The Power of Defining Your Own Success Story

Author

Benjamin Friedman
April 08, 2025

Morning beehiivcommunity!

This newsletter turns experience into lessons you can apply to your startup. As a growth partner for visionary founders, we help sharpen leadership skills and unlock growth potential.

Redefining Success on Your Terms

"The very essence of leadership is that you need a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion."
— Theodore Hesburgh

As you piece together your version of success, hopefully, you’ll find it uniquely meaningful. Some find success when solving problems and improving communities. Others find it in building lasting businesses, creating wealth, or any combination of these achievements.

I aim to develop startups that positively impact the world, guided by my core values: collaboration, curiosity, growth, and optimism. This framework helps me make clear decisions about future opportunities.

In this week's post, we'll begin with a story about Warren Buffett. Then, we'll explore building your unique version of success—first through broader concepts and then by creating a five-year plan.

The Focused Founder:
How to Fully Harness Your Time

Transform your learning, time management, and leadership skills through proven, applicable strategies with this free five-day email course. Here's what you'll master:

  • Wasting Your Time? Here's the Fix

  • The Mistake That Breaks Momentum

  • How Smart Founders Invest 30 Minutes

  • The Social Learning Trick Most Founders Miss

  • Your Brain Hates This—And It's Killing Your Work

You'll learn to align vision with action, optimize your work environment, sharpen learning methods, and leverage feedback for maximum impact. Get started by clicking HERE.

Expert Tips for Startups
Quick, valuable insights from accomplished founders

What’s The Point of Doing Financial Projections?
They Will Always Be Wrong!

Financial projections are inevitably flawed, yet essential for startups. How can we parse this paradox?

1) Focus on the process to gain insights into your business.

2) Set realistic goals, align teams, and understand key drivers. These critical steps will drive your business.

3) Use scenario planning to manage uncertainty. Better planning = more options.

Though projections may miss the mark, the process of creating them increases accountability and growth.

Adi Dehejia is a fractional CFO for 15five and other clients. He publishes a newsletter, The Reluctant CFO, and you can read the full article here.

How Top Founders Turn Fear into Fuel

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” – H.P. Lovecraft

Entrepreneurship is filled with uncertainty, and uncertainty breeds fear.

We are all born with an instinct to avoid fear. Throughout history, this instinct has helped us survive by avoiding danger. Yet, in business, this fear of uncertainty can hold us back from taking the calculated risks and bold actions needed for growth.

Most successful leaders face numerous failures. Like anyone else, these leaders felt fear but chose to face it head-on.

Build Scale Grow offers a free download to unlock your full potential and achieve your goals. Grab it here.

How We Can Help

Over 90% of startups fail. Build Scale Grow helps founders beat these odds by efficiently scaling businesses and aligning vision, resources, and efforts.

We partner with founders to build and manage teams, systems, and functions, such as Customer Success and Revenue Operations, that drive rapid growth.

Book a free 30-minute call HERE to see how we can help.