Planning for Long-Term Success as an Entrepreneur
By: Hani Alsaleh
Tags: Startup, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management, Business

Entrepreneurship is often incorrectly framed in the short-term. New entrepreneurs see the potential for immediate success that comes with a strong idea and the limitless possibilities inherent in any new venture. The term “agility” is often used to describe a business able to adapt to market changes, but there’s a line between flexibility and an inability to make decisions. It’s easy to get paralyzed in choosing a course of action for a new business, but skilled entrepreneurs know how to navigate with long-term success in mind.

Changing course is an easy thing to do with a young startup, especially given the lack of infrastructure or personnel that these decisions affect. While it is valuable to recognize when making sweeping decisions is necessary, every change has a certain cost associated with it, whether spending money to change systems or lost productivity as a team adjusts to new methods. Though this mindset is beneficial early on, startups that have survived to become mature companies will need a healthy amount of consistency to thrive.

Conversely, a lack of decision making can hamstring a business for different reasons. This particularly applies to marketing, as trying to keep your options open in terms of an audience is less effective than identifying the best prospects and focusing on them. Trying to appeal to a wide variety of customers often means creating products that don’t serve any subset particularly well. Being an entrepreneur means picking a direction and sticking to it after considering all inputs and possible courses of action.

Even so, iteration is the lifeblood of expanding a company. It can be easy for entrepreneurs to blame external factors — after all, so much can go wrong. It takes a good entrepreneur to take ownership of missteps and change direction in the interest of sustaining the company. Oftentimes, finding a new solution means going in an innovating direction that doesn’t already exist — risky, but such is the way of things for any startup.

For entrepreneurs, how you make changes matters just as much as the changes you make. Trying to cut corners with certain processes early on incurs what’s called “shortcut debt”, or the costs associated with finding solutions that don’t scale or only work in the short term. This can pile up in the long term, forcing key members of the team to put out fires rather than making meaningful progress. In addition, timing is everything when it comes to expanding a business. This comes with ample research and constant learning on part of the professionals involved with the business. Staying on top of an industry is challenging, but necessary to keep a business going.

Lastly, it’s beneficial for entrepreneurs to pay attention to themselves. Even the most ambitious founder can become burnt out, and taking steps to maintain mental health can translate to benefits when it comes to cognition and creativity in the workplace. There’s always more work to be done, but a smart entrepreneur learns not to be overwhelmed or distracted by everything they must contend with.