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What to Stop Doing Today: Real Talk with a Startup Coach

Feras Alhlou returns with real-world insights on scaling startups, avoiding burnout, and leading with purpose.

We’re thrilled to welcome back Feras Alhlou—seasoned entrepreneur, startup coach, and co-founder of Start Up With Feras—for another insightful episode of Startup Success.

In this candid conversation, Feras dives into what it really takes to build and scale a successful startup. He shares hard-earned lessons from his own journey, including how to focus on what matters most during each phase of the startup lifecycle and why founders must learn to delegate! And he offers his take on giving back to your team and your community.

We discuss:

  • The importance of “outsourcing the headache”
  • Common mistakes founders make when trying to scale
  • Why only great things come from networking
  • Advice for founders out there who are struggling

Whether you’re just starting out or gearing up for a major growth spurt, this episode is packed with wisdom you won’t want to miss.

This discussion with Feras Alhlou of Start Up With Feras comes from our show Startup Success. Browse all Burkland podcasts and subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts.

Episode Transcript

Kate 00:18
Welcome to Startup Success. Today, we have a special guest who’s been on the show before and is back for a second conversation, which is always great. Feras Alhlou, it’s so great to see you again. Welcome.

Feras 00:32
I’m really happy to be here. Looking forward to this conversation.

Kate 00:36
I am as well. So those of you who may remember, and if you didn’t check out Feras’s first episode with us, I highly recommend you go give it a listen, but Feras is a seasoned, very successful startup founder. I knew him from his time at E-Nor, which had a very, very successful exit. And now he is a co-founder of Start Up with Feras, which provides coaching for entrepreneurs and startup founders, correct?

Feras 01:08
That’s what we do.

Kate 01:09
I love it. It’s so fantastic. And you know, you’ve just done a lot to give back to entrepreneurs and founders, which I love. Feras has a lot of content out there and a lot of tools and resources, and we’ll put that up in the show notes and also share that at the end of this episode. But you know, Faris, we talked a lot the last time you were here about your journey, and you know, your success with your startups, and the listeners learned a lot. This time I kind of want to get into what you’re doing now, your coaching and how your mentoring founders. And one of the things you help founders do is around scaling. Are there some things or mistakes that you see a lot of that you know kind of want to share with founders and entrepreneurs around those early days that they should be careful about?

Feras 02:07
In terms of scale, the standard answer is probably. You need SOPs. You need the standards and operating procedures, of course. You cannot scale without processes and checklists and systems. But I want to highlight something that I recently have been researching and I’ve actually written about, is simple advice, outsource the headache. So whatever it is that is taking your time today and you should not be doing, find a way to outsource it. So depending on what phase you are in, in a startup, if you are in a development mode now, you’re building the beta, the alpha, the beta. You’re about getting ready for that product-market fit. You’re focused on developing, of course, right. In addition, or if you’re going into, like, marketing and sales, hiring people, you need to focus on what’s important in this specific phase of your journey and everything else should take a back seat. And some things that you’re not good at and you should not be doing, those have to go somewhere else. You outsource, you delegate, you find someone to help you with. And just very recently, I didn’t know we were gonna talk about this today, but we developed something called Founder Focus Organizer. It’s a spreadsheet where I ask founders, put everything you do today, look at this week or last week, and then put the time you spend on and then there are four categories, things you’re good at – you should be doing, things you’re good at – should not be doing, things you’re bad at – you should be doing, and things you’re bad at and should not be doing. And do this for a couple of weeks. And then that will give you easy just and the spreadsheet will give you, I’ll give you the link, Kate, if you want to add it to the show notes, but it’ll give you a summary of the things you should not be working on. And I think that, and that could change from one phase to another, but that is really important. You have to focus on what is important this month. What’s important in this phase of the journey? If you are fundraising, that’s going to take 70% of your time, 80% of your time, so other stuff has to get done. So what is it that you can, you know, pass on someone else, delegate, outsource. That, I think, a really, really important thing that I’ve learned the hard way. And then I advise founders to look into as well.

Kate 04:20
I love that. First of all, I love that exercise, because I think a lot of us could benefit from that, right? I think there’s a lot of surprises, you know, when you do something like that, on where your time goes. And then also, I love the idea of outsourcing the headache, I guess you’re saying, in a sense, like whether it’s the back office function or something, so the founder can focus on the product, the service, I guess, where you feel like they’d add the most value?

