Expertise alone is not enough to start a business. Isn't this how we often operate? Someone is good at baking and thinks they can open a bakery. Someone is good at sewing, so they leave their company job and open their own sewing workshop. Be careful! That could be a major mistake!
Those are the views of young entrepreneur Tạ Minh Tuấn. Forbes named him among 30 outstanding people under 30. In his view, expertise alone is not enough to start a successful business. Expertise can sometimes confine a founder to their own specialty, preventing them from handling the overall situation comprehensively and leaving them constantly circling around technical issues.
This person also suffers from the problem of thinking ‘employees cannot do work as well as I do, so I will do it myself; I do not dare delegate.’ The business owner is then not freed, cannot create greater influence or impact, and cannot grow the business's scale. In this case, the entrepreneur does not own the business; the business owns them. So sometimes strong expertise is a double-edged sword.
To start a successful business, you need 3 closely connected pillars, like a “three-legged stool.” Professional expertise is only one part. Expertise relates to the product. For example, if you open a bakery and have baking expertise, your products are Cupcakes. Or if you open an English center and have a Tesol qualification (a type of certification for English teachers), your products are English training courses.
Expertise here does not mean sales, marketing, or HR expertise… but knowledge of the company’s business sector, such as real estate, education, or healthcare… You need to understand it, or have a trade yourself and have worked in that field for many years.
A three-legged foundation for startup success
Many people believe expertise alone is enough to start a business. This is a serious mistake when they overlook the following two factors:
First is leadership ability. What Tạ Minh Tuấn means also includes the capacity to run a business. Returning to the bakery example above, if you have only technical expertise, you will personally make delicious cakes. Understanding the product is an advantage. But without leadership ability, from the day you open the business through many years afterward, you will still be the only one baking.
This means the business is very small because it depends entirely on you. Indeed, you can bake as long as you are healthy; if you fall ill, your business will stop along with you. To become more successful, you clearly need to build and standardize an entire business system and know how to control that system.
You also need to know how to attract many people to work with you and awaken their latent abilities so that they give their all and realize their full potential while working with you. You will then train and develop them. Your business will have not just you as its baker, but 10-20-30 bakers like you. When you manage well, the system will grow, and you will have many bakeries and branches. Even if you take a break for a while, your business will still run smoothly. That is leadership and management capability.
Second, you must also have business capability—specifically, the ability to acquire customers. Because in business, everything begins with customers. A business does not die because it lacks the best product in the world. It dies because it lacks enough customers. You need to know how to sell, market, care for customers, and execute your strategy, tactics, and action plan. Manage finances well to carry out those activities and acquire customers. In a business, the person paying employees' salaries is neither the boss nor the shareholders; ultimately, it is the customer. So, as Sam Walton, Walmart's founder, said, “the customer is your real boss.”
Returning to the three essential entrepreneurial capabilities, they are closely connected. Product capability ensures quality and makes selling easier. Business capability brings the product to more people. Leadership capability develops the team that carries out product and business tasks, thereby increasing the scale of the company’s success. This is the ‘three-legged support’ of successful entrepreneurship.
According to Tạ Minh Tuấn, one person may struggle to possess all three capabilities. You can therefore seek companions as Co-Founders. In his experience, a business needs 3 important people.
First is a person responsible for the product. This person devotes 100% of their mind to one thing: how to create a truly high-quality product. If the product is not good, how is pouring money into marketing and advertising any different from pouring money into a bottomless funnel?
In business, a product reflects the entrepreneur's heart. Someone with dishonest intentions will pick up a stone from the roadside, take it home and polish it smooth, advertise it as a meteorite from space, and sell it for millions of dollars.
Next is someone responsible for customers. This person devotes 100% of their energy to one task: how to bring the product above to as many customers as possible, with as many users as possible.
However, the person responsible for the product and the person responsible for customers may often disagree and conflict. So the team needs a true leader to maintain balance.
* This article draws on the book Before Dawn There Is Always Darkness- Tạ Minh Tuấn.
Original article on Cafebiz: http://cafebiz.vn/sai-lam-kinh-dien-cua-nguoi-muon-startup-gioi-lam-banh-va-nghi-rang-minh-co-the-mo-hieu-banh-20180602120137299.chn
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