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GO IT ALONE!

Go-it-alone business owners orient their product development around what they learn from customers. Because these companies have always lived off positive cash flow from cus-tomers—as opposed to investor dollars—they are particularly sensitive to finding ever better ways to meet customer needs.

Go-it-alone entrepreneurs translate their experimental attitude into actual experiments. In the areas that are part of their core focus, they are constantly asking themselves, “What if . . . ?” As one such entrepreneur says, “You test and you test, and then you test some more.” This idea may seem self-evi-dent, but it’s incredibly easy to overlook this process, particularly in a one-person operation. That’s why as the business expands, outsourcing everything you can and being disciplined are essential.

Maintaining an experimental attitude also means that go-it-alone entrepreneurs are oriented toward doing something as opposed to thinking about doing something. Go-it-alone entrepreneurs are not obsessed with attempting to know everything possible about a subject before they act on it. In contrast, they believe that no matter how much they study a possible action they won’t really know what matters until they get started. They believe that you learn by doing and by live experimentation.

As a consequence, go-it-alone entrepreneurs are impatient. They know that they are unlikely to “get it right” the first time, so they limit the risk associated with whatever they are doing. They begin with small steps. At the same time, they also know that the only way to ultimately “get it right” is to get started as quickly as possible.

Go-it-alone entrepreneurs recognize that mistakes are a necessary part of the game. As a solo entrepreneur, your attitude toward mistakes is, in fact, so important for your ultimate success, that it is the focus of Chapter 13 of this book, “Mistakes Happen—Learn from Them.”

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Terms of Use GO IT ALONE! Copyright 2004 by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.