Feras 04:53
In a book I just listened to recently, it’s called “Fall in Love with the Problem, not the Solution” by Uri Levine, one of the founders of Waze, so he knows what he’s talking about. And he does talk about this concept of phases, like you as a founder, maybe co-founders, depending on if you’re just vetting the idea, there’s certain sets of activities, if you are now in your product-market fit phase, there’s certain things you should be doing. Doesn’t mean that you ignore everything else, but the majority of your time should be focused on that, and others have to be taken on these other responsibilities. So I think you have to examine what is important for me this quarter, so I’m not talking about a productivity hack or, of course, you can block time and and you can, you know, avoid, you know, the alerts and the notifications all of that, yes, but in terms of, like, at a macro level, what should I be doing as a founder or as a manager, or as a COO or CFO, or what should I be doing this quarter, and make sure you have the time to do it, you have the mental bandwidth to think about it. Now, if you’re not good at sales and you don’t have a co-founder selling for you, there’s no escape. You have to learn that. So that’s an I’m not good at, but I should be doing. So, my team and I thought about this for a few weeks and came up with this categorization. It’s really the back office stuff, for sure. Anything that is just taken away from what is important for this phase of the journey, I think should be outsourced or delegated. Again, gradually find the right person to delegate to or to outsource to, but that’s a big, big I think blocker from people growing and scaling.

Kate 06:41
I think you’re onto something there, because I have a lot of founders on the show, and they talk about how it’s hard to give up that control, because when they start out, it’s just two or three employees, and they’re doing everything, and they have their hand in everything. At that point, it makes them feel better, right? Because they’ve taken this leap of faith. They want to be involved in everything. It’s hard to make that transition, to start delegating these huge projects, right?

Feras 07:09
Absolutely. And funny how these things come up together. I just spoke with a couple of founders, literally just few minutes before I was getting ready for this podcast, doing extremely well in physical therapy. Very impressed by what they’ve done and the challenge they’re facing now, because they’re so good at what they do, and they’re good with people, is that when they’re signing contracts, customers want them to deliver the service. It’s a challenge. And I said, Hey, it’s not common to you. Like any, any type of, if you’re in consulting and services, it’s a people’s business. People want to work with the founder. So you have to think of it, first, you have to have talented, certified,customer-friendly people like you, that have your DNA, with you. And then you have to position, you know, in your sales process, you say, my team and I, my certified team and I, right? So, I told them to your point, Kate, it’s very rewarding that you feel wanted – people say, We want you – but that is at the same time, it’s just not going to, you know, help you scale. So, maybe you take on the top two accounts, if you’re in the consulting services space, or if you’re a founder in tech, you know, and you have to do maybe a lot of initially customer interactions, just to understand the pain points of the clients. So you might have to do some of it, but If you do all of it, then you’re not thinking of growth, you’re not thinking of processes, of systems. You’re just really getting bogged down in the details. And that’s just not going to be helpful,

Kate 08:38
Right? I mean, you yourself won’t be able to kind of scale your abilities into the next phases if you kind of limit yourself in that sense.

Feras 08:49
Spot on. And again, this concept, I really liked what this author said is that you have to think like, What is the next phase that this business needs? And again, if you have multiple founders, you have co-founders, I think it’s good. Maybe you focus on product. They focus on marketing. So if you are about to to hit it big, and you’re about to be hiring a whole lot of people, I remember in one of the tech startups I was part of back, oh my goodness, 20 years ago, you got the funding and, you know, investors wanted to build, and investors wanted to hire. We hired 60 developers I think, I was Director of Product Development at the time, in like two or three months. It was crazy. It was absolutely crazy. Technically, they’re solid, but how do you onboard them to your processes, to the way you do development, the way you do QA, the way you do documentation, teamwork, the whole culture aspect? If you don’t have onboarding checklist, if you don’t have HR people, People Ops, people who will help you. So you have to think of, what is the next phase, and how do I get ready myself? Your point, Kate, be ready to manage that phase. Do I need to get some education? Do I need to get help? Do I need to hire? Do I need to get a consultant? Do I have, like, my next in line take care of this while I take care of that? So that thinking, I think maybe not every day, maybe at a quarterly. I think cadence is important.

Kate 10:10
And do you find, just based on your own experience and working with the founders that you mentor and help right now, there are a lot of similar phases that these entrepreneurs and founders will go through? Do you have them broken down, or are they unique? (It’s a roller coaster!) Is it a roller coaster? Okay.

