Dear Founders
Yet in practice, building these systems requires extraordinary discipline and awareness. When I'm teaching business to new founders, I always discuss the seven pillars that form the foundation of any successful business: strategy, g2m, design, technology, product, people operations, and financial planning and analysis.
Consider each pillar as a stack of empty cog shaped buckets that requires sand before it can operate effectively. As you pour, the sand passes through a hole in the bottom of all the bucket shaped cogs to the bottom. This sand represents your allocated daily effort, comprising time, energy, and attention. Each day begins with a finite quantity of sand for distribution.
First, momentum is paramount. Just as a heavy gear requires significant force to start turning but then maintains its motion with less effort, your business systems need an intense initial investment but become self-sustaining once properly established. This is why distributing even a few grains of sand daily across all areas is vital, it maintains the momentum you’ve worked so hard to build.
Second, systems thinking is essential. Many founders fall into the trap of viewing their business as a product or service, when in reality it’s a complex machine composed of interlocking processes. Each pillar represents a crucial subsystem:
