Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in personal and business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Michael Kester, CEO of Lead Belay, located in Denver, CO, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Lead Belay gives small groups of new managers a powerful leadership development experience affordably. We combine self-reflection, peer learning, group coaching, and experiential learning to give emerging managers the support they need to be their best.

Two things make us different from all of the other leadership development offerings today: 1) we have a group-matching algorithm to bring the right groups of managers together across organizations that will support and challenge one another as they grow, and 2) price–we get the kind of results you would expect from a $20K leadership development program for under $1K per person.

Our customers are individuals and employers. We work with small startups and nonprofits, Fortune 500 companies, and large government agencies.

Tell us about yourself

I started Lead Belay after co-leading a company called The Regis Company for 11 years. Regis built very high-end custom leadership development programs for huge organizations. The work Regis did was incredible, but it was reserved for the select chosen few at the biggest companies in the world. I wanted to create something that could deliver the same level of outstanding experience and impact that anyone could afford. So my goal when I founded Lead Belay was to give anyone with the will to grow the support they need to become a great leader.

I started working on the concept that became Lead Belay while still co-leading Regis. That was right before the Covid lockdown in 2020, so when Covid hit, I had a difficult choice: either pause my new work and return to the core business of Regis or carve the work off and form a new company. It was a scary time to launch a new business, but it felt right–I was passionate about this new effort and launched Lead Belay to carry it forward. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Every day I'm motivated by the impact we're making on the new managers in our program–we call them "Belayers"–and the impact they're having on their teams. Our business world has evolved in a way that has stripped much of our humanity from our work, but Lead Belay is helping young, new leaders learn how to create cohesive, engaged teams that are happier, healthier, and more effective. We're bringing humanity back to work for many people.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Lead Belay is the third business I've helped build, and I'm very proud of the first two. With Lead Belay, though, I'm incredibly proud of the approach we took to create an outstanding product and get it into the world quickly. In less than six months, we did a ton of research with young new managers, launched pilot programs, created the initial technology to administer our programs (including our group-matching algorithm), and launched our first paid version of a product. Getting to a place where we were generating revenue and getting lots of feedback and input from real users (participants and their employers) helped us evolve and improve our program quickly–in under a year, we were getting results from a low-cost virtual program that rival top-dollar, in-person leadership development programs!

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

Separating the noise from the signal. It's easy to overreact emotionally, both positively and negatively, to every bit of data you get. The emotional ups and downs are incredibly straining, and it's important to stay focused on the data that lets you know whether you're heading in the right direction or if you need to adjust course. Either going too far down the wrong path, or being twitchy and adjusting too frequently, can kill your business, so it's important to be clear about your assumptions and hypotheses and to be vigilant at collecting data that helps you analyze them critically and carefully.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Frequently document what you believe and what we're learning about your customers, market, and business. Be explicit about your assumptions and hypotheses, and look for ways to challenge them. This includes explicitly seeking negative feedback from users/customers.
  2. Read Lean Startup if you haven't done so already. It's important to get some version of your product or service in the hands of customers as fast as possible to know if you're delivering something distinctive for a market of buyers and, of course, adjust quickly. This book has some great techniques to help you learn fast.
  3. Get a business coach and/or cohort of other business leaders struggling with similar challenges. These things can help you manage your own emotions and energy and find useful answers to questions quickly.

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Starting a business from scratch is extremely difficult and far more likely to fail than succeed. I wouldn't recommend it to many people. It requires that you have a lot of skills, are willing to learn new and challenging things constantly, and have the emotional resilience to push and work extremely hard in spite of slow momentum and/or bad news. Only embark on this journey if you are extremely passionate about what you're doing and would regret it for the rest of your life if you didn't give it a shot–that's how I felt when I founded Lead Belay.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.leadbelay.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadbelay/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lead_Belay
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/leadbelay/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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