Feras 10:30
But I think to your point about phases, to your question about phases, I think they’re vetting the idea, the business, business planning, doing some market research, product, product market fit, start to sell, grow, scale, you know, exit, right? So if you, if you’re about to exit, since you have a lot of folks who are maybe in that phase, when we had our first exit, or the big exit. So I had small exit which day and night different than this big exit, I had no idea. And one of my friends, a competitor, and that speaks to the importance of relationships in business, even with your competitors. Compete fiercely, but still be professional, be nice. But anyhow, he picked up the phone and called me and said, Feras, you just saw the LOI (letter of intent). This is going to be like nothing you’ve seen before. Talk to your wife, talk to your children, whoever is impacted by you in your personal life, and let them know that it’s going to be it’s going to be something you haven’t experienced before, because you still have to run the business, and now you’re under the microscope in terms of your numbers, because you’ve made some commitments. I’m going to make this kind of number this month and next month. And at the same time, you have to go through this painful process of due diligence, your numbers, your contracts, everything. They’re going to, you know, they want to look at, the buyer is going to look at everything. So being ready, and I’m so appreciative of this gentleman, Alex, and he’s a friend still, because I actually went and told my wife, Alex just called and said this, she said, Okay, I don’t care. You’re already crazy. You work hard already. What’s gonna happen? But it was really, it was I went and told my senior team, folks, I’m going to be distracted. I’m going to be spending half of my day for a couple of months to get the company ready, you know, for the buyer. So, so, yeah, being ready mentally, also, like, from learning, talking to others, talking to other CEOs, talking to other people who have been to where you want to go. That is, that’s really important. So, so you, you retool up skill, and also psychologically, mentally and also relationships that might be impacted in that phase, you also want to attend to that.

Kate 12:54
That’s a great point. Would you say, based on that, it’s helpful to kind of put a network, or, like, a founder circle, or some kind of support system around you, of like, maybe founders that have already gone through it, or right, or, like, get involved with some kind of organization that, because, you know, just with this, what this gentleman, Alex, shared with you so helpful, right?

Feras 13:19
Short answer is yes. And I think I have a saying, like, only, only great things come out of networking. So I learned it early on, when I was laid off and I started my first business. I had zero experience in sales, and I had to learn sales and networking. And one sales coach said, Go and attend every possible networking event. I went to these 7am breakfast, you know, networking like I don’t eat that. I mean, I get up early, but I don’t eat that early. But, you know, I went through everything possible here in the South Bay, and it did bring us business over time, right? So I think networking you meet potential, you know, customers, people you hire, competitors. So I think learning from people, peers is really important. Joint issues or common issues, you and your competitors are facing, that’s good to chat about. And then, you know, speaking with someone who, I think it was Adam Grant in his book, Hidden Potential, he talked about seeking advice, and he said someone who obviously has the technical knowledge you’re seeking, but also someone who knows you and someone who cares about you. That would be the ideal person to take advice from. So CEOs, peers, competitors, including competitors or partner or suppliers who are in a similar phase in their journey or on their journey. I think that those would give very good advice. But yeah, if you can find someone who, who knows you well, cares about you and has some domain knowledge that would be the best piece of advice.

Kate 14:56
That’s the checklist, right? I see that. Tell us a little bit about Start Up with Feras. Like, how do you help founders for somebody listening, who’s maybe in a tough spot right now. Tell us about areas that you can help with.

Feras 15:11
Yeah, sure. Thank you for asking. My goal is at this point in my life, the mission is to help founders get to where they want to go with less bruises. You will have bruises. It will happen, right and avoid dead ends. You know, because dead ends are very costly, very costly, right? So, we produce a lot of content. We have a YouTube channel at Start Up with Feras. Feras spelled F, E, R, A, S. I’m active on LinkedIn, I publish daily. We also have a newsletter. So, you can follow us on any of these mediums, or startupwithfaras.com, my website. We have just a ton of content related to entrepreneurship. We a lot of our content is for early stage founders, someone who actually wants to start, or someone who started and they’re struggling. I do one-on-one consulting, but we also have some digital products that I think we’ve developed since you and I spoke last time. People can go through the entire curriculum, and I have office hours and whatnot. So, yeah, there’s a lot of free resources, but if you need that one on one attention, we have that, we offer that as well.

Kate 16:46
And I like that you have resources there for founders and entrepreneurs that are struggling, that you just kind of call it out because I don’t think I see that as often.

