Over the past few years, as I have slowly, steadily and cautiously built my loan advisory company, MultiFunding, there have many sleepless nights where I have questioned my approach.
You see, all around me, many of my peers were choosing to build their companies at lightning speed. My approach has been and continues to be contrary. Fellow entrepreneurs were raising hundreds of millions of dollars through multiple rounds of venture capital to build their businesses as quickly as possible and grab as much market share as they possibly could. Meanwhile, I worried about cash flow and providing real value to my clients.
When I take this approach, I often feel minimized and insignificant. Sometimes when I walk into fancy offices of others in my industry, I look around at the hundreds of people and fancy coffee bars and baristas in awe. Sometimes these companies have dozens of people doing what we have a half a head doing. When we go to trade shows, these companies have exorbitant fancy exhibits.
And so often I would wander. What am I doing wrong? Am I missing the train? Is my tortoise approach the right way to go.
The “big” makes you feel so “small.” We continue to do well by our standards, but certainly not by their standards.
But yet, somehow I have had the discipline and focused over the years to keep my path. I want to build an exceptional customer experience with real value based on cash flow. I never want to go to bed at night worrying about a regulator shutting me down, or having to completely reinvent my business to accommodate them. I want to build a company where we treat every customer as we would want to be treated. I don’t want one word on our website or brochure to be a false promise.
This is hard to do. Really hard.
Finally, after years of sweat and tears, there are signs that our approach is anchoring down. As I wrote in my column earlier this week, many of the companies that chose the lightening approach are starting to crack and face regulatory and legal issues. Their stock prices keep tumbling to new lows.
Someone asked me the other day if I feel vindicated or happy? That’s not it at all. I know many people at these companies who are caught in the tide, never meant any harm, and I feel awful for them.
But now I lay awake less worrying about perceptions vs. reality. I know that if I continue my course of being a builder versus a flipper and worrying about my customers, we will be here for a very long time.