Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics, he helps companies like Amazon, AOL, GM, HP, and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web and Entrepreneur Magazine says he is one of the top entrepreneurs in the world.
You can read more about Niel from his world-famous blog QuickSprout. We recently connected with Neil and asked him to share the top 3 mistakes he made launching his company and this is what he had to say:
What were the top 3 mistakes you made starting out with your business and if you could start over what would you do differently?
Not having enough focus
When I started my first business I kept on trying to do too many things and expand the business even before we had a bit of revenue. This caused me to output mediocre work instead of great work. Eventually, clients suffered from it and we lost revenue.
My advice: If I had to do it all over again, I would just focus on one model within my business. As the revenue growth declines, I would then expand, but not until then.
Hire B players
Just like most entrepreneurs, I didn’t have a lot of cash when I was starting out. So I hired B and C employees because that is all I could afford.
Sadly the results from these employees weren’t great, which meant that they needed to be micromanaged. Not only did this take a lot of my time, but it caused customers to be unhappy again.
My advice: If I had to do it over again I would have given up equity in the business to hire A players. This would have made the business a lot larger.
Letting the foot off the pedal
Once things started to look up and I was making a decent amount of money, I slowly started taking my foot off the pedal because I was enjoying life. I should have never done this because I eventually was losing customers faster than I was adding them.
My advice: Always keep pushing hard and never slow down when things are good. You can lose everything much faster than it took you to build the business.
Neil Patel | Founder | KISSmetrics
