The notion I just can’t get over is that being good at business is actually a learnable skill. For me personally, I have plenty to improve, but I can at least give myself credit for some pretty serious personal development, and for recognizing what my personal “raw materials” were out of the gate and how those affected my evolution as a businessperson and entrepreneur.

So what are these learnable skills? Well, like just about every other discipline, it comes down to the fundamentals. What’s so fascinating about entrepreneurship is that before the Internet, the individual lessons that each entrepreneur learned were locked away in their heads, shared to a select few people, all of whom didn’t want to “give away the secret sauce” and so kept a tight lock on the knowledge. With blogging, it’s different. I know about Mark Cuban’s business philosophies and his story right down to his personal take on Bill Gates’s dancing abilities.

But, okay, let’s get to the good stuff.  Here are the actual fundamentals I’ve been able to identify in the last few years.

1. Companies Exist at Different Stages
This may seem obvious, but it wasn’t to me.  Being a startup is pretty different than being a big established company like Apple.  Or even a “small” established company like a 50-person software firm.  In fact, one of my favorite authors, Michael Masterson, brilliantly described 4 major stages of a company.

When you first start out, he says, your biggest problem is that you have no idea what the hell you’re doing, so your primary objective is to keep your costs as absolutely minimal as possible until you do figure it out.  This means your first office should be dumpy and unimpressive because it will cost you less.  I remember once walking into a startup medical practice (it was elective medicine) whose office furniture and decor rivaled the Ritz Carlton.  They actually wound up going out of business because they ran out of money after just a few short months of not enough patients.

Anyway, there are lots more details on the stages, but let’s leave it at the fact that there are in fact stages for now.

2. The Purpose of a Startup is to Validate Your Hypotheses
This profoundly valuable lesson I have learned from one of my entrepreneurial heroes, Steven Gary Blank.  I mean, wow.  Blank has started 8 companies in Silicon Valley and he absolutely nailed the process that a startup goes through.  Once I discovered his ideas, I felt like I viewed every other startup business in a completely different light.  It’s these kind of “framework” ideas that have the power to change everything about the way you think.

So what’s the big idea?  Well, it’s that everything you think you know about your business is really just a set of hypotheses until proven otherwise.  So, in other words, when you start a new company and have a passionate vision for a new product, you’re secretly operating on a set of hypotheses that are probably not yet proven.  Your job as the startup’s founder(s) is to validate those hypotheses while building something of value.

So, this is a more detailed understanding of Michael Masterson’s first stage, and it’s a brilliant one.  Once you validate your hypotheses, you can keep coming up with new ones until you’ve got the entire product development to sale to make money process actually mastered.

But wait, there’s more!

3. Luck = Preparation + Opportunity
When Omedix raised its first outside capital from investors for whom I have enormous respect, I have to attribute the victory to 75% hard work and preparation on our part, and 25% pure unadulterated luck.  I know of other entrepreneurs who have pitched their business plan to countless investors.  We pitched to just one, and that was all we needed.

I could easily pass that off as us being clever, but the truth is we were prepared and we were lucky.  When I read about other entrepreneurs’ successes, I realize that they each seem to have their “lucky moments” when all their hard work truly pays off.

I’ve even experienced the opposite of luck with Omedix — where the equation looked more like Reality = Lack of Preparation + Opportunity. And guess what?  Nothing happened from those situations?  So I’ve now come to accept that it’s my responsibility to be prepared, but also that the universe will periodically deliver opportunity my way, and that will make me “lucky.”

4. Growing a Business is NOT an Intellectual Exercise
Another major myth I had from college was that if you think you’re pretty smart, then you just have to apply some of that intelligence to business and you’ll make millions.  Since I did well in high school classes I took from age 14 – 18, I got accepted to Wharton.  At Wharton, I was taught that I’m already brilliant and if only the world would pause for a moment, it could capture this force of talent.  In the real world, I learned that being “smart” is one of the worst liabilities you can have in business (that’s for another post).

Six years into Omedix, I do enjoy the intellectual things I get to spend time on — software development, strategy, product planning — but I now have serious respect for the relatively non-intellectual things like sales, management, hiring, and operations.  Sales in particular, because…

5. Sales is Everything.
Another mistaken belief I had is that if you have a “clever” business model you can be a clever company, the rest will figure itself out, and you’ll make millions.  Honestly, I feel dumb just writing that out.  I am now absolutely convinced that the value of a company is pretty much based on what it has sold and how easy it is to continue to sell.

Sales brings in money.  Sales earns traction.  Sales generates recurring revenue.  Sales makes *everything* happen in the company.  I now know that every company needs a sales “engine” (however small) that pushes it forward.  Again, this must sound blindingly obvious to some, but it wasn’t to me when I started out, so it makes the cu.

6. You are Not Good At Everything.
I have lots more to write about, but let’s leave this as the last.  One of the final insights is that no one is good at everything.  Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and don’t fool yourself into thinking you only have strengths and more strengths.

In fact, you can look at any company and even tell the strengths / weaknesses of its founders by the company itself.  For too long, Omedix had a crappy sales infrastructure because, well, I’m not a natural salesguy.  I’m honest, passionate, and willing to work hard so that counts for quite a bit.  But I tend to get too technical and too detailed, and I don’t naturally read people’s emotions the way some people can.

I’ve made far more sales than I can remember, but our sales & marketing infrastructure was still embarassingly weak compared to what it could have been.  The takeaway is that you have to be honest with yourself about what you’re good and not good at, and make sure you’re responsible for things you’re good at, and find other people who can help you with things you’re not good at.

Lessons Learned

• Business is a learnable skill
• A startup’s job is to validate hypotheses
• Luck != luck
• Growing a business is not an intellectual exercise
• Know your strengths and weaknesses

So, that was my noble motivation for getting this blog back up in a respectable format, but hey, motivation is motivation regardless of where it springs from!

I’m going to try to write every few weeks on here.  There are some pretty exciting changes taking place in the healthcare IT / patient portal / medical practice website industry right now, so I have plenty of thoughts swimming around in my head.  I have also always been passionate about business and entrepreneurship, the process of starting with absolutely nothing but an intention and then converting that into a business of significance that actually makes an impact on the world.  For me, how that happens is totally fascinating and I like writing about it both to share and explore what I think.

Anyway, that’s all for now.  But more coming soon.