The Importance of Step Two (to Building a Great Company)

There is tremendous value in taking the first step to anything–especially starting a great company.

Being confident enough to go out and meet anyone, to share opinions, to think differently, to solve your own problems and to shape your reality is both admirable and necessary to change the world for the better.

That being said, starting a great company is not a one step process. Your problem which you bravely solved may be shared by many people around the world, but a great company will never grow and survive around you–it will do so around that which makes other people’s lives better.

I don’t know every step to making a great company, but I’m pretty sure that Step Two is to look beyond your own needs and develop a deep interest in how your actions will affect others. I guess this fits somewhere in between “building for a market of one” and scaling your solution after discovering product/market fit.

Today, it’s easier than ever to hear what the people you affect are saying, but no one teaches you how to listen. It’s also easier than ever to publish content and put it in front of others, but no one teaches you how to think about the ways in which readers will perceive it and respond.

I think that the best way to approach Step Two is to assume that everyone can see straight through you. If you interact with them only to inflate your own status, they will eventually pick up on it. If you publish content to broadcast your own needs without serving theirs, they will figure it out and abandon you.

“You can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” - Bob Marley

People are smart–they can tell when someone spends extra time thinking about what they need. You’re smart too, but you’re not smart enough to fake that.

Great companies spend more time thinking about the problems of others than they do their own. Those companies understand the best ways to solve our problems even before we do because they’ve spent so much time thinking about it. We love that feeling, and we pay for it.

So, whether you were part of the founding team of your company or not, be the first person on your team to take Step Two. Spend extra time to make everything you produce more helpful to everyone else, and ignore those on your team who will tell you that you are wasting time.

Your thanks will not come from them, but from the smart, real people whose lives you improve while building your great company.

Question for comments: Does what I wrote resonate with you? If so, please tell me what you’re thinking about now.