What an Entrepreneur Would Do Differently with Her Next Startup

Entrepreneurs learn their business lessons the hard way: through experience. And those who end up with success learn how to profit from their own mistakes. Rieva Lesonsky, the former editor of Entrepreneur magazine and an AllBusiness columnist, notes that entrepreneurs frequently discover early in the startup phase of their business how much they don’t know . “They're experts in their industry,” she says, “but all too often they don't know enough about the other aspects of business operation.”

That was the case for Jennifer Lyle, owner of Software Testing Solutions. Her company creates software that helps hospitals test critical systems and was the 2008 winner of the AllBusiness Big Business Contest. After eight years at the helm of her successful company and after receiving in-depth business consulting as part of the AllBusiness contest, Lyle has learned plenty from her mistakes.

Start Your Business with the End in Mind

“If I were building my business today,” Lyle says, “I would start with the end in mind.” David Finkel, a business consultant who worked with Lyle as part of the Big Business Contest, points out that many business owners never clearly establish an end goal for their business -- or else they forget that goal as they get mired in the day-to-day operations. Finkel encourages business owners to clarify whether they intend to get out of their business at some point -- by selling it or handing over the leadership to someone else -- or whether they plan to continue indefinitely in an operational role. The owner's final goal should influence how he or she runs the business.

Lyle says she wants to build a company that could continue creating its successful software products and providing the valuable services to hospitals even if she, as the owner, weren’t at the helm.

Building this kind of company has meant making sure that the critical processes in the business are efficient, effective, and able to run even if Lyle isn’t there. Because she has built a company with a totally virtual workforce, her engineers and analysts are already largely self-sufficient, with a system for communication and development that doesn’t rely on Lyle day-to-day. It was the sales process, which Lyle primarily handled, that needed to be delegated. Now, with a system and people in place to expand the company’s sales process, Lyle is more free to take charge of the strategic planning that the company needs. She’s still a core asset of the company, but she is closer to steering a company that’s truly comprised of skills, systems, and products that can be sustained without her direct involvement.

Lyle now likens her business to a child: A parent must nurture it until it can take care of itself.

Document Your Processes

If Lyle were starting STS today, she would also "document things properly. I built processes along the way, but I failed to document them. They wind up in somebody’s head -- and when that person moves on you have to start all over again.”

As part of her work with Finkel, Lyle and her team identified one key barrier to the company’s growth: the lack of a clearly defined sales process. Hiring and training new salespeople was difficult without documentation that detailed the stages of the sales cycle and referenced key sales materials. Now, the company can bring new employees up to speed much faster because they have started to systematically record and collect the procedures that keep the company selling: call scripts, sales schedules and cycles, tracking software, and a system for measuring the sales performance of a growing staff.

Analyze Your Time

Even as recently as a few months ago, Lyle was making a mistake common among small business owners who aren't accountable to anyone and can easily be pulled in many directions: She was engaged in every aspect of the business, and her days were packed full of time-sucking busy work. During their time working together, Lyle checked in with Finkel every 10 days and gave him a report on her activity, a process that helped clarify how she spent her time. She quickly realized that by “stepping off the wheel” of the day-to-day grind, she could see the big picture.

Finkel asked Lyle to identify activities that would be the “highest and best” use of her time, and to hand off the less important responsibilities. Someone else now handles sales, and she focuses on strategic planning, new product development, and courting key clients. In fact, Lyle now dedicates one day per week to working on the company’s strategic direction and new product development -- without checking e-mail and without answering phones.

“I make sure I’m not spending all of my time on things that are comfortable or easy -- getting rid of those tasks and realizing that it’s OK to hand them off.”

Now “the biggest difference for me as a business owner is focus,” she says.

Get an Outside Perspective

The final lesson Lyle has learned? Find good advisors. Many business owners see the world only through their own eyes, and fail to solicit input from people inside and outside of the company. Finkel says, “A lot of the time we don’t know what we don’t know, so we need to go out there and ask the experts. We need to not be afraid to ask, and to say I don’t know and I need some help.”

After working with a series of experts -- business tax advisors, legal experts, and branding consultants -- and seeing her company through their eyes, Lyle now understand what STS has done right and what it has done wrong. A lawyer who reviewed the company’s legal structures recommended that the company re-draw their partnership agreements, and a tax professional helped change the tax filing status of STS. A review of the sales process showed Lyle how to increase sales capacity and also save money, and several consultations with a branding expert culminated in a total brand overhaul.

What piece of advice would Jennifer Lyle give to an entrepreneur who’s just getting started, or to a business owner who’s feeling stuck in a rut?

Read a book. Talk to other business owners and have an open mind. The key is to remove your own blinders. “You have to take the leap -- you have to say that you will do something different, and you have to realize that if you continue as you’ve been going you won’t change the way your business operates. Find an advisor who can help you analyze your business, someone you can trust, and commit to making a change.”