Making A New Business Work

The messy middle is where many businesses stumble. You’ve got a live website, and hopefully a few clients paying, but panic arrives often. This session lays out four common pitfalls. First, mistaking early revenue for safety—forgetting that timing and profit matter more than top-line numbers. Second, flattering market research that teaches nothing. Third, busywork disguised as sales—social media posts rather than real conversations. And finally, promoting yourself into the bottleneck, drowning in delivery while growth stalls. The fixes we propose are steady, not flashy. Making a business work isn’t mysterious—it’s about a handful of behaviours done on repeat. If you can handle the messy middle, you earn the right to scale.