The Internet is full of leadership articles on „How to succeed“ and „How to build the best company ever.“ But while following those guidelines we often forget that there’s a lot you just can’t do.
Learning from your own mistakes is good, but it’s even better when you can learn from the mistakes of others.
Everyone’s favorite billionaire and Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has said “Watch, listen, and learn. You can’t know it all yourself. Anyone who thinks they do is destined for mediocrity.”
Unfortunately there is still enough leaders who are sure they know it all.
There’s also a lot of myths about how start ups should look like and what people (especially younger millennials) expect from them. The image of swimming in money comes to mind.
We put together a list of everything you can do, if you want to make sure that you fail. So let’s learn all those small things we can do, to guarantee failure.
If you know something, you can avoid it.
So let’s say you’ve just raised your first $1 million. What will you do?
The most important thing is productivity: you just can’t have that. Be sure to have a lot of people with no clear tasks. They will eat up your budget without offering any results. That’s an excellent start.
You could also get bonus points if most of those employees and managers are your old friends, maybe drinking buddies from college.
As no-one is actually working and there’s no revenue, you should definitely spend a lot of money on marketing. For god sake, don’t think too much about it. ROI is just an useless acronym. The most important thing is that you have a billboard, maybe some banner space and an awesome TV ad.
While the adds are having no effect due to bad planning, you’ll have extra time to play Sims and redecorate the office into Awesome Startup Office Space. Then you can start saying sentences like „We have a really good vibe in the office. The Xbox in the poolroom sparks our creativity and culture.“
If you still have some money, have a lot of business meetings, travel a lot and go on a vacation. When you get back, you can start your next awesome company.
And that’s what leadership is all about!