3 pitfalls to avoid in 2024

If you’re a brand founder reading this, and you’ve managed to make it through the last few years with your business (mostly) intact, let us begin by saying, congratulations. What a wild pandemic ride, in an inflationary period with a sprinkling of recession. Truly traumatizing for many startups. At our agency we have faith in the future (it’s actually part of our core values) and our Founder Ange believes 2024 is a pivotal year in the consumer packaged goods space. You’ve made it this far, and you’re doing amazing sweetie (said in Kris Jenner’s voice) so let’s get serious about the pitfalls to avoid to achieve profitability and sustainability — as we tackle the last calendar quarter of the year, let’s focus on good growth together, for the next one.

Getting risk wrong

Getting risk right is so tricky - many of us go over / under on risk. Not enough, your brand can stall, stagnant, lose traction, fail to scale. Too much, you’re suddenly (and scarily) overextended, exposed and on the cliff edge of losing it all. Finding a way forward with measurable risk is a skill we can all learn, and it’s about finding the balance between vision and caution. Caution keeps us from making ill informed, frantic and stupid choices. Vision inspires us to look ahead, stretch forward, and do the brave thing (without gambling away your business).

In a crisis like the one we’ve all just survived, it’s not uncommon to be become abundantly cautious, out of necessity. From closures to capital crunches, many companies had to rush to understand risk in a completely uncertain context (if we hear the word unprecedented one more time). While being abundantly careful served to carry us through the worst of it, remaining in a risk suppressed business model could seriously hamper growth mode for your brand. We did survive. Now, in order to thrive, we have to become comfortable again with taking strategic bets in brand building. Rather than being reckless, making moves in 2024 will be about repositioning and strengthening your brand building power. Use the discipline of your operating system to restructure a one, three and ten year plan, and feel safe in the knowledge that the best laid plans can be flexible against the unknown factors that we will (inevitably) face this year. Get ready to grow, again.

Scrambling instead of systematizing

Before we rush to take these glorious measured risks, stop, drop and systematize. If I had a dollar for every founder that wanted to grow willy nilly without structure, I could retire (literally love you all so damn much, but it’s true for some of you). One of the first, best actions we take with founders and teams when we onboard in a partnership is systems building, if it’s needed. In fact, we devote up to one full month for systems creation and establishing organized documents, SOPs and other unsexy stuff. Sometimes, that can feel like a slow and unnecessary kick off in the context of startups — where the desire to go fast and break shit remains the temptation, especially in hustle culture. Calling in stakeholders to create systems, records, and details can feel like a colossal waste of time, until you recognize that businesses without solid operating structures fail by design. If we attempt to scale without the scaffolding needed to grow — to drive sales even — without a system, eventually we will watch things fall apart, fall through the cracks. Falling is failing, and that can only be glossed over for so long.

You can make critical changes within your business in the span of just a week — you can address needs function by function, friction by friction, without losing focus in your overall operations. You can still ship orders, while you improve shipment of orders. Even carving out half days or 60 minute sprints with the right support and tools can equip you with the changes necessary to set up systems that scale. Don’t wait on it — you may believe there will be a more perfect time to set aside in some foggy future for this work. There is not. The time is now. The earlier you make changes and create a culture of systems at your company, the better the benefits will be for you, your team, your customers, your investors and your partners (both personal and professional, TBH). Ask yourself this question: what stressors would leave my life if my company was better organized, a more well oiled operational entity? If you can think of more than one, you stand to gain from this.

Let me be unequivocally clear — if you’re bootstrapping your brand you are especially exposed to the real risk of running your business in a scramble. When every dollar counts, then everything must be accounted for. If it feels like a sacrifice to set aside time to get your systems in order, it’s likely true that you can’t afford not to.

Leading outside the trap(s)

The most organized businesses, taking the right risks need the support of visionary leadership. Leadership is the secret sauce that cultivates culture and engages all stakeholders. One of the joyful nuggets of conscious capitalism we practice is the element of leadership. And this is especially critical for women, non-binary people and all folks who have been historically marginalized in the entrepreneurial ecosystem that wasn’t originally built by us, for us. The world pushes on us to show up and take space in ways others can feel comfortable with — culture and society asks us to abide by a set of spoken and unspoken rules to lead. And then holds us hostage when we literally can never measure up to the impossibility of it all. No seriously, it is actually impossible. For example research shows women are literally never the ‘right age’ in the workforce, we are always too young and too old. Judged for everything from our personality, marital status, size, height, ambition level or appearance. Our voices aren’t the correct pitch, our hair is a problem, our perceived authority is not impactful enough. The world too often says we are just not enough we are just not right.

We’re stuck in a double bind out there. In the pretzel that is the performance of leadership. So as someone in the arena working to leave a legacy with the weight of impossible expectations I say we agree to something else (all of us together, as there is power in numbers). Let’s agree to stuff it. And become champions of our individual and collective methods of reimagining leadership. Speak with vocal fry! Show up the way you want - look how you like, create your own pace, nurture safe inclusive space, break the rules, lead free, in love. If we don’t stand a chance of meeting expectations, and the data and our own damned lived experience teaches us we can’t, then let’s give ourselves the gift of living powerful truths in our beliefs, behaviours and choices. We’re leaders because we lead, and we can rest easy in the comfort of our convictions.

So, 2024 is a chance to curate our influence, get organized and be bold. It’s an opportunity to build brave brands for a better world, to work together and deliver what we all feel matters most: a fair, just, regenerative future for all. Each one of us is empowered to answer that call.