https://blog.baremetrics.com/startups-keep-it-classy-5bba13285cc6
Building a business makes relatively sane humans do some insane things. The past 10 years have been the modern day gold rush for tech. And I mean that in the sense where lots of people risk everything and make nothing while a few hit it big.
And that “gold rush” culture makes people do some desperate things in the name of business survival.
Every day founders have an infinite number of tiny decisions to make and it’s easy to get decisions fatigue. In a moment of weakness you may do something dumb that hurts you, your team, your company, your brand or any one of a thousand other things.
So here’s an easy rule of thumb to help you when making decisions: keep it classy.
Seriously. It’s that easy. Just ask yourself, “Am I being classy?” If the answer is anything other than “yes” you’re likely taking the route that may have short term gains but long term negative consequences.
You don’t want to be a low class business. You never want to leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth. You’ll almost always regret your decision later on if you go the low-class route.
Copying others’ product designs, badmouthing competitors, taking advantage of customers, overworking your team…there are just so many problems that aren’t solved but actually completely avoidable by keeping it classy.
There are so many things working against the success of your business. So many variables out of your control. Don’t make it harder on yourself by choosing the low-class option.
Successful businesses, the ones that survive the ups and downs, are built on having class. Sure, the occasional bad apple slips through and for whatever terrible reason the universe lets them succeed, but nobody actually wants to be the sleazy used car salesman. Deep down we all want to be respected by friends, family, peers, coworkers and customers. That doesn’t come from taking the low-class route.
Make decisions you’re proud of. Decisions that, although maybe not the easiest route, don’t leave you feeling icky at the end of the day.
Keep it classy.
Earlier this year I failed to sell Baremetrics for $5m. But I learned a heaping pile of things from that and one of the biggest things I learned about was the world of asset sales and stock sales.
This is about to get real nerdy but this is crucial if you're trying to sell a company. It could literally save you millions of dollars.
I failed to sell Baremetrics for $5m. While failure is 100% a part of success, it's only useful if you learn something. So, here are some of the things I learned from this little failure.
Hopefully these are some things you can apply to your own company (present or future) that can save you a bit of pain.
In the past six years of Baremetrics' existence, I've received dozens upon dozens of emails from folks interested in acquiring Baremetrics. When you're running a transparent company that's growing, it just comes with the territory. Generally these conversations quickly fizzle once they realize I'm not even remotely interested in some quick, 1x revenue sale.
Intros, a product we launched to great fanfare three months ago, is being shutdown, having never made a single penny and costing our team months of work.
https://baremetrics.com/blog/sunsetting-intros
Yesterday I wasn't feeling great, mentally. I had a level of anxiety I hadn't felt in a long time that started in the morning and really persisted through the night. I can't pinpoint it to any one specific thing. It was more the sum of a dozen small things. I felt like I hadn't been leading the team well through a big product change, parenting has been taxing lately, I was second guessing all sorts of life decisions, the things that typically bring me joy day in and out have just felt really uninteresting and on top of that, the weather yesterday was dark and stormy...which perfectly matched how my brain felt.
https://baremetrics.com/blog/founder-mental-health
As founders, a lot of our identities get wrapped up in our companies. Certainly within our industries, but even to family and friends it’s how people know us. And over time, we sort of become our companies. Most founders or CEOs are the “face” of their businesses and eventually they’re inseparable. Being wholly consumed by your company hurts not only you and the people around you, but even the company itself.
A couple of years ago, we were in a hard spot. I had just realized we were mere weeks away from running out of cash and had asked the whole team to take a pay cut while we figured out how to get profitable. But in addition to cutting costs, we needed to figure out how to speed up growth. One of the things we did to speed up growth was figure out who our “perfect customer” was. We’d spent the first two years making some big assumptions about who our ideal customer was and who we should target, but had no imperial data to back that up.
https://baremetrics.com/blog/perfect-customer
When you’re just getting started, everything feels like a big deal. Everything. The tinniest things can turn in to huge showstoppers that drain time and, in many cases, money. But the longer you’re in the game, the more you realize how few things actually matter.
Where to publish something has becoming a difficult decision for a lot of businesses. You read so many stories about using various channels to distribute content and grow traffic, it's hard to know what does and doesn't work. Medium, in particular, has become a major player in the world of startup content, but is it really that great?
https://baremetrics.com/blog/medium-back-to-blog
When building a startup, so much emphasis is put on “the product” or even “the customers”. Everything else takes a backseat. On some level, and at some points in a company’s lifecycle, this makes sense. Of course you’ll make sacrifices and you’ll have to work really hard and work really weird hours.
But eventually, you’ll have to stop. The downsides far outweigh the benefits and the damage done to you and your team can be detrimental. That’s what I’m writing about to day. Managing the long term health of you and your team.
https://baremetrics.com/blog/startup-health-well-being
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