The opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Early entrepreneurs are encouraged to say “no” if they want to succeed. But if I had taken this advice earlier in my career, I would have been a network engineer sitting in a cold 50°F server room instead of running my own business.
I understand where this advice comes from. In the early stages, when every idea seems like a good one, distraction can be the enemy of progress. But think of starting a business like looking at the stars through a telescope. If you stare into the black void and focus on just one spot, you could miss the entire galaxy.
The ability to say “no” is acquired, and you won’t develop that intuition until you’ve said “yes” millions of times.
Entrepreneurs often tout that their success is the result of their failures. But failure is the result of saying yes to the wrong thing. Their success was their ability to quickly admit failure and move on from it.
These are some of the most important lessons I’ve learned about how saying “yes” shapes your success as a founder.
Related: 6 questions to ask before saying yes to something
discover your superpower
You may start a business because you are familiar with a product, market, or service and think you can do better. Either way, you’ve probably learned that starting a business requires you to do a lot more than you expected. Tax optimization, budgeting, identifying marketing opportunities, customer support, and the list goes on.
First off, starting a business means saying yes to doing most of these things yourself. Once you start doing all of this, you’ll quickly become overwhelmed, but you’ll discover what I call the three pillars of professional growth.
What are you good at? What is the most important thing in running a business? What is the most important thing in making your customers happy?
Having too much to do and not enough time is often the first mistake business owners make. But it’s an important lesson to learn. I believe early founders should say yes, go all in, and use the three pillars of growth to discover what works. The answers to the three pillar questions will help you determine:
Where should you personally focus? Who should you hire to replace you in your weakest areas? What projects should you work on?
If you say no too early, you will be blind to your own limits and possibilities. By saying yes, you can get your business running faster and at maximum efficiency.
Related: 3 overlooked everyday solutions that actually lead to long-term success
find friends
I’m a big believer in the adage “fake it until you make it,” and a less concise extension of that adage is: “Cooperate with others until you know what you’re doing.” , crowdsource ideas.” ” As an entrepreneur, you can’t do everything by yourself. The joy of my professional career so far has been collaborating with business partners. And if I hadn’t said yes, I wouldn’t have found them.
I was a computer networking major in college, and during my junior year internship, my boss asked me if I could build a website for a friend’s business. I said so. In fact, I had no idea how to create a website. However, I asked some friends for help and we solved it together. I knew they were more capable than me. Asking for help not only helped us get better results for our projects, but also helped us discover our individual superpowers. Not only will our performance determine the outcome of the project, but poor performance will 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 we didn’t intentionally start as a business, started to grow. We were able to encourage each other to be better and learn about ourselves faster.
By the end of that first year, we had made over $1 million in profits.
find your niche
Around this time, in addition to running a web services company, my co-founder and I were also developing new products in hopes of generating passive income for our business. It borrowed a model from the success of the popular 37Signals and Basecamp. Our only goal was to find a way to say yes to new ideas and new possibilities. We have developed and launched over 8 products in 2 years.
After seven failures, we reached our breaking point. Trying to do too much at once put the foundation of the business at risk. That was until I was asked to pitch one of our products at an investor conference. Again, I felt unprepared and a little too burnt out for the opportunity in front of me, but my co-founder and I said yes anyway. We quickly got to work, each leveraging our expertise to complete the first version of the product and create a proposal.
We secured funding from that conference and launched our first product business. I said yes to all of these opportunities because I knew I had people supporting me throughout the process. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t said yes, and I wouldn’t have said yes without them.
Related: Why you should say yes
find what suits you
Many founders get so wrapped up in their initial vision for their product that they don’t see hard evidence that something isn’t working.
If one part of your business isn’t working, whether it’s your underlying technology, product design, or marketing methods, it’s important to know when to pivot. If YouTube’s co-founders hadn’t been willing to pivot, YouTube would now be an online dating service instead of one of the world’s most valuable media companies.
Interestingly, a few years ago we helped one of our clients launch a video dating app with the goal of becoming a direct competitor to Tinder. After a few years, we realized that the majority of our users were also spending a lot of extra money on matching services. We saw a huge opportunity to offer digital matchmaking services to our existing user base and attract even more customers. As a result, they changed direction. We were able to charge extra for this additional service, and because we changed our policy, we reached profitability faster.
Remember, the privilege of saying no is earned. Success depends on your ability to quickly admit failure, bounce back from it, and double down on what’s good for you.
