What it’s about
Mario has spent years in the corporate world in various sales positions, his last role being vice president, sales for a large corporation. He recently decided to take a more entrepreneurial path by starting his new company, Vengreso, and is fast-tracking its growth.
In this interview, Mario talks about staying focused on shorter-term goals, identifying problems your product or service is trying to solve, and trusting your business partners’ decisions.
Takeaways
Focus on short term goals
We all know setting goals for your business is key. However, in many businesses it’s common to focus on long term goals, like where you see the businesses in five years.
When it comes to smaller businesses, Mario suggests focusing on the short-term, like three, six, twelve, and eighteen-month goals.
In the beginning, you think about how you’re going to survive in the first three months. By month six, you start thinking about how you can scale things so you can get bigger and not work 20-hour days. By focusing on these shorter term goals, you prevent yourself from working those long days that most entrepreneurs are still pulling in month twelve.
Nail down which problems you can solve with your product/ service
As you start working your way through your business goals, Mario suggests taking time to ask yourself what problems you’re looking to solve with your product or service. Start by documenting the problems you identify, then put a strategy in place to solve them.
If your strategy for solving each one requires too much time for one person to handle, it could be an indicator of where and when you need team members or partners to help you out.
This can help you stay focused on the future of the business, while shining a light on where and when you want to start scaling and bringing more people on board.
When it comes to partners, trust their decisions
You don’t always have to agree with someone else’s decisions, but when it comes to working with partners you have to trust their area of business expertise. You have to respect the position they hold and their responsibilities for a certain segment of your business, even if you disagree with their opinion. It’s how you build a healthy, respectful, thriving workplace environment.
There is no difference in methodology when it comes to growth
There are arguably a few different ways to grow a business, but for Mario it’s all about process and methodology.
In an ideal world, to grow and scale revenue the process needs to be replicable and scalable so it can be used over and over again. It may take a lot of time in the beginning, but Mario says by spending time setting up the process to be replicable, it will save you time in the future, and allow you to work more profitably.
“Trying to grow a $300 million a year business to a $400 million a year business is just as hard as going from a $100,000 a year business to a million dollars a year. It’s not different, it’s just more volume. There is no difference in the methodology.”
Don’t get distracted
With so many decisions and goals pulling you in so many directions, it is easy to get distracted; shiny ball syndrome, if you will.
When you’re building and scaling your company, Mario says you have to know your core competency, and if, and when, you should pivot. In most cases you have a plan, so focus on that and do it really, really well, then pivot later on.
"Don’t get distracted by the shiny balls of new ways to make money. Stay focused on your plan.”
“As entrepreneurs, sometimes we lose focus because we’re just going after the money. Month after month, week after week, and that’s where it becomes really hard. You see something that could produce money, but try to remember that following new ways to make money just diverts you away from the plan and focus you’ve been pushing toward for weeks.”
Show notes
