5 Lessons on Succeeding in Business
From the Perspective of Someone Who Failed
In 2024, I founded a supplement business, generating a modest £15,000 in revenue. Ultimately, the business failed, leaving me demoralised. However, I failed so you don’t have to. Here are some top tips on how to run a successful business—straight from someone who didn’t.
Lesson 1: Iterate
Have you ever heard of lean, agile methodologies? If not, I highly recommend reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.
To summarise, the lean startup approach emphasises launching a minimum viable product (MVP) as quickly as possible, gathering real customer feedback, and iterating rapidly to improve the product. This method reduces waste by preventing you from investing time and money into something your customers don’t actually want. The key is to build based on real-world validation, not assumptions.
What we did well: We naturally adopted an iterative approach, but it should have been a core element of our strategy. We did launch a basic website and made incremental improvements based on key performance indicators (KPIs), such as adjusting call to action (CTA) placements i.e. making the ‘Buy Now’ button more visible.
Mistakes: We wasted a lot of money on assumptions by buying products in bulk before demand was validated. Additionally, we neglected gathering customer feedback as much and as often as possible—a crucial aspect validating concepts in a lean, iterative approach.
Takeaways
Start with small samples, or better yet, no stock at all.
Test demand first by launching a website, listing products, and if someone buys, refund them with an apology: "Due to overwhelming demand, we're currently out of stock." Then, once demand is confirmed, buy the stock.
We wasted £1000s on stock that we never sold, closing the business partly because of this waste. We could have made more lucrative decisions had we been more reluctant to part with money earlier on.
Collecting customer feedback
We didn’t focus enough on gathering insights from real customers. We incorrectly assumed that customers would navigate a website like us—young, tech-capable users. To test this, I conducted a usability test with my dad to see how he navigated the website. Watching a middle-aged man struggle to find certain products was ... eye-opening. Perhaps frustrating is a better word. Customer feedback is a crucial aspect of an iterative approach as it drives change. The key is to release an MVP and iterate rapidly based on continuing customer feedback.
Lesson 2: Assume You’re Not as Clever as You Think You Are
Being overconfident can lead to confirmation bias—the tendency to interpret data in a way that supports your existing beliefs. This is fatal for a business, as data will be used to support unsuccessful ideas, rather than driving improvements through change.
What we did well: We mimicked some of our competitors' products and features, understanding that existing businesses had extensive knowledge. Analysing competitors’ products and strategies can be valuable as they have already validated that a market exists for these products.
Mistakes: We thought we were geniuses in this space. Our competitors seemed like idiots. And honestly, they may have been. But their model worked. Ours didn’t. This arrogance led us to believe that better information, a more appealing user experience (UX), and a superior web design would make us overnight millionaires. It didn’t.
It took us far too long to realise why our competitors were successful. We were drowning in confirmation bias, assuming that customers were starving for fresh web designs and information surrounding supplements. This wasn’t the case. Our competitors' success was partly because they had been in the market for a long time, building a strong customer base and brand loyalty—things we lacked and couldn’t just throw money at to gain. We refused to accept this reality for a very long time.
Takeaways
Consider why competitors are successful despite their flaws.
Be aware of confirmation bias creeping into strategy and actively analyse potential flaws in your assumptions.
A Pre-emptive Post-Mortem
Conduct a pre-emptive post-mortem—a proactive strategy to analyse risks and failures before they occur. It forces you to confront the potential weaknesses in your strategy and address them before they become fatal flaws. Had we done this, we might have spotted the cracks in our plan early enough to course-correct.
Lesson 3: Pivot based off hypothesis changes
Have a clear hypothesis for your business that describes your customers, their reason for choosing you, and the product. For example, ours was “Young, information-hungry supplement users would be interested in buying our supplements because of a cleanly designed website and informative blogs that would facilitate trust in our business.”
Once you realise that an element of your hypothesis is incorrect, you must pivot.
A change to your hypothesis can include:
Your customers are different from who you originally thought.
The reasons people buy are different from what you assumed.
Your product is different than expected (e.g. if you were making ad revenue from blogs instead of selling supplements).
