Start Small

For many of us, the days of massive start-up costs are over. We live in a digital world.  Nearly every design aspect of a product can be completed on a laptop.  We no longer need costly business teams to handle advertising, brochures, TV spots, and web pages. With a little time and a lot of effort, the computer-savvy business owner can do it all from the comfort of their own couch. This can be both a bane and a blessing. Multitask too much and you will get caught up with everyday tasks, failing to streamline and grow your business. Outsource too much and you may break budget and lose the reigns over your product. Don’t try to balance them at first– you don’t need to. If you scope your business appropriately, you will be forced to multitask first and outsource second. In fact, this is the natural progression I have unknowingly followed my entire life, largely as a result of not having large sums of start-up capital

Like many, my first business began with a paper route at the age of 14. Talk about starting small. I was just a kid with a Huffy White Heat bike and dreams of a car when I turned sixteen. Nothing else was needed. My first payday was like hitting the lottery: $180 for a month’s worth of hard work. I immediately made it rain baseball cards and comic books. I had a new addiction: an insatiable appetite for shiny cardboard crack. This led to another paper route. My school day was sandwiched between black and white. Twice a day at 3:30, I rode my bike in the darkness and sunlight, hurling papers onto porches and sneaking by barking dogs.

At sixteen, I had saved enough to afford my own used car, a 1991 brown-crusted Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. With Big Brown in tow, I could now partner up with my cousin, Scott, and take on a much more ambitious driving route. The morning route took an hour and 45 minutes. For two summers we worked the same circuit at increasing speeds. Along the way, we streamlined. We went from tedious rubber bands to plastic bags. We moved from one of us walking, and one driving, to both running. I’d drop Scott off and drive up a block. He ran his side and I ran mine. Then we’d meet back at the car and he’d reload our satchels while I drove to the next drop. After that, it was steamy-hot BK croissan’wiches and videogames. By the end of the second year, we had successfully shaved an entire hour off the delivery time and increased our Mario Kart skills beyond all comparison.

Like any kids, we made do with what we had and scaled as we progressed. We eliminated the obsolete tools such as bikes and rubber bands, and worked to streamline our process. We adapted. The same rules apply now. Just because you can get a big bank loan, doesn’t mean that you should. Just because you can outsource the busy work, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t spend some time coming up with your own solution. Granted, scale when needed, but don’t worry about having to start big. Starting small will give you the chops you’ll need for the skills you’ll eventually be managing. Starting small will acclimate you to a constantly changing environment; you’ll either adapt or sink. If you adapt than you have earned the right to get big. If you sink, put the swimmies back on and try again. And take solace in the fact that you didn’t take the whole ship down with you. No massive loans to repay and no arsenal of employees to fire.

Reflect7 began with a big idea but chose to start small and build towards that idea. Everyday, that decision proves worthy as we face new challenges in manageable amounts rather than an onslaught of landmines.  Through development, we can also gauge how well we work together and where our strengths and weaknesses lie.  These are the growing pains that a company needs to go through before it can make it.  This part is putting in the work and feeling the pain.  But the pain is good because it proves that you are out of your comfort zone and moving in a new direction.

To summarize, think of starting small as the training wheels.  From there you can move on to a bigger bike and eventually you’ll be driving your own car. If the startup seems overwhelming, it probably is. Take three steps back and start there. You’ll thank yourself when you’re steamrolling past your initial plan. In short, snowball your business, don’t let your business snowball you.

-Brian