How saying yes to every opportunity helped my startup make $1 million in its first year

It is advisable for beginner entrepreneurs say no if they need to succeed. But if I had followed this recommendation early in my profession, as a substitute of running my own company, I might have been a network engineer sitting in a 50°F server room.

I understand where this recommendation is coming from. Distraction may be the enemy of progress in the early stages when every idea seems good. But think of starting a business like using a telescope to observe the stars. If you stare into a black void and only look at that one spot, you could miss the entire galaxy.

The ability to say “no” has to be earned – you will not gain such intuition if you do not say “yes” a million times.

Entrepreneurs often boast that their successes are the results of failures. But failure comes from saying yes to the mistaken thing. Their success depended on the ability to quickly admit defeat and get well from it.

Here are some of the most vital lessons I’ve learned about how saying “yes” can shape your success as a founder.

Discovering your superpower

You probably start a company because you know the product, market or service and you think you may do it higher. Whatever the case, you are probably learning that starting a business requires doing a lot greater than you expected. Tax optimization, budgeting, identifying marketing opportunities, customer support and the list goes on.

In the starting, starting a business means agreeing to do most of these items yourself. When you begin doing all of them, you may quickly feel overwhelmed, but you may discover what I call the three pillars of skilled development:

1. What are you good at?
2. What is most vital in running your enterprise?
3. What is most vital to keep your customers satisfied?

Dealing with too many things to do without enough time to get them done is often the first failure a business owner encounters. But it is a vital lesson that have to be learned. I consider early founders should say yes, take all of it in, and discover what works using the three pillars of growth. The answers to these three pillar questions should aid you determine:

1. Where it’s best to focus
2. Who must you hire to replace you in your weakest areas?
3. What projects try to be working on

If you say “no” beforehand, you will not recognize your limitations and potential. If you say yes, your enterprise shall be running at maximum efficiency faster.

Finding your people

I’m a staunch believer in the saying “fake it till you make it,” but I think an expanded, if less concise, version of it is, “collaborate with others and solicit ideas until you understand what you’re doing.” ” As an entrepreneur, you may’t do every thing on your personal. The joy of my profession so far has been working with my business partners. And I would not have found them without saying yes.

In college, I specialized in computer networking, and during an internship my first year of school, my boss asked if I could build a website for his friend’s company. I said yes. I actually had no idea how to build a website. But I asked a few people I knew for help and together we figured it out. I knew they were more knowledgeable than me, and asking for help not only led to a higher project end result, but allowed us to discover our individual superpowers. Not only would our performance determine the end result of the project, but poor performance could let down the remainder of the group. There was no room for ego.

My friends and I quickly realized that we knew a lot of people that wanted to build web sites or needed technical support, so we began charging them to build their ideas. From that moment on, our company, which was not initially intended to be a business, began to develop. We pushed each other to be higher and get to know ourselves faster.

By the end of the first year, we had revamped $1 million.

Finding your area of interest

Around this time, in addition to running our web services company, my co-founders and I were also developing latest products in hopes that they might generate passive revenue for the company – borrowing a model from the popular 37Signals and their success at Basecamp. Our only goal was to find a way to say yes to latest ideas and latest potential. Within two years, we have built and introduced over eight products to the market.

After seven failures, we had reached our limit – doing too many things at once was threatening the foundation of our company. And that was until we were asked to present one of our products at an investor conference. Once again, I felt underequipped and a little too burnt out to benefit from the opportunities at hand, but my co-founders and I agreed anyway. We quickly got to work, each of us using our area of ​​expertise to finalize the first version of the product and prepare a presentation.

We raised funds from this conference and launched our first product. I said yes to all of those opportunities because I knew I had individuals who would support me throughout the process. I would not be where I’m today if I hadn’t said “yes” and I would not have been able to say “yes” without them.

Finding your match

Many founders get so caught up in their initial product vision that they fail to see the hard evidence that something is not working.

When a part of your enterprise is not working – whether it’s the underlying technology, the design of your product, or the way you sell it – it is important to know when to change. If YouTube’s co-founders weren’t willing to change, they might be today online dating site not one of most beneficial media firms in the world.

Interestingly, a few years ago we helped one of our clients launch a video dating app that was intended to be a direct competitor to Tinder. After a few years, we realized that the majority of their users were also spending a lot of extra cash on dating services. We saw a huge opportunity to bring a digital dating service to its existing user base and attract much more customers. As a result, they fell over. They are able to charge more for this extra service and achieved profitability faster because they modified course.

Remember that the privilege of saying “no” is earned. Success depends on your ability to quickly admit failure, get well from it, and focus on the things that work for you.