Think long term – act short term

Big results come from a lot of smaller actions

When I was younger and naïve I used to believe the rhetoric about companies always needing to act only in their long term interests. Sounds good.

The only problem is that you have to survive long enough to have the kind of spare money to drop on to long term investments such as R&D. Alternatively you can have a job in government and spend other people’s money.

But you don’t have this option yet as a startup as your revenues won’t cover the long term just yet.

You can build up to delivering your long term vision by using short term results to build up the foundation for the longer term version of the company.

If you are one of the 99% of new businesses that don’t get funded by a venture capitalists, you are quickly going to hit the cold hard reality of how hard it is to win customers and make ongoing sales. Some of you may hit it lucky or have lucky streaks, but it is a hard battle.

For example it normally takes about 3 years to establish a regular customer base and a product/service offering that matches what clients want.

The other reason for acting short terms is that your business plan is your view of how you want the world to work. Not many business plans last contact with real customers. So every short term win you have sets the foundation for a new and better business model that has a better chance of success.

You don’t have to give up your long term goal, just think of it as a series of smaller short term wins.