3 ways to excel in the business of construction companies

Entrepreneurship can be a messy affair.

Manifesting success requires a combination of incompetence, intelligence, talent and luck in unpredictable proportions. For some, the inherent unpredictability suggests that the whole endeavor is more art than science, where the risk of failure can be reduced but not avoided.

If that’s your view on entrepreneurship, you’re certainly not wrong. The vast majority of startups fail to return a penny to their founders.

However, this view is not exactly correct either.

Not all founders are equally likely to fail, and few succeed with a consistency that defies our understanding of the inherent risks of entrepreneurship. The common denominator between founders and CEOs who seemingly can’t fail is that they view building companies as a process to be completed. To them, entrepreneurship is simply the business of building companies, and adopting this mindset is one of the most transformative insights for any leader.

Join us below as we explore three different variations of this approach to entrepreneurship, all with proven results.

Founders who turn purpose and frustration into success

For some, entrepreneurship is something they fall into after nothing goes as planned.

For others, becoming a founder is the culmination of decades of preparation and introspection that leaves them with no choice but to create their own path. You’ll hear leaders in this category speak natively of purpose, passion, and perseverance in the face of the most daunting odds, and this is where we find leaders who may stumble, but are unlikely to fall on the path to success. do

“In the beginning, I didn’t have a website, manufacturers, customers, or anything else you need to run this type of business.Aubre Winters-Casiano, founder of workout platform Sweat Sessions, mentioned success in our recent discussion of waste transformation.

“All I had was a “why,” and that’s what fueled the finesse and persistence I needed to build Sweat Sessions into the online community and international studio it is today.Uber reflected on what has kept him going during the most challenging times of his leadership journey.

knowing yourself ‘Why’ It seems to be a CEO’s superpower, something that Simon Sink wonderfully explores in his book, Start With Why.

It’s not like entrepreneurship is a non-stop chore that can’t be tackled without a clear goal. On the contrary, most people who succeed in entrepreneurship fall in love with entrepreneurship long before they succeed in entrepreneurship. However, a clear sense of purpose is what lifts founders every time they get knocked down. It is precisely this kind of flexibility that increases the chances of success, regardless of where one starts.

Few know the transformative power of purpose and resilience better than Alyssa McKay, who rose from foster care to career as co-founder of streetwear brand Beyond Lost and lifestyle creator with millions of followers.

“It has all been rather surrealAlyssa noted as we retrace the path she took to where she is today. “I have never had a backup plan for entrepreneurship. I know that what covered my rent last month might not pay another dime next week, and the way I play it safe is by taking risks and constantly investing in myself and my business. I will push myself.Alyssa explained.

If you have trouble setting your goal, you can rely on frustration just as much.

“I was incredibly frustrated with the state of the medical fieldDuring our conversation, Dr. Mitesh Rao, CEO of healthcare data ecosystem OMNY Health, recalled what got him started.

“I looked everywhere for an upfront solution to the fragmented state of healthcare data. At some point I realized that I needed to take action on my own and the best way to do that was to leave medicine altogether to become an entrepreneur.Mitesh continued to think.

Although the results can be extraordinary, there is nothing magical about purpose, passion or desperation. Instead, when founders rely on these three drivers, they tip the scales of wealth significantly in their favor.

As luck favors the prepared, success comes to those who don’t know how to give up. The same goes for those who simply can’t shake the feeling that there’s a problem in their name waiting to be solved.

Founders who can’t let go of a good problem

There are two types of people when it comes to problems: those who know they should avoid them, and those who can’t help but try to solve them.

Mathematicians are known for their love of a good problem, even if it means devoting centuries to a solution.

There’s an uncanny resemblance between founders who seem almost destined to make it and mathematicians who can’t let go of a problem until it’s solved. To begin with, both begin by asking questions that others ignore.

“How come we can buy fresh food for our dogs, but everything for babies comes in a canBen Lewis, co-founder of Little Spoon, finds himself being asked out loud more than he’d like.

“I was by no means a baby food expert, but this question won’t let me go. Eventually, my co-founder and I gave in to the need to find answers and realized that there was no reason why parents couldn’t buy fresh baby food. It hadn’t been done, so we decided to do itBen reflected on starting the company.

For founders motivated by an insatiable need to find answers, entrepreneurship is the only logical outcome. Here we find something that transcends purpose or passion. Certainty of direction.

Leaders who see themselves as assured of direction can be true forces of nature, with success an inevitability, even if getting there means going back to the drawing board until the equations align.

Elise Burns, founder of Evette Veterinary Staffing Agency, is a great example of how belief can lead to success.

“I have to admit that I wasn’t even an animal lover until I started working with EvetteDuring our discussion, Elise admitted how her path to leadership began with identifying a problem rather than a deep passion for the industry.

“What drew me to this life was my inability to let go of solving an obvious problem that others were ignoring. How is it possible that the veterinary industry does not have a human-centered hiring process when the humane sector does.Elise explained, as we delved further into what got her started with Evette.

The reason that building a business around a problem is such a powerful approach is that it focuses the founding team’s efforts while inviting them to try new approaches until the original itch to start kicks in.

“We had already launched three or four times with different versions of our original idea, but nothing really happenedBrendan Kam, CEO of corporate appreciation and gifting platform Thnks, recalled his thoughts on why they finally got off the ground when our conversation started.

“We wouldn’t be here without our own spin until we found a solution to a problem we knew everyone else had. Lack of truly personal forms of remote gratitude. I could never have guessed how our product market fit would come together, but I knew that as long as the problem stood, we had to keep trying.Brendan added.

Founders and investors who build companies as a business

We tend to oversell the importance of individuals and underestimate the importance of the team behind them.

Even Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos needed their teams to succeed, and there’s a fascinating group of founders and venture capitalists who know how to use that fact to their advantage.

“Even if the timing is right and the business model is flawless, starting a company can be very difficult.Kevin Lenoy, CTO of Pioneer Square Labs, which has raised tens of millions in venture capital for a number of startups in its portfolio, said in our discussion about how his company formalized the business of building successful companies.

“The reason most startups fail to reach their potential is because they never put the right team behind them. That’s why we’re launching a startup studio that reduces entrepreneurial risk by combining great ideas with funding, operators and technical talent to get the company on the right track.Kevin explained.

PSL’s approach also includes equipping its founders with the right tools, even when it means they have to build them themselves, as they recently did with JACoB AI – an open-source artificial intelligence agent that simplifies the process of building software. .

Adam Sharkavi, co-founder and managing partner of Material Impact, is another believer in the power of process optimization for construction companies.

“We build companies in a very structured wayAdam explained.

“We have an entire ecosystem of core teams ready to deploy to any company in our portfolio with specific goals and exit points for when their skills are no longer needed. Each interaction helps founders as much as it helps expert teams learn how to build companies more effectively.Adam noted that we discuss the positive feedback loops that emerge from the Material Impact approach.

What PSL, Material Impact and their peers have found is that by treating company formation as a business in itself, there are huge returns.

Founders and VCs who internalize this approach take less chances after each iteration, ultimately making each investment less of a gamble and more of a test run.

For those still exploring their path to entrepreneurship, knowing practice and commitment can compensate for purpose and passion for problem solving.