What You Feel: your company is struggling and you don’t know what the root of the problem is. Your value proposition is clear but you are not making the progress you expected.

Perspective: What I am about to tell you is as unfair as it gets. If your company is struggling, or not progressing as quickly as you would like, do you know whose fault it is? Yours. How unfair is that? You work the hardest, put in the money, strain your personal life (if you have one), deplete your finances (if you still have any), strain your relationships (if you have any), cry, drink, don’t sleep, don’t date, and spend every waking moment on the business. No one said being an entrepreneur was fair.

Early stage companies face a chaos that accompanies the need to accomplish both strategic and tactical tasks with limited resources. This chaos is often characterized by common problems. They include:

• Too much to do

• Lack of financial resources

• Lack of human resources

• Lack of established priorities

• Lack of clarity with internal and external constituents

• Emotional and reactive decision-making

• Frustration with existing resources

• Reactive day-to-day management

Sound familiar? The results is chaos. The definition of chaos is:

“complete confusion and disorder: a state in which behavior and events are not controlled by anything”

Sounds about right, doesn’t it? You probably believe the cause of this chaos is that your business is unique, or that this is the nature of the entrepreneurial beast, or that you can’t operate like more established businesses. Nope. It’s you.

It is your job to fix these issues. As the leader, if you choose not to fix these issues and the chaos persists, it’s your fault the company is flailing. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you can apply your talents and the tools in this book to move the business forward.

Isn’t that a relief? You thought you had hundreds of problems to fix and you only have one – you.