My CEO Life

Over the last 3 months we have been setting up a new business called Classified Ad Ventures (CAV).  As we set up this business, we are learning and re-learning what it takes to start a new business and I thought i would share some of these lessons with you.

Clarity of Mission is Critical

When you have a small busness it is very important to make sure that you have extreme clarity in what you are doing – your mission in life.  In addition you need to make sure that what you are doing is related to a real business model with real revenue and profit potential.  The ultimate test of this is the elevator test – can you clearly articulate what your business does in 30 sec to a minute.  If not … think clearly about what you are doing.

Focus on What Matters

Having worked out what the business is going to do, you need to make sure that everyone is totally focused on making that mission come true. What is as important is working out what you are not going to do – that is, the ability to say no to things. In our business the team often comes up with great ideas (well interesting at least) and i spend time on asking the simple question “how is this going to help deliver our mission and bring in revenue?” More often than not these ideas dont actually add value and are more of a distraction.

Make Sure You Have Funding

Great ideas without money to make them happen are just great ideas. Therefore it is important that you have enough funding to get the idea off the ground or at least have enough man-power to make it happen. Often the man-power can be secured on a sweat equity basis where labour is provided in exchange for equity in the business. This is not my preferred option as equity should be treated as gold and cash used to pay for people as often as possible.

Build a Strong Team

No business can truly happen unless there is a team in place and preferably a strong team. Building a strong team is the most important objective for any founder of a business. At CAV we are really focusing on building a strong team and in doing so, i prefer to work with people i have worked with before as i know their skills and workstyles and they know mine.

Keep a Close Eye on Costs

You may have raised some money however this is not revenue so it is important that you keep a very close eye on all costs. At CAV (and its subsidiaries) i personally sign off on all costs before the are incurred and make sure that there are strong cost control procedures in place. We want to create as much runway as possible to get the business off the ground.

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