What It’s Like to Build a Company From Ground Zero

In all honesty, entrepreneurship sucks. If anyone tells you anything different, they are lying. Entrepreneurship is like someone retrofitting a Sudoku puzzle into a Rubik's cube, blindfolding you, and telling you to solve the problem. If you’re lucky enough to have a clairvoyant on your team, perhaps you can have an idea where all this may steer to, but that’s highly unlikely.
My first interaction with entrepreneurship was when my mom started her own mortgage branch, similar to how they have those Mary Kay or Avon associates. This was in the midst of the upcoming 2007 financial crisis, so it was not a long standing business. For this, attracting customers is always the hardest feat. I remember walking outside in the scorching sun, mailbox to mailbox, placing brochures on the outside of them. We walked blocks of neighborhoods hoping to gain business. Once we were done, we’d go to a different neighborhood. My mom was a fast walker, which I didn’t appreciate while trailing behind her. From the mortgage business, she then moved onto construction.
Now, starting a business without money is like trying to escape safely from a car crash or avoiding monthly bills. It just may not work out. You have to pay for everything when starting a business: incorporation, taxes, licenses, insurance, payroll, employees, capital costs, software, and any other incurred costs. If you’re planning to start a business, make sure you have some funds to bootstrap yourself, a separate income, a couple grants, or investors lined up because having no money is not an option. The best part is that everything becomes a tax write-off, but you have to have the money first in order to do that. I have definitely put in more than a couple thousands of dollars, and the cash flow issues are so real when you’re just gaining traction. While ordering print copies for my magazine, looking at the prices, I questioned whether I even had enough funds to house inventory. The cash flow issues that exist work similarly to reimbursements. You pay upfront, and then collect and make profit afterwards, however, you need money to spend money, but you also need money to live, which can make things somewhat difficult.
Building traction is like yanking on knotted shoestrings until they loosen. You may yank or pick at the knot for a while until you’re actually able to re-open those laces and tie your shoes again properly. It’s also a lot of trial and error. I enjoy Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares’s book, Traction, for this topic because they break down all the possible traction strategies and tests that you could implement for your business. Foremost, you must understand that it may not be that you cannot reach your audience but instead your audience may not exist or be large enough i.e. product-market fit failure. If the latter is your issue, you’re going to have to pivot, think bigger, or find a way to heavily profit from your small audience. If the first is your problem, hooray! But also, boo! You have so much work to do, my friend, and money to spend. Advertising and marketing is not free, even if it’s just time (opportunity cost). You may have to give people free things, run ads, make printouts, vendor at trade shows, create quality content, do sales calls, run SEO/SEM, host events, etc. The best way to attract customers is through word of mouth (viral loop) and referrals, but sadly, that does not happen automatically. For me, I like to read up on growth studies (https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies), compare and contrast scaling methodology, or meetup with an industry expert to better understand my next move.
Lastly, teamwork makes the dream work. If you hate group assignments, I have a sad story for you. Work life is all about collaboration and group work, so if you can’t work efficiently or effectively with a group, you’re screwed. If you’re one of those people that like to go off alone and do solopreneurship, bless your soul. So much goes into building from ground zero that continuing alone is improbable. You will need teams, whether it’s advisers, partnerships, board members, or employees. It is why we have work infrastructures because all operations cannot be handled by one person in the long-run efficiently. Also, the quality would drop if someone did. For some people, finding board members is easy. For others, the vision may not be clear enough, so people will wait and linger until they’re ready to join. There’s also just people who don’t want to handle that much responsibility, which is completely valid.
For my fellow entrepreneurs, prepare for many sleepless nights and thousands of cold emails, DMs, and phone calls. I just sent 20 of them before writing this article. Everyday I’m reaching out, pushing, and hustling. And yes, rejection is common, but in a sea of No’s, I only need a couple Yes’s. I’m constantly updating my business model and my pitch deck, as I react to how things go versus how I planned it out in my head. I fill out applications for grants, fellowships, and programs whenever I can. I’ve prepared plans for scaling in the future and spreadsheets for reducing costs due to economies of scale. I read so much that I’ll probably have to build myself a library or host a book exchange in the near future. I network 25/8 that I even dream about the follow-up emails that I need to send. Most importantly, I treat everyone with the dignity, respect, and gratitude that they deserve because none of this would be made possible without their help and support.
Starting from the bottom is a journey that comes with highs and lows, but the satisfaction is always greater than the pain no matter the failure; the lessons learned are forever ingrained.
Thank you for reading my article! My name is Jessica Innis, and I’m the CEO of redflowers, an online, media platform that promotes, empowers, and engages black identities and black women. More info at www.redflowers.co❤
