The startup life isn’t easy. For founders, a startup means fighting an uphill battle to success—if success ever comes. Sitting in such a high leadership is a lonely endeavor. That’s why we focused on the importance of finding a mentor in the first episode of the Startup Pittsburgh Podcast. After we wrapped up our discussion on mentorship, our members took turns discussing some of the biggest challenges startups face in the early days of their business.
Part 1: A Mentor is Your Guide to Success
A reliable, trusted mentor can spell the difference between your professional successes and failures. A 2013 survey of successful high level executives found that 80% of them leaned on a mentor in the early stages of their business. A recent Sage survey found 93% of startups agreed that having a mentor was instrumental in helping their business succeed.
If you don’t have a mentor by your side, you’re losing a significant edge against your competition.
What To Look For in a Mentor
A great mentor should:
- Have business experience
- Have industry experience, or at least understand your industry
- Be honest
- Be able to connect you with other industry leaders and professionals who can support your business and professional development
- Be willing to listen to you and support your growth
Where to Find a Mentor
There are countless places to find a mentor. Some places to consider:
- Professional networking events and groups (like BNI, Chamber of Commerce, and others)
- Contacts already in your network (think of the third-party professionals you work with on a regular basis)
- Professional coaches (even a sales coach or marketing consultant can become a trusted voice that helps you grow over time)
Recommended Reading
Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, by Jerry Coloanna
Summary:
Jerry is a former founder and investor and now spends his days as an executive coach. In Reboot, Jerry explains the importance of understanding how our past influences the way we lead. One of the recurring themes in Jerry’s book is how lonely it can be as a founder or CEO. In these high leadership positions, entire companies rely on our guidance for direction and important decisions. Having a mentor to lean on and bounce ideas off of reduces the pressure we feel and can improve the decisions we make for our company and stakeholders.
Part 2: Common Startup Challenges
Here’s what each of our professionals had to say:
Many startups and founders think it’s going to be easy to find a commercial space on their own, but it’s actually quite difficult. And because many are strapped for cash, they avoid getting a commercial broker. What they don’t realize is that it doesn’t cost anything to get a broker. If you’re a tenant, you’ll never have to pay a single fee to the broker.
The moment you decide you want to look for a commercial space, you should connect with a broker. They’ll speed up the process for you and get you into more places. The faster you sign a lease, the faster you can get in there and customize the paint, the walls, the floors, and everything else to make it your own.
Many landlords with push startups into three- or five-year leases, and a lot of startups simply can’t commit to that. So I often recommend starting off in a co-working space. Many co-working spaces will allow you to grow within their office space, so you can move from shared spaces to private offices.
Some of the biggest questions that startups have about commercial insurance are:
- What kind of insurance do I need?
- How much do I need?
- How do I get started?
The answers are really determined by the decisions you company has made and plans to make in the future. Your real estate decisions, for example, will determine whether or not your rental insurance. Sometimes the deal you enter with clients require you to have extra insurance as well.
One of the biggest questions startups have is what makes an effective logo and how to implement a logo in their brand.
Your logo is the face of your company. It’s on your website, it’s on your business cards, it’s on your brochures, it’s on the signage on your building. A poorly designed logo can make you look amateurish and hurt you business because of it.
That’s why it’s so important to properly design an effective logo from the beginning so that your business can mature faster.
A major question startups have when they go to purchase a website is, “How much is this going to cost?” It’s a tricky question because buying a website is a little like buying a car. It really depends on the options and details you select.
A better question to ask yourself is, “What do I want my website to do?” Once you have this answer, you can get a better estimate. To get to that answer, you can consider questions like:
- Who are my customers?
- Who do I want to connect with?
- What should my website do for them?
Businesses that are just getting off the ground don’t always have a major marketing budget. Because of this, some of their most common questions are:
- How much do I need to spend on marketing?
- How do I spend my marketing budget effectively so that I get the biggest ROI?
The two biggest factors that determine any company’s marketing success are:
- The data they have and generate
- The decisions they make with that data
The more data a company has, the better their marketing decisions can become. Whether a company decides to build an internal team or outsource their marketing responsibilities, they should press forward by paying attention to their data.
Kyle Knapp of Viterium
(Information Technology) Many startups are concerned with their IT budget, so they’re often on the lookout for free tools that are really effective. The G-Suite (Gmail, Google Docs, etc.) can help to keep costs down.
However, this is only good in the early days. What I often see is that after the first year or two in business or after the company starts growing, they need more collaborative solutions. So instead of looking at the free or inexpensive tools in the early days, a company should look at the tools that can empower them to grow over time.
The most common question we hear is, “How do I know when I should hire a new employee.” No one can really answer this question without first understanding the business. Questions to consider are:
- Can you afford to hire another person?
- Do you really need an employee or should you hire a contractor?
Once someone has these questions figured out, we can discuss payroll, compliance, hiring, and all of the other factors that go into bringing on a new team member.
Startups seem to have dozens of questions when they start thinking about benefits. Some of the most common:
- How quickly can I provide benefits?
- What’s it going to cost?
- What benefits should I offer?
The earlier you start thinking about these questions the better. Just about anything is possible, but you need time to pick out the benefits you want to provide and pick the right brokers or vendors to provide the services at the lowest costs.