10 Rules On How To Build a Fastlane Business

[MJ DeMarco]

Great article from Forbes (linked at Yahoo)

I'm a big fan of Honest Tea and a customer. They were bought out in 2011 by Coke for, well, we can assume millions.

Notice how the Commandments of Fastlane are addressed ... they usually ARE addressed from successful multi-millionaire founders. They aren't addressed from people who don't get it, or have never built or sold a company.

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advi...d-a-wildly-successful-business-185346457.html

3. “Prepare to be copied. Don’t start unless you’ll survive imitation.”

If your idea is truly radical and takes off, you can count the minutes before the copy-cats arrive. How will you survive competition from the big 800-pound gorillas on the block? Or even from the upstart little guys? Your key is a system of ‘continuous innovation’. Although you could also take the road of Honest Tea — make friends with one of the gorillas and let them buy you out

5. “Never, ever give up control — until you sell.”

Some high-impact entrepreneurs will readily give up control in exchange for the lure of high-growth through venture capital — but I am not one of them. Relinquish control and you risk losing the culture and vision of the company you set out to build. Even though Honest Tea raised investment capital from the beginning, the co-founders always remained in the driver’s seat. (And yes — Goldman can still drive his vision as CEO of Honest Tea, but his boss at Coca-Cola can say ‘no’ at anytime. Thus, true control is forever gone.)

 

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[funkj25]

9. “Take care of your family, personal and spiritual health — if you aren’t laughing or smiling on a regular basis, recalibrate.”

As someone who feels like I'm never doing enough to move forward this is something I have hard time keeping in mind, but am almost positive on its necessity. With my current project I just try to make a literal list of 5-6 big tasks on a whiteboard on my wall that need to be accomplished each week and get them done, then it's time to relax a little.

Burnout is real folks, grind too long/too hard and you'll perish (at least I've seen it in hundreds of fellow athletes).

Thanks as always for the article link MJ. This king of stuff and some great threads in the INSIDERS section keep the motivation up over time for me.

 

[Ardú]

Thank you for posting this. It seems to me like Yahoo has been posting a lot of good articles on entrepreneurship lately. Practical advice, instead of the inner mindset stuff that seems to dominate most of the articles on entrepreneurship (not that mindset isn't important, but some articles can get a little out there).

4. “Build up reserves of money and energy for bad luck and mistakes.”

I've heard that before; that you want to think of cash on hand as padding against mistakes.

 

[fishnukin]

10. “Build the enterprise and the brand as if you’ll own them forever.”

Thanks for sharing a great post and article MJ!
I liked all 10 rules but Rule #10 is the one that I truly believe in it.

 

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[Raoul Duke]

bump

 

[ChrisV]

1. “Build something you believe in — because that’s the first step to building a great brand.”

Just like Goldman and Nalebuff, I learned a powerful lesson in tenacious passion from 30 plus years of entrepreneurship. When you’re all alone, sitting in a dark room wondering why your business is failing, there is only one true thing to power you forward — you believe in your purpose.​

See, the idea of “Do what you love” gets a lot of flack here... but I think this is important. Business is hard. And I find that if you don’t really believe in the cause, it’s very difficult to weather the storms. I think that ‘do what you love’ is okay advice, as long as there’s a market demand for what you love. If knitting pink mittens for Chihuahua is your passion, you might have a hard time finding a market for that (or maybe not.)

I think it’s hard to survive the lows of business if you don’t truly believe in your cause. Honest Tea wanted to bring a high-quality tea to the market. It’s what they believed in, and there was also a demand for it. So I think that ‘do what you love’ is okay advice as long as there’s a demand for what you love.

 

[Andreas Thiel]

Awesome!

When I read "12 Rules for Life" I wondered what the "12 Rules for Indie Hacker Life" might be.
Thought about aking what people thought in a thread here, but that article comes pretty close (just two more ... c'mon guys ).

The rules that I came up with at the time were: 12 Rules – DoByLearning.com

IMO Lazy Thinking is a problem that is not addressed often enough. It is often implied as important, but I think it deserves more screen time in the spotlight.

Good find @ChrisV

 

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