The Startup Therapy Couch™: Reason 3 of 7 your startup is failing - "You don't act like a boss"

Reason #3: You don't know how to be the boss and run a business.
No one is born knowing how to run a business. You may have innate skills in reading people, understanding complex concepts, etc, but running a business is a different animal. To be successful at it you need skills in conflict resolution, managing different types of people, managing up (to your board of directors) as well as down, and you need to know how to fire someone.

It's also important to understand the jobs that you are hiring people to do for you. You don't need an MBA in finance to be able to read a P&L and see if something looks off to you in your books. You don't need to necessarily be able to write code, but you should be asking questions about the stack your team is working in and understanding what your technical debt is. You will likely always be the top sales performer at your company, but even if you aren't "good at sales", you have to develop a process for your sales team and the only way to do that is by doing the process yourself first. You can't hire someone if you don't know what you're hiring them FOR and you can't set performance metrics if you don't understand what's actually achievable.

All of these skills CAN be taught and learned. If you want your startup to be a successful business, learn how to RUN A BUSINESS!

Now go do it... like a BOSS.

Go back to “Reason 1 your startup is failing - Hocus Pocus, Lack of Focus”.

Go back to “Reason 2 your startup is failing - Your pride gets in the way“.