In the Spring 2011, I found myself at a crossroads. I had recently closed the doors on a 4 month part-time mobile app project; our team decided to go our separate ways. I had caught the entrepreneurial bug, but had no clear path to take next.

I was determined to start my own company and I set the following criteria:

• I would continue working with early-stage technology companies
• rely on my existing skills
• Be the sole owner

Not being technical, I instead fell back on my online marketing skills I had developed while building the web presence at a previous job and working with the previous mentioned mobile app project. Thus, Face The Buzz, with the mission to help early stage startups acquire customers through online marketing efforts, was born.

I wish I could say I was so overwhelming confident in my abilities that I knew it would be successful. The truth is that starting my own company was as much about seeing if I could actually do it than anything else.

Simple things – simple when looking back with the lens of experience! – such as how to incorporate the business (LLC vs Corp) and open the correct bank accounts were all learning experiences. It was exciting and scary.

Throughout owning Face the Buzz I had successes and failures. More than anything, I take away the experience of it all. It has provided an incredible foundation to grow my career. Here are the three biggest lessons I learned:

Expertise is Relative

In all industries there are those few people who are recognized as leaders at the peak of achievement. Especially in Internet related businesses you see these people rise up and gain massive followings. I am not one of those people and I initially fell into a trap I see repeated by others:

“I’m not the guru in field XYZ, so why would people buy from me.”

I carried these doubts in my head, especially walking into my first face-to-face sales meeting. However, as I eased into this conversation to provide services to an early stage biotech software company, I realized that I didn’t have to be at the uppermost echelon of the my industry to be of value to this company; I just had to be the expert in the room and I could be very valuable to this organization.

The same is true for anyone. Expertise is relative. You’ll always find someone with more knowledge/skill than you in your field and people with whom you have more expertise. As a result, you can’t ever let these thoughts of doubt deter you, it’s a non-issue.

Sales Above All Else

Providing a valuable service or product is important. Serving your customers is important. But, generating business through whatever sales channel you can is of paramount importance. Without it, your business will never have the wings to lift of.

Further, sales falls squarely on the owner’s shoulders. That fact is missed by many, especially technical owners. You have to be the one who cracks the customer acquisition code for your business. It’s not sufficient to build the product and believe you can hand that duty off by hiring the right person.

If you don’t want to do sales long-term, you should make the first few sales, then find the person who can take it over and run wild with sales. If the prospect of sales sends you running under your bed sheets, plan according and start with a customer-acquisition-driven founder who will be as invested in the company’s success as you.

Handling sole responsibility for sales greatly increased my interest in learning sales processes and respect for masterful salespeople.

Services Businesses are Hard

Face the Buzz focused exclusively on providing a service (as opposed to a product) to our customers. When I started out, I was doing it all. As I grew, I brought on others to help provide the services.

This growth was exciting but also meant that I was removed from providing service to clients, and instead focused only on sales, managing people, process, and operations. I quickly realized that services businesses scale linearly, not exponentially, and that I would be more and more involved with running a business than interacting with customers.

The Future

These realizations are what turned my eye back towards software businesses. Fortunately, I found two young women who shared many of my ambitions for the business. These two have acquired the company and running full steam ahead with it. They’ve given the brand a facelift and I’m excited to watch their future successes.

Face The Buzz was incredibly rewarding, provided the means to take 18 weeks away from employment to learn to code, and reinvigorated my passion for software businesses. I am forever grateful for the experience and the customers I had the opportunity to work with.

Photo image courtesy of Antoine Beauvillain