This is a website about business. About building a business, and making it a success.
A normal, real-world, profitable business1.
The way I did it
I started our B2B IT services business from scratch at 27 years old with no investors, no staff, no customers and not much money. What we did have was capability, a vision, and the drive to make it a success no matter how long it took. And it took years2.
Oh, we also had the willingness to learn along the way. Learn a lot.
We bootstrapped, in a competitive industry.
Our business appeared on the AFR Fast 100 list three times, CRN Fast 50 five times and Deloitte Tech Fast 50 three times. One year we were AWS Rising Star Partner of the Year for Australia & NZ.
By many measures, we were pretty successful. Successful and profitable, not huge. We built the business up from scratch, and ultimately sold it. The company is still a great business – I’m just not involved anymore.
It was a lot of work and a lot of focus for many years.
Why are you writing this blog?
Growing a business is challenging. For us, it took a lot of hard work over many years. Despite the awards, growing a business felt like moving from one challenge to the next.
It can be hard to figure out what to do at any given point in time. And by default, if you’re in charge, you’re responsible for every decision. There are constant decisions, constant challenges, constant obstacles. Often it’s not obvious which decision would be the right one ahead of time.
Running a business is like running an adventure race without map. I can’t give you a map. There is no map. The closest asset you’ll have to a map is knowledge. Along the way I found the best knowledge for me, was what I learnt from other people’s experience – whether from someone I knew, books, or articles. So that’s what I’m sharing here.
I think I’ve learnt a lot over the years about how to grow a business:
- How to get started and pick a market
- How to differentiate what you’re doing from your competitors
- How to attract, land, grow and retain customers
- How to have the main operational parts of a business run without your direct involvement
- How to hire and build your people, and grow future leaders in a business
- How to stay in your industry’s “sweet-spot”
- How to do effective marketing
- How to scale a company while staying profitable
- How to successfully navigate the M&A (sale) process
- … and more.
Why should I listen to you?
Fair point. There are many people more experienced at business than me. Then again, there are plenty of people less experienced.
I enjoy working on businesses, talking about businesses, solving problems, and I enjoy writing – so, that’s why I’m starting this project.
If you’re growing a business, or starting one, I hope you enjoy the articles I write on this website.
What do boats have to do with it?
Little Boat Way is a play on the meaning of my last name – Kahn – “little boat”. And Way? A way can be a direction, a method or a philosophy, or all three. And it has a nice ring to it.
Thanks for reading,
JK.
- By normal business, I mean one where the purpose is to provide a product or service and generate a profit, which is what I think most people think of when they think of a business. Not all businesses are run like that. More on what a “normal” business is in a future post. ↩︎
- I’m sure it would have taken less time if we’d had more capital, or more experience at the start. ↩︎