Feras 16:21
Yeah, if you go on YouTube, you know, you see all these, I don’t pick on the young ones, but you know, yeah, make $10,000 a month, you know, overnight. You know, passive, passive income. There’s no such thing as passive income unless you’ve made a lot of money and you put it in the stock market or real estate or whatever it is. There’s no passive. There’s nothing passive, you know. And you know, you see this yesterday, I was on a website that said, Yeah, I run a $10 million company and I only work four days a month. It’s not humanly possible. A lot of people read this stuff, hear about it. We’re bombarded by this stuff on Tiktok, on Instagram, on YouTube, and it maybe sinks in people believe it. It just doesn’t work. I mean, I’ll mention this example to these. I don’t want to paint a dark picture, but this is what it takes to grow and scale. Ryan Chesky, one of the co-founders of Airbnb, he said, When they started the business, one of his other co-founders flew to the Bay Area, and they decided to work from eight to midnight, seven days a week, for three to four months. I mean, I work hard, but that’s, yeah, that’s hard, that’s hard work. This is that commitment. And they were able to do it, health wise, relationship wise, they were, you know, young, and they were able to do it, but that, given the momentum, I’m not suggesting that every founder has to do it that way to succeed, but you can’t grow, and you can’t scale if you’re doing 35 hours a week, there’s just no way. It’s possible, like winning the lottery is like one in 293 million I think chance. Other than that, you really have to work hard. And then there are seasons in life when you can work hard, and I think you should. And there are seasons in life where you have to take care of your aging parents, your young you know, children, maybe your spouse. Maybe she’s going through her career move and getting promoted, and you got to support her or support him. So so I think I’m all for working hard. I’m all for working very hard and building something that you’re proud of, not just because of the money, but also like the team and the culture and the friendships, but at the same time, it’s not all about the money, because, as we talked about in the previous episode, is about also giving back, yeah, giving back to your team, especially when you make it, you know, when you’re not very profitable and maybe it’s tough, but when you’re making money, share with your team. You couldn’t have done it without them. Share with the community. A cause you believe in. We have a huge income inequality issue in this country, how can we address it? You know, there are other, obviously, you know, causes. So it’s not all about money. You know, I’m a capitalist at heart, I want to make as much money as anyone else. At the same time, I want to share. I want to share a lot. I hope that people who listen to this and you can share in so many different ways, but have this, this idea of helping others, I think it’s very rewarding to the giver more than the receiver actually.

Kate 19:14
Absolutely. I liked your answer for two reasons. One, you were very candid on what it takes to succeed and be an entrepreneur. And, I actually think that’s helpful for people listening like you’re not painting a dark picture, you’re painting a realistic picture. So it kind of gives those that are in the midst of it hope, right, like this is the cycle. And then I love how you, you know, it’s been a theme just knowing you and seeing your work giving back. Because I think people forget that piece a lot, especially where we are, here in the Bay Area. And you’re right, what you learn is you get so much out of it that that’s like the hidden you know, surprise when you start volunteering and giving back and, you know, taking on different causes. It’s a really great feeling so I always appreciate that. We’re actually coming up on time. I all my conversations with you fly by, but I always like to end the show with any, you know, parting advice you can leave early stage founders like, you know, in this time period we’re in a post- pandemic, kind of uncertain time in the world, any kind of parting advice you can share would be appreciated.

Feras 20:33
So business is part science, part art, and I think the science part, they can know fairly quickly and apply – you know, Okay, I gotta send a proposal. I gotta do this. I gotta have a marketing campaign. The art part, you’ll enjoy it at one point, just like painting. I mean, I’m also into martial arts, so there are a lot of analogies to martial arts and these timeless principles about discipline and taking care. You know, you don’t want to hurt your opponent. Especially in Aikido, the art I practice. But I think, like, Don’t go too hard on yourself. I’m saying working hard, you know, success is never guaranteed, but we’re learning. We’re learning, you know, even if a customer rejects us, even if the product doesn’t do well on the first launch. It’s okay. Work hard, learn from the mistakes, and then it’s really the reps. I think the 10,000 hours to mastery is a thing. But it does require reps. So every aspect: sales, marketing, delivery, product development. So if you’re just not there yet and you’re struggling, and things don’t look too bright, learn from the mistakes, learn from the mistakes of others, and keep going at it. And you know, nothing is guaranteed but you increase your chances, your likelihood of success significantly if you follow some of the some of the things we discussed today, including you know that you’re on your road to mastery.
Kate 21:56
Yeah. So, yes, I like that. Thank you. Please share one more time where listeners can find you and your content, just so it’s fresh in their minds.

Feras 22:05
Sure. Thanks, Kate. So yeah, you can go to Start Up with Feras.com, that’s the website. We have a newsletter there. You can subscribe weekly. You get that weekly edition, and then we also have the channel @StartUpwithFeras and on LinkedIn. So just find me, and if you have a question, you can reach out. Actually, I give 20 minute sessions, no charge every week, two or three sessions. If you have a question, you’re stuck, you’re not sure what to do next, you can sign up for a session, no pitches, no gimmicks. I’m just there to help out, because a lot of people helped me out, and I like to do that. So yeah, you can take advantage of that Ask Feras session anytime.

Kate 22:30
That’s so fantastic. Thanks for coming back, Feras. It’s always a treat to talk to you. I appreciate you making the time.

Feras 22:47
Kate, thank you so much. I appreciate your time as well. Thank you.

Intro
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