Slow Down! Why Starting Slow Is the Right Speed for Business Success

Doesn’t creating a new enterprise mean that everything’s going to happen quickly and with great difficulty? Aren’t new enterprises built around hard choices, hard work and endless hours? These are myths, and you don’t have to buy into them if you want to be successful.

Consider the word hard. The word often implies something onerous and difficult. Something that we think is hard is something we typically don’t want to do. If something is new to us, it’s usually something we don’t know how to do.

Now, let’s put that in context. A new enterprise should be something you want to do. You’ve been doing new things most of your life, so you can put your skill set to work to help overcome the hard/new challenges. If your new enterprise is something you want to do, the hardness will fall away as you learn more.

That said, how do you rectify the need to learn with the typical rush of scaling a startup? Those stories of manic young entrepreneurs sprinting to stay ahead of their own predictions, investors, and cash flow meltdowns are great for TV. This is often referred to as “building the airplane in-flight.” But there are far smarter startup paths available, especially suited to ageless entrepreneurial launches — the slow startup is one such path.

Slow startups are new organizations that are typically self-funded that don’t need to meet rapid financial goals. They’re enterprises designed their founders’ personal goals and aspirations for success. Certainly, there’s a need for consistent revenue so the entity’s sustainable, but slow startups can be created, planned, and executed in ways that develop slowly over time to match a founder’s resources and available time.

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