Starting and running your own business is a rollercoaster ride – and probably not for the faint-hearted.
There’s a regular and constant need to make decisions, to choose one path over others. An essential element of running your own business though is being able to reflect on what you’ve done and where you’ve been.
Reflection is an often overlooked business skill: The focus tends to be on planning and executing, on creating, launching, and selling products – and then of course repeating the cycle. However, the most resilient business leaders are the ones who take the time to review the road they’ve travelled – and share the findings from their journey with others.
Mistakes are inevitable in any process, but here are some pieces of advice based on my own experience that others might find useful.
The four things I would do differently if I were starting NuNano today would be…
1) Having a business partner to work with day-to-day. Whilst I had, and continue to have, a brilliant team of co-founders, we set out with the clear intention that they would be more advisory than hands-on in nature. However, having someone in the trenches, willing to commit to those early pains of working without any guarantees, for low or no salary, but striving towards a vision together would I suspect have leant a different flavour to the experience.
2) Talking to key stakeholders well before you’re ready to execute. I’d have had conversations with key stakeholders much sooner rather than waiting until we had our processes and products in place. While working in a small business can be fast-paced, there will inevitably be aspects that move slower than anticipated. Conversations with key players that will help make your business a success need to start early – earlier, I’d contend, than feels comfortable.
3) Raising more investment sooner (– if possible!). This is one where I’m really on the fence. More money sooner would have helped us fund the business more fully and deliver faster on R&D and sales - and potentially it would have cost less over time. We chose to raise investment little and often as progress warranted it. This is perhaps a more conservative approach, but one that generally sits better with me.
4) Meeting more people in person. I would have done more travel, attended more events and ensured I was meeting more people in person in those early days. Nothing beats that face-to-face interaction. In particular, I didn’t do much international travel in the beginning and the events we attended tended to be lower cost. It’s chicken and egg really – we didn’t do those things because we simply couldn’t afford to. However, if we had been at those events, some conversations could have happened sooner which in turn would have benefit the business financially.
Our recent conference stand (at RMS AFM & SPM in Durham, UK)
A brilliant, if unexpected, aspect of taking time to review and reflect on building a business is realising the things you got right.
So here are five things I did when setting up NuNano that I would do again in a heartbeat - and I’d encourage anyone starting out today in a similar business to consider doing these too:
1) Getting the product out to customers ASAP. We had minimal time to market with our first probes which is unusual for a manufacturing company, but I was confident we could do something – and do it well. Of course, we had improvements to make, but at the same time, we had researchers in UK using our probes for their research and publishing scientific literature within about 18 month of the first product release. That was testament to the quality of the products and we still have those relationships in place with people who gave us early feedback. They are often our most stalwart champions.
2) Building the board. When it came to fleshing out the NuNano board of directors, I was keen early on to get people involved who would and could give different types of advice. Engaging with SETSquared and taking part in their business review panels meant I connected with people who were willing to roll up their sleeves and participate in the business in a big way. This has been hugely beneficial and key to our success.
3) Recruitment of engineers from our local ecosystems. Recruiting our engineers from the Universities of Bristol and Edinburgh meant we hired people who were already familiar with the equipment we use. This reduced the need for extensive training and meant we could focus on getting them up to speed on the specifics of our process and making meaningful contributions to the business sooner than they might have otherwise.
4) Cashflow Management. My approach was frugal rather than frivolous – we didn’t splash out on any trendy start-up spending. We went about things in a sensible way, laying the foundation of a solid and reliable financial framework from which the business has grown.
5) Design and branding. The conversations we had about the colours, the logo, and our packaging have all stood the test of time. These are all things that we are well known for now: we stand out from the crowd with our NuNano green, and people love the Gel-Pak layout, hitting as they do, that sweet spot in combining great design and usefulness.
Our Branded Gel-Pak Probe layout design
Reflection is never a one-time event. Rather it is something that we must build into our working practices if we are to continually grow and innovate our businesses. Reflection is about consciously processing, internalising and reframing what we know in the light of all the information available. Some of this approach I attribute to my background in academia, able to assimilate large amounts of data, to critique and apply as appropriate in a steady and objective manner.
What part does reflection play in your work? Is it a core part of your practice? I’d love to know – and learn from, how you do things too.
If you enjoyed this blog post you may also like Why growing your start-up business inside an incubator is a good idea – an outsider-insider perspective and Building a world class team: What NuNano can learn from Le Tour