Pivoting can involve changes to web design, pricing strategy, marketing funnel, or any other aspect of business operations in response to new data.
What we did well: We pivoted away from our original assumption—that young, information-seeking customers would buy our products—towards a more accurate understanding that our actual customers were middle-aged men looking for quick fixes. We stopped writing blogs and started including key bullet points on our landing page instead, using language we believed older generations would find appealing.
Mistakes: We pivoted too slowly, partly due to confirmation bias and a reluctance to accept that our entire strategy was flawed. Not having regular discussions on pivoting cost us valuable time.
Takeaways
Write down a clear hypothesis in your business plan: “These types of customers will buy our product because they want this.”
Schedule regular ‘pivot’ meetings—maybe every six weeks (though the frequency depends on the business).
Ask: Has anything in our hypothesis changed? If so, pivot.
Accept that changing your strategy is a part of having a successful business.
Most business owners, after a pivot, only regret that they didn’t pivot earlier.
Lesson 4: Track metrics
Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, bounce rate, and customer life-time value (LTV) are key aspects of maintaining a business. Clear targets must be set from the outset, with regular reviews to assess whether they are being achieved. Analyse the areas where the business is underperforming compared to a baseline metric. Perhaps a thorough review is required or maybe the target was overly ambitious.
For example, you may set a target of a 5% conversion rate. If you find the conversion rate is 1%, you must use tools such as google analytics to find where customers are dropping off in the sales funnel.
Are all users hitting the landing page, not adding anything to cart, and dropping off? That may suggest your landing page sucks or your pricing strategy is off—remember having low prices may infer poor quality so it isn’t always the case that prices should be lowered.
Are users adding to the cart but not checking out? Perhaps the cart is poorly designed. Ensure checking out is easy for the customer. Consider adding a buy now button to the product page.
Are users checking out but not completing the purchase? Perform a test order to ensure the payment system works correctly and confirm there are no unknown costs being added to the total price.
Or perhaps a 1% conversion rate is standard in your industry and a 5% target was too ambitious.
What we did well: We made many changes in response to poor conversion rates, staying true to an iterative approach. For example, we enhanced our product price display by replacing the default dropdown with a clear, side-by-side comparison of all three subscription lengths and their respective discounts.
Mistakes: We didn’t track enough metrics consistently to the extent that we didn’t even know how much money we were making or losing, blindly believing that success was guaranteed.
Our conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who actually bought a product) was often less than 1%—extremely poor. We did make some tweaks to landing pages based on that metric, but we were riddled with confirmation bias. If one day our conversion rate jumped to 5%, we’d assume our latest change was incredible. But then, when it dropped back to 1% the next day, we’d assume we just needed another tweak. We weren’t diagnosing issues properly, just reacting blindly.
Takeaways
Set clear KPI targets before starting (e.g. 5% conversion rate).
Track KPIs consistently, using tools like Google Analytics.
Regularly review performance—are you meeting your targets?
Diagnose the actual causes of poor performance by talking to customers.
Make data-driven decisions instead of waiting too long to react.
Lesson 5: Have a solid marketing strategy
Determining a marketing strategy—how you are going to acquire customers—is key. There are two main ways of doing this: organic growth and advertising. Organic growth can consist of search engine optimization (SEO)—having your website rank highly on search engines, going viral—such as blowing up on youtube like this blender business, or word of mouth.
Advertising is paying companies such as Google or Meta to display your ads on their platforms.
What we did well: We eventually pivoted to reels after much trial and error. But honestly, when it came to marketing, we got very little right.
Mistakes: Where to begin? We threw money up the wall with terrible advertising strategies, starting with AI-generated static ads which had an awful CTR and even worse conversion rates. After some time, we switched to informative reels on TikTok and Instagram, but we were probably boring people to tears. My biggest takeaway from advertising? Quick, fun reels are the way forward.
Takeaways
Learn to sell. I cannot stress this enough. If you can’t sell, it doesn’t matter how good your business is, no one will buy your products. We all know of terrible products that are successful simply because a charismatic celebrity is pushing them.
Focus on organic growth as well as advertising. Try going viral and implementing strong SEO strategies.
Good luck!
Wow, sick read