The Foundations of Starting a Business: An Interview with Kathryn Finney

We have had the amazing opportunity to ask Kathryn Finney, author of “How to Build the Damn Thing” and founding managing partner of the Genius Guild, five crucial questions you would want answered if you were attempting to start your own business. We were so lucky to have received such valuable responses from her, and it was all for the purpose of sharing them with you.

This discussion will be focused on the importance of idea validity, the challenges of the first year of business, pre-seed investment, and ultimately how becoming an entrepreneur can impact you.

We started on the topic of validity. When your parents or best friend say that your business is a great idea, that is one thing, but how do we know from a business perspective that what we are working on will truly make the impact we are trying to make? Where can we gain access to that essential hard-to-hear feedback that we desperately need as business owners to grow?

This shaped our first question for Kathryn “Where can an entrepreneur find validity in their idea to build confidence in investing in their idea?” her advice was practical.

“The best way to know if your idea is good is to create a very simple version of the idea and put it out there for real feedback from potential customers. That feedback will give you a sense of whether there is a valid market for your idea before you spend a lot of time and money on it. You can then use that feedback to iterate on your idea and make it even better with the confidence of knowing that your idea creates a solution that people will pay for.”

If you have just been relying on your inner circle to provide you with the information and insights you need to create your business, now is the time to look to your customers and to your end users. How can you leverage a test within your target market to expand on your idea? The insights and evidence you can gain from such a push are endless. Our addition to the challenge? Go out and test in person, with real face-to-face interactions. Have a table or booth at a relevant event, attend a seminar or summit, even if your product will be primarily available virtually you will learn a lot from an in-person interaction.

You are probably already quite familiar with the concept of the first 1-2 years of starting a business being some of the most difficult, it is when you can anticipate investing the most, putting in the most sweat equity, and it is often when you see the most direct stress.

We asked Kathryn “How do the challenges of the first year of business compare to long-term challenges?”

She shared the following: “The first year of business can be completely overwhelming, especially if this is your first company. You can get so caught up in all the initial steps you need to transform your idea into a viable product that you forget that you also have to have a sustainable way to keep making that product. You may have been so focused on how to raise the money you needed that you neglected to set up financial management systems to keep track of the money as it comes in so that you can manage it better. Or maybe you concentrated so much on hiring the right people that you haven’t thought very much about how they will all work together to help you execute your vision.

One way to make sure that you don’t get caught in this trap is to try to always be thinking several ahead, even when it’s tempting to narrow your focus to just the present challenge. Long-term challenges require you to sit and think about them. When I was starting Genius Guild, one of the first things I did was to create a set of core values, which served as a kind of North Star for what I wanted my company to be. By having those values to fall back on, I was able to make sure I kept my focus on the next few years of my company rather than just the next two weeks.”

The mission of your business, at least in my humble perspective is the part that truly comes the easiest, it is what you showed up to the fight to do, but your values (while in alignment with your mission) often serve a completely different purpose, and are much harder to develop. Your values not only speak to the “why you are here” and “what you are doing” they serve as Kathryn mentioned, as the “North Star” of your organization and for your team. While your mission is shared more outwardly to understand your business, your values are what will rally your team behind you, and what will keep you on your path in the face of shiny distractions, and it is true that often we cannot afford such distractions anyway, the ability to stay focused will save you money.

We asked Kathryn “Who should an entrepreneur go to for financial investment and pre-seed funding?”

A business needs some sort of cash flow to get started, whether you are investing in the tools to operate, or the people, having cash to work with can be crucial to making your business successful. Kathyrn’s reply encouraged us to do more research.

“The first thing you have to figure out is what kind of financial backing is right for you. Taking venture capital can come with a ton of pressure, because VCs will want you to scale quickly and make as much money as possible so that they can return the money to their investors.

If you decide to take VC money, you want to be sure you’ve found the right people who will help you take your business where you want it to go for a reasonable price. So, don’t try to target every investor you come across. Research who is actually writing the checks for other companies like yours so that you can find a VC firm that’s a good fit. And make sure that any investor you bring on to your company has at the very least a basic understanding of the field your company operates in.

If VC money isn’t right for you, there are many other options, including grants, resources from the Small Business Administration, and equity crowdfunding, where you sell ownership in your company to the crowd of potential customers and the larger community.”

By now, I am sure you are feeling the pressure, you (and I) have a lot of work to do to make our businesses shine. But we all do this with some sort of end in mind right? With our own unique visions of what lies at the end of the rainbow, after the work has been put in.

And so we asked Kathryn “Why is creating your own business so important, and how has it changed your life?”

Her answer offered motivation for our next steps as founders, “Building your own company is a way for you to have a creative life that you control. Imagine creating something you truly believe in, watching it succeed beyond your wildest dreams, and then getting paid for the value you’ve created. That’s the promise of building your own damn thing. For me, being able to decide what to do with my capital, from money to my time, was very liberating and was worth the risk of possible failure.

I also love that in running my own venture firm, Genius Guild, I can look for investment opportunities that are solid businesses that also contribute to the betterment of the community they serve.  I want to help build a world where everyone can win, and creating Genius Guild allows me to do just that.”

To Kathyrn’s point, the hard work pays off, the long workdays, the tough calls, the fight for what you believe is right. But how do we mitigate such challenges during our most difficult years in starting a business?

Our last question for Kathryn was “How do you think becoming an entrepreneur can impact your health, wellness, and lifestyle?”

Her answer showed us that while we aim to stay the course, we must also take time for self. “Entrepreneurship is hard. It’s not easy. It is tough. It is exhausting. And because it’s so hard, it can be really tempting to lose yourself entirely in your company. To decide that you don’t have time for your personal well-being, or your health, or family, because you feel like all you should be doing is working.

This is a recipe for disaster. Remember that if you’re not good, then the company will not be good either. So, taking time to get yourself in a good place is the single most important thing you can do to ensure the success of your company before you build it. Smart, successful entrepreneurs have no problem spending time on their mental and spiritual health, because they know that getting their mind right is crucial to getting their company right.

That means that you need to make sure you are doing whatever you need to support yourself. Maybe that looks like going to the gym, or creating a meditation practice, or making sure that you are home for dinner with your kids at 7 PM every night no matter what. Because you are the hub of your company, your self-care is also your company’s self-care.”

We thank Kathryn Finney and her amazing team for addressing our questions, and if you haven’t gotten enough homework from this amazing interview here are a few more things you can do:

Read Kathryn Finney’s book “Build the Damn Thing.” She goes into so much detail and her amazing advice married with Beyonce quotes will have you grasping for the next page like it is oxygen itself.

Listen to her podcast, it will be easy to find because it is also called “Build the Damn Thing!” (and because we are providing a direct link.) She has just wrapped season two, which means you have roughly over 7 hours of valuable information to soak up directly from Kathryn herself.

Lastly, this interview was brought to you in partnership with Black Health Matters a non-profit organization founded with the mission of breaking barriers in the healthcare space for the Black community. Learn more about where Black health starts here.