When I first started my company, I couldn’t focus on my fears—I had to stay focused on results in order to get the business off the ground.
I was passionate, persistent, and results-oriented and eventually it paid off. We’ve come a long way since our creation in 2010, but that same mindset continues to inform my leadership mentality today. That mindset can best be summed up as “No nonsense gets it done.”
While my training as a competitive swimmer (Go Stanford!) helped shape me into a straightforward, results-oriented person from a young age, the experiences I’ve had since starting Revel in 2010 have sharpened that focus.
Why has that mantra served me so well? For a couple of reasons.
The first is that people behave unexpectedly when money is involved. Truthfully, I was naïve when it came to understanding people back in the early years of Revel.
My instinct had always been to trust people until they gave me a reason not to, but that way of operating breaks down when there are large sums of cash at stake. In business, you’re much better off making people earn your trust before getting too involved with them. This is true of investors, partners and employees alike.
The flip side is that when you do find those people you can trust, it’s amazing what you can accomplish together. I’m fortunate today to be surrounded by an incredible team of colleagues at Revel. Their hard work and commitment to our company impresses and inspires me every single day.
The second reason it’s so important to take a no-nonsense approach is that in lean startup stage, you need executors more than you need talkers. It’s easy to get lulled into spending too much time networking and having lunch with investment bankers. I see this all the time. After all, these are relatively enjoyable, easy activities. It’s much harder to dig into your business and focus on its challenges.
Less talk, more action
But the fact is that you won’t have investors to meet with if you haven’t been relentlessly focused on execution and results. As a startup you are in survival mode, plain and simple. I’ve had to learn the hard way to build Revel around executors, not talkers.
In years past I’ve witnessed executives focus more on building relationships with board members or bankers, rather than solving business problems that directly impact the experience of our customers. And while business operations and relationship building are both extremely important to any business, in startup stage I believe you really have to focus more on the former.
That’s why I love executives who get things done from day one (and also why the biggest compliment, in my book, is being called a doer.) They’re the ones who really understand the mentality of a lean startup. They’re the ones who see that our mission at Revel—to help entrepreneurs around the world build the business of their dreams—has to be carried out through one no-nonsense decision after another. ●
Lisa Falzone is co-founder and CEO at Revel Systems
