Continue to push hard but protect yourself against the inevitable plateau or crash.
Growing businesses everywhere struggle to gain new customers and new revenue. It is like pushing a boulder up a hill. As budding business mavens, we work hard to find that next big deal or that marketing breakthrough where our app is suddenly the viral hit. If you are one of the lucky ones that capture a few of these in a row, you find yourself on a rocket ship, the trajectory of which only a few can enjoy.
But beware, because in my experience the fall comes quicker and with steeper momentum than the push upwards. And by the time you recognize that the crash is not a blip but a newfound trend, it may be too late to change course.
For first-time founder/CEO’s, you must utilize a combination of confidence, tenacity, and exuberance with an equal amount of skepticism and caution. I believe that all of us go into our new business with a healthy balance of these traits, but when great things continue to happen–we begin to assume that these great things will just continue to show up at our door everyday like the Fed Ex driver.
When your business grows past you and the small founding team and you add other professionals like sales people, you begin to create distance between you and reality. Sales people by nature are optimists and frankly we enjoy hearing the good news over any of the bad news. There is no ill intent here it is just human nature. However, your job is to protect yourself against these phenomena from creeping into your business.
Read more here and hear about a recent experience that brought this issue right to my door.