Evan Carmichael, Richard Kelly, and Jeremy Corner discuss how founders survive startup setbacks. Richard describes cash-flow anxiety while scaling. Jeremy says adversity forces you back to basics: product-market fit, pricing, customer communication. Both stress that grit, consistent execution, and belief in your product matter more than resources.
Richard, the million-dollar question is how does one stay focused and, uh, on and determined with their goals when everything seems to go wrong? How do you stay focused and determined when everything seems to go wrong?
That's true.
Yeah, that's something.
Maybe I'll chip in. You know, reality, particularly when I was a startup business entrepreneur leader, chief executive back in California, I had months where I'm really worried about not making payroll every day. Every day. God, I remember it so vividly. It was an emotional roller coaster ride. And some days I used to say, right, today was a great day. 3 steps forward, 2 steps back. But some days it was 2 steps back. There wasn't a lot of good news. And then we'd land a big order and then we wouldn't have enough people in the business and we'd go crazy on hiring. And then it's the schizophrenia as a leader. You can't freak your colleagues out and share this stuff with them because one day you're growing, you scale it up, you're hiring people. And then if the kind of order pipeline dries up, you think, wow, do we need to take costs down? And there is that schizophrenia you need to manage. But how you manage that, number one, I think you need stronger emotional resilience back to your passion, back to connecting you with the mission, because then you know it's worthwhile. And you can't expect anything special in life to be created from anything apart from having a really good mission, tremendous passion, and then put all your energy into execution. And hard graft never hurt anybody, honestly, I promise you that. And I don't know anything really special and sustainable you create apart from really awesome execution and hard work, unless you win the lottery or something, you know. But otherwise, you don't— if you don't do anything special and create something unique and magical unless you really execute it. And you've got to stay true to your core.
Yeah.
When I find it difficult and when things go wrong for me, I actually really sort of thrive on that. I get excited because you move forward from pain. So if sales are down and you're having a tough year, you just go back to all the— I always go back to the basics. So it's like, are we delivering the right products to our customers at the right price? Are we keeping in touch with them in the right way? What are our competitors doing? Are they doing something better than us at the moment that we haven't noticed? And then sometimes it can be outside of your control. So you can't control the economy. And so you have to pay attention to those things. And when economies are struggling or you have difficult times, like we don't know what's going to happen in the UK. I'm looking at abroad at the moment because there's lots of opportunity for us abroad with the pound changing and all that kind of thing. I think, you know, it makes you more resourceful. It's like, you know, like we were talking this morning about, you know, just entrepreneurs, they kind of, if you want to do something like we wanted to do things today where we wanted to get places and, you know, we wouldn't take no for an answer, right?
Stage change.
There we go.
And I think the other thing, obviously we talked about this in previous kind of Google Hangouts and collabs, find someone you trust who's been through your journey before and, you know, just go for a have a coffee with them and just be honest with yourself and ask for advice when you face some really tough times. And the good news is in business, everything can be overcome with great determination, conviction, and belief. And if you still believe in your passion and you've got an awesome product, there's always where you can find to grow. And actually, Jeremy's point is the answer is never more resources. It's all about resourcefulness. Resourcefulness. And as an entrepreneur, You've got bundles of resources.
I would say too, like, to add to both, both of the points, uh, you got to enjoy the process. You know, you have to enjoy the work, not just be attached to the outcome. A lot of people, I have a goal, I want to hit this thing, this is where I want to be, and I'm going to do all this crap to get to that goal. But if you don't enjoy the work, then when you don't hit that goal, that's super frustrating, you're going to quit. Where the most successful entrepreneurs, yeah, we have goals, we have big dreams, we want to hit this milestone, you know, I want to hit X You know, I had a million subscribers on YouTube, but it's not the point. I'm not doing stuff just to hit a million subscribers on YouTube. I like the craft. I like making these videos. I like making stuff for you. And I find when you don't enjoy the process of your business, then it's really hard to stay motivated. So, you know, there's going to be a lot of down days. You may not get that yes from the customer, and that's understandable. Like, you're going to get down on yourself a little bit. But what gets me back in is I just drive back into the work. Like, I'm going to make another video. Because I love it, right? I get hugs from my work, right? It fills my soul. So like, so you have to be doing something that you love and not just do a bunch of crap to get to that goal. Enjoy the process, and the process keeps you through. The thing that gets you through the, the crap of building the business is enjoying the craft.
