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Below is our recent interview with Glen Wakeman, Co-Founder and CEO of LaunchPad Holdings, LLC:
Q: Glen, let’s start with your background. What were you doing before LaunchPad?
A: Before co-founding LaunchPad Holdings, I was a Global Business Executive and had been in CEO roles for the better part of two decades. I lived and worked in North America, South America, Europe and Asia where I built, sold, acquired, integrated, and started-up dozens of businesses. I decided to offer my skills and lessons learned to early-stage entrepreneurs with the hope that they could benefit from my experiences by reducing their start-up risks.
Q: What is the most important lesson you’ve learned in your career to date?
A: The most important lesson I’ve learned is to never take a setback personally. Instead, treat a setback as a learning opportunity. Progress requires taking risks, and things don’t always work out as planned. The human course of action is to respond to setbacks emotionally and to feel a sense of frustration or despair. These feelings are normal but not helpful. They can be overcome by changing your perspective and focusing on the learning you can derive from setbacks. But, don’t apologize for being human. That same emotional power is also the secret sauce that causes entrepreneurs to persevere. We need both sets of skills. The wiser course of action is to seek to analyze setbacks, learn from them, and intend to never repeat your mistakes.
Recommended: Q: What advice do you have for early-stage entrepreneurs who hope to scale up as quickly and successfully as you have?
A: My advice is to focus on designing your operations and cash management for scale. Your design should minimize exceptions and irregularities. Define your goals and ensure that there is a straight line between customer requests and fulfillment. The more complex the processes are the higher risk of failure. That is why you need to plan, not guess. The same rule is true for cash management. Businesses fail because they run out of cash, so whatever you estimate you need to grow and scale, double it. Lastly, always pay close attention to expenses and what your business spend looks like.
Q: How do you increase entrepreneurs’ success rate at LaunchPad Holdings?
A: Our toolkit is simple to use and focuses on the most important success factors. It helps entrepreneurs to think carefully about their customers, operations, and financials. We’ve learned that an idea is not a plan, and our process helps entrepreneurs to recognize and understand that difference.
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Q: What does the future hold? Where is LaunchPad Holdings headed?
A: We expect to scale LaunchPad Holdings. As a part of the scaling process, we plan to set aside funds to seed angel investments. Armed with a plan and access to capital, we hope to create many successful new entrepreneurs, businesses and jobs.
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