Words to the Wise Glean pearls of wisdom from this entrepreneur's experience.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Dale Bathum, 38-year-old founder of Bite Golf, a golf shoemanufacturer and retailer in Preston, Washington, knows a thing ortwo about running a successful business. A 2000Entrepreneur young millionaire, he expects year-endsales to hit $8 million. Here, he reflects on his smartest start-upmove--and biggest blunder:
What was your biggest start-upsuccess?
Bathum: I put a lot ofeffort into [building] a strong team early on. That's whatcarried us through--if it was just me and I didn't have astrong team, I don't think we would have survived. So [I wouldrecommend] putting together a really strong team [internally] and[externally] of accountants and lawyers and a board ofadvisors.
What was your biggest start-upfailure?
Bathum: Not having enoughupfront funding at the beginning, so we needed to go out and raisemoney when the business was just getting underway. The second[biggest mistake] was inventory mismanagement. We buy and sellshoes--we overproduced some shoes that didn't sell [very well].So we had to discount them, and that really killed our profits.
Contact Source
- Bite Golf
(800) 248-3465, www.biteshoes.com
