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Early entrepreneurs are advised to say “no” if they want to be successful. But if I had taken this advice earlier in my career, I would be a network engineer sitting in a cold 50ºF server room instead of running my own business.
I can understand where this advice is coming from. Distraction can be the enemy of progress at an early stage where every idea seems like a good idea. But think of starting a business like using a telescope to look at the stars. If you're staring into a black void and you only look at that spot, you could be missing an entire galaxy.
The ability to say no is earned – you don't get that kind of intuition without saying yes a million times.
Entrepreneurs will often say that their successes are a result of their failures. But a failure is the result of saying yes to the wrong thing. Their success was their ability to quickly accept a failure and move on from it.
These are some of the most important lessons I've learned about how saying yes can shape your success as a founder.
Related: The 6 questions I ask before I say 'yes' to anything
Discover your superpower
It is likely that you are starting a business because you are familiar with a product, market or service and think you can do better. Whatever the case, you're probably learning this starting a business it involves doing a lot more than you anticipated. Optimizing your taxes, creating budgets, identifying marketing opportunities, customer support and the list goes on.
In the beginning, starting a business means saying yes to doing most of these things yourself. When you start doing it all, you'll quickly become overwhelmed, but you'll discover what I call the three pillars of professional growth:
- What are you good at doing?
- What is most important to running your business?
- What is most important to keep your customers happy?
Ending up with too many things to do without enough time to do them is often the first setback a business owner faces. But it's an essential lesson to learn. I believe early stage founders should say yes, take it all in and find out what works using the three pillars of growth. The answers to the three pillar questions should help you determine:
- Where your individual focus should be
- Who should you hire to replace you in your weakest areas?
- What projects should you work on?
Saying no earlier will blind you to your limits and potential. By saying yes, your business will run at peak efficiency faster.
Related: 3 overlooked, everyday solutions that actually drive long-term success
Finding your people
I am a staunch advocate for “fake it till you make it“, adage, but I think the extended, albeit less condensed version of this is, “cooperate with others and Crowdsource ideas until you understand what you're doing.” As an entrepreneur, you can't do everything yourself. The joy of my professional career so far has been working with my business partners. And I wouldn't have found them without saying “yes “.
I majored in computer networking in college, and during an internship my freshman year, my boss asked me if I could build a website for his friend's business. I said yes. In reality, I had no idea how to build a website. But I asked some people I knew to help and together we figured it out. I knew they were more competent than I was, and asking for help not only led to a better outcome for the project, but allowed us to discover our individual superpowers. Not only would our performance determine the outcome of the project, but a poor performance would disappoint the rest of the group. There was no room for ego.
My friends and I quickly realized that we knew a lot of people who wanted to build websites or needed some kind of technical support, so we started charging them to build their ideas. From there, our business, which did not intentionally start as a business, began to grow. We were pushing each other to get better and learn faster about ourselves.
By the end of that first year, we had made over $1 million.
Finding your niche
Around this time, in addition to running our Internet services company, my co-founders and I were also developing new products in hopes of generating passive income for the business—borrowing a model from the popular 37 Signals and their success with Basecamp. Our only goal was to figure out how to say yes to new ideas and new potential. We built and launched over eight products in the span of two years.
After seven failures, we had reached our limit – trying do too much at once it was jeopardizing the foundation of our business. That was until we were asked to present one of our products at an investor conference. Again, I felt underequipped and a little burned out on the opportunity at hand, but my co-founders and I said yes anyway. We quickly got to work, each of us using our own area of expertise to finalize the first version of the product and create a pitch.
We secured funding from that conference and went on to start our first product business. I said yes to all these opportunities because I knew I had people who would support me throughout the process. I wouldn't be where I am today without saying yes, and I wouldn't have been able to say yes without them.
Related: Why you should say 'Yes' more
Finding your fit
Many founders are so wrapped up in their initial vision for a product that they become blind to hard evidence that something isn't working.
When one part of your business isn't working, whether it's the core technology, product design or the way it's being marketed, it's important to know when to pivot. If YouTube's co-founders hadn't been willing to roll, today they would be one online dating service instead of one of most valuable media companies in the world.
Interestingly, we helped one of our clients launch a video dating app a few years ago, aiming to be a direct competitor to Tinder. After a few years, we realized that most of their users were also spending a lot of extra money on matchmaking services. We saw a huge opportunity to offer a digital matchmaking service to their existing user base and attract even more customers. As a result, they rolled. They can charge more for this additional service and they did profitability faster because they changed course.
Remember, the privilege of saying no is earned. Success depends on your ability to quickly admit a failure, move on, and double down on what works for you.