Is Your Content/SAAS Startup Business Failing to Kick-Off?

This might be the killer problem

In a galaxy far, far away when I was a junior staff at a multi-national accountancy firm, my people manager told me I wasn’t going to get promoted unless I fixed this stinking problem.

But I was hardworking, smart, clever and commercial. Clients loved me.

So I ignored her.

I was eventually headhunted to a larger firm with a higher salary and got promoted. But eventually, another mentor told me the same thing.

He said despite how everything was working well for me, this problem could eventually bring my career and reputation grave danger.

It had, and three years after I had quit my finance job and started working on my business. It was this same fatal flaw that killed me (thankfully, I revived).

Aye, it’s consistency.

It coasted by for ten years without consistency

With my highflying career, I had ignored my kind bosses’ constructive criticism because my career seemed to be working out fine.

But when it came to my starting my own business as a sole trader, without a team and resources backing me up, my lack of consistency really stank.

Lacking consistency will drive our clients away.

Building trust is everything for a startup business

Although this article targets specifically content and software as a service (SAAS) business, building trust is everything for every single person — a mother or a son, an employee or an entrepreneur, a startup business or a large conglomerate.

Thanks to the internet, everyone can build their businesses and have customers from all over the world (maybe eventually from Mars when Elon Musk has sorted out the colonisation)!

But that also means the competition is stark and customers are smart. They can switch anytime they want to, your competitions are giving them the incentive to change.

So it really comes down to this:

Do your customers trust you?

Building trust through consistency

Let’s unpack the word consistency a bit.

When I was working in finance, I thought I had consistency. I turned up to work on time every day and I had my out-of-office on when I was on holiday.

This was why I thought my boss’ comment was invalid.

But my second boss was clearer. He said that it really depended on what time they gave me a task to do. If it was somewhere between 3 and 6 pm, legitimately within the working hours, I tended to do a sloppy job.

Now, I did find out that a traditional nine-to-five didn’t work for me, but that’s a topic for another time. At that time, in an office environment, my quality of output was not consistent for the high-stakes job I was in.

That was all the management cared about, and my career was on the line.

Translate to startup businesses

Trust is key for a business to grow and consistency is how we build trust. In order words:

Consistency is about being reliable, which builds trust.

Side note: I was later diagnosed with highly functioning neurodiversity. This explained why I was distracted so easily, why when I fixated on something (at 3 pm precisely), my brain can’t switch back to work. This isn’t an article to tell you off but to grow together. If you feel this echo your experience, here’s a link for further information about adult neurodiversity and diagnosis:

My startup failure story

Read on for my five tips to build consistency in your business/work immediately, but first, let me share the mistakes I’ve learned from my start-up journey.

Which part of my business life lacked consistency?

• Pivoting Niche: Not only as a content writer but I’ve seen many early entrepreneurs pivot too quickly and stretch too far. This is particularly bad for SAAS businesses as the initial capital cost is low. I kept building websites for different niches. If you read the earlier posts on my Medium, you will see that I have dabbled on so many different topics. Customers will leave if you don’t deliver the same services they’re looking for.
• Social Media: My readers of over ten years started to get very confused when I stopped and started posting on social media so randomly. They had no loyalty to me because I had none for them. There’s always a reason why we stop doing a certain thing but our customers won’t care. They will forget you if you aren’t consistently relevant.

Five tips to be more consistent as a content/SAAS startup

1. Reply quickly to clients’ messages/emails, even if it is only a holding/acknowledgement email.
2. Organise your life in one place. Don’t go fancy with gadgets if you’re a chaotic person like me. One calendar sync through your phone, laptop, online, Fitbit, etc. I love the Calendar app on my iPhone and I sync work and personal engagements on just one app.
3. Rest if you’re tired. Take this quiz about your sleeping/waking pattern. One of the best things about working for yourself is you are in charge of your time, then make use of it!
4. Use star/mark as an unread function in your email. This might seem basic, but as an entrepreneur, no one else will pick up these emails if you don’t, and they can get overwhelming. Overwhelming leads to procrastination and delay in replying to your customers, which ruins trust, reliability and consistency.
5. Stick to your plan. If things are on your calendar/to-do list then you should do it. I find this hard as a neurodiverse person as my mind is so chaotic and my attention span is so short. But I’ve learned some coping mechanisms. Follow me on Medium if you are curious.