Learn from your mistakes. Fail, fail again, fail harder. Any of these apply to me.
For my previous company going bankrupt to have any sustainable, positive outcome, I will need to learn from it. And as I get older, I discover that I learn by doing. Repetition builds quality. Not that I want to go bankrupt again, mind you. I want to get better at creating my own, sustainable source of income. And my main path to do so is through creating an independent company.
So, how do I go about starting a new business? Some thoughts, in a somewhat random order:
- Partnership
I know how to work, but I get better in partnerships. Luckily, I know just the guy for that. Having been through the exact same bankruptcy as me, former partner Ronald Mulder is as hell-bent on improving his entrepreneurship as I am. And we know how to work together. - Focus
This should not be something you do when provoked. It should be a constant effort. But having nothing better to do than start over has made it very easy to throw out the old and start with a clean sheet.- Eliminate noise: I am ferociously unfollowing on Twitter, un-friending on Facebook and disconnecting on LinkedIn. This is sometimes awkward. But it needs to be done in order to make those networks ‘work’ for me.
- Increasing attention to the areas of interest. In my case: it is not Social Media that is interesting anymore. It is the impact it has on the behavior of people. It is not startups per se, it is creating sustainable value through modern networked organizations. Or something (still working on that one).
- Talk, connect
Ronald and I talk a lot about what we want to bring to the world. We also talk about what really interests us, and what combinations would be made possible from that. But most importantly, we are starting to talk to people we think are doing interesting stuff right now. Because eventually, those conversations will create our market.
