3 Things I Learned About Growing A Start Up
As I write, I am nearing my 7th year anniversary of what led to the development and growth of WellAtSea - a 3rd party health implementation solution for the maritime industry. In the last 7 years, I have been faced with all kinds of exciting and intimidating challenges, which have forced me to really reflect on the journey that got us here. I realized that despite the problems and the difficult personalities, there were 3 things that I have found essential in growing a start up.
It All Starts When The Executive Layer Can Dream Together
Sigmund Freud, known popularly for starting the psychoanalytic school of thought, said that the mind has 3 regions - conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. On the subconscious level, ideas, memories, images, symbols, and creative expression may not be readily available but are accessible. These are often accessed in dreams.
Freud teaches us that the subconscious mind speaks to us in images and symbols. This is why our language is so full of metaphors. We use imagery to explain ideas, and we use play to dream up reality. We are constantly speaking to the subconscious, and it is talking back.
In the last 7 years, I learned that it has been crucial to the life of a start up that its executive layer can dream together. My co-founders and I would often spend some hours from the work allowing ourselves to dream. We would laugh at the exaggerated ideas, but we welcomed them anyway. In 2018, we began the journey with 19 pilot vessels. I remember, one of them (Kris) telling me that he could envision how I was going to make an impact. I, on the other hand, told him that I could see a hundred ships. And soon 500.
By January 2019, we had signed 3 clients, with a total of 111 ships on which we launched. Dream big, they say, but in my opinion it’s dream big TOGETHER.
Leaders Need to Invite The Whole Team to Dream with Them
Any leader would know that a company does not thrive on their vision alone. Growing a start up has taught me that it is important that people feel like they can take ownership on your product and services as well. Job ownership, I realized, is best supported when we can invite the whole team to dream with us.
It was Christmas 2019, when the first 4 members of the WellAtSea Manila team and I sat around a table for our office Christmas dinner, that turned into a discussion on dreams. We asked ourselves where we would like to be in 1 year, and what our wishes were for the company. Again, we laughed at our silly ideas, but those silly ideas came into fruition in the following year. Our team grew 3 times its size in 2020. We doubled our profits at 200%. We moved into our first official office in 2021, and in 2022, we had acquired our 2nd industry award.
Inviting the silly, grandiose, and out of this world ideas, are where the success of a team begin. In my experience, dreaming together has only led us to growth, productivity, and better customer experience.
Ground Dreams into Yearly, Quarterly, Monthly, and Weekly Goals.
While I enjoy a good brain storm and welcome all kinds of dream declarations, I have learned that start ups only grow when we can measure our progress by plotting our goals. When we say we want to conquer the world, we take time to define how many people in the world we would like to help. We define this by the number of vessels, the seafarers in each fleet, and the engagement rates that tell us how near or far we are.
When we say that we want to be the leading health technology solution in maritime that attracts dream companies, we share a common message when we meet new people. And finally when we say that we want to be appreciated, we create concrete values that we can believe in, together.
I think dreams should never be shot down, instead they need to be grounded. When a team declares that they believe that they can grow profits by two-fold in 1 quarter, I’ve learned to encourage. When a team believes that they can deliver on a goal for The Day of The Seafarer within 1 week’s time, I’ve learned to trust that they mean it. While not all dreams are achieved in the timelines that we declare, they are still achieved down the line when concrete goals can support them.
Dreams, as Sigmund Freud has taught us, are ways in which our subconscious problem solves. And though sometimes our creative babbling might sound silly, it is when we can take the perspective of an alien goldfish in a toilet tank running with its feet, that we are able to grow.