In growing a new business entrepreneurs often wish for more money and other resources to grow the business more quickly.  Recently, I was talking to a friend who runs a very successful asset management business here in the Chicago area.  Aside from being a 2-time successful entrepreneur himself, many of his clients are successful entrepreneurs and he usually has a great perspective on business strategy.

His lesson this week was:

Even the best businesses take a while (years) to cashflow and many businesses need time more than they need money, entrepreneurs need to be patient and not give up so early.

I thought more deeply about that comment and it began to make a lot of sense to me.  Small changes can be made and tested quickly, but making major changes to product or marketing strategy both require time to measure the impact of each change.  If it takes 50 major changes of direction to get a product right and each one takes 2 weeks to make and monitor, that’s 2 years worth of work!

Image courtesy of bogenfreund on Flickr — http://www.flickr.com/photos/28548387@N00/556656621/