reduces the stability of the business. You have to grow into that lar...

Start earlier. Don't think about it more and more and wonder when you are going to do it. If you have the idea and passion to do it, don't wait. Start today. Start right now, make that first phone call, get your business licensed, get set up, name your company. Start moving. Don't waste time because what you will find is once you get into this, you never have enough time.

So they think their last step is running the payroll, hire an employee, coming out on the front. We want to create the other last step which is let's take a look at your expenses. Maybe beyond having an expense on your profit loss, we can convert that into a tax credit. If we could use it for the payroll tax credit, that would be great, or else it counts as income tax. We do a lot of planning, pho...

Make sure you are getting into the business for the right reasons. I would say: don't chase the dollar signs. Don't get involved in an opportunity solely because you believe you are going to make a fortune. If you really don't enjoy doing what you do, it's pretty easy to give up when you run into some roadblocks.