Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
Dr. Randy Pausch
This young, brilliant, dying professor speaking at a final class lecture at Carnegie Mellon was not talking about business. He was talking about life. But if you’re like me and business is life you immediately started thinking of the times experience was all you got.
Then it hit me. Most experience should only be experienced once.
Starting a company on a shoestring (or in a garage or fill in the blank) is very risky. If it hasn’t worked for you before maybe a lot more planning is required. The newspapers are filled with rags to riches stories? No they’re not. They are filled with stories about the same few companies that actually become successful.
“Hired” family because they were free? Nothing’s free. Free workers don’t always feel committed, leave without notice for a real job or cause more problems than they solve. If it hasn’t worked for you reconsider the notion of a family business that is handed down through the generations.
(If working alone is what you’ve always wanted skip to the next paragraph.) When you are the only person in your company actually bringing in money you are simply an employee who pays all the bills. If the huge responsibility and long hours and lack of freedom hasn’t worked for you then come to terms with needing staff, outside professional help and plenty of income to cover those bills.
I won’t tell which of these I have experienced more than once.
There are lots of other examples: Turning over all the bookkeeping/accounting responsibility to an employee, forgetting the financial goals of the company are completely separate from personal financial goals, getting a venture capitalist involved and pretending you still own the company, telling yourself that sales is for people who don’t have a great product or service.
As I thought about all the experience I had and committed to not having again I remembered another famous quote.
Sometimes you just might find you get what you need.
The Rolling Stones