5 Key Lessons We Learned Launching Our Automotive Start-Up

When Michael and I pulled the trigger on officially developing and launching TailHand in March 2020, we knew the learning curve was going to be steep, with hands-on experience and mistakes being a better teacher than any MBA course could be. 

But what have those lessons looked like? Competing in the SEMA Launch Pad competition for automotive aftermarket start-ups, building relationships with incredible partners, and even taking a break when life threw too much at us at once have given us plenty to work with.

Here are the Top 5 lessons we’ve learned on our TailHand journey.  

The period between going public and being a “real” product is tough

It doesn’t matter whether you’re manufacturing a physical or digital product; there will likely be an awkward period of time when you start sharing details of your company with the public before it’s fully baked and ready to serve your customers. The nuggets of information you’ll receive from potential customers and stakeholders during this time will make your product/solution/service better, even before it’s available for public consumption. Those nuggets are invaluable and if you’re lucky enough to get feedback from your prospects (aka future customers), listen!  

Despite the obvious benefits, we quickly learned that this was also a taxing period of time for our team. I think of this as the “Baby Goes to Kindergarten'' period. Much like parents who look forward to their child going to school for the very first time (think of all of the time we’ll have!), we were eager to move on to exposing our product to the “real world.” Little did we know, just as Kindergarten parents often do, we felt a teeny bit of panic and overestimated how confident and ready we were to let our little baby go out into the big, bad world. But, it was  the right thing to do and we couldn’t hold on to total control forever. Be ready for the uncomfortable feeling of pushing your precious idea out into the world, but remember, it’s an exciting and necessary event. 

Your timeline will never go exactly as planned

Despite your very best intentions, the most robust project management software, dedicated teammates and all the drive in the world, your timeline will never go exactly the way you planned it. The best part about that is amazing things can happen when things don’t go to plan. We’ve always tried our hardest to take the attitude that there are “treasures of darkness”; even in the toughest situations, there are riches to be found-- if you look for them. There are so many factors outside of your control when you’re starting a business and the people on your team are just that: people. They get overwhelmed, prioritize other things over your business, and just get tired.

The timeline going off course can be a real positive too. In 2022, when Michael and I found ourselves treading water amidst a lot of life coming at us, we made the tough choice to put TailHand on pause in order to focus on other priorities that couldn't be ignored. As hard as it was to make that call, we knew it was the right choice for us AND that we would come back stronger and ready to deliver TailHand to the market in a way that we could feel proud of. 

As long as you are keeping momentum in the right direction and maintaining a clear focus on what is critical, embrace the unexpected in your timeline. 

You must lean on your peers

The amount of amazing people we’ve encountered on our journey, with many of them going out of their way to help us. This includes team members, mentors, family/friends, partners, industry contacts (shoutout to SEMA!) and fellow startup founders. One sub-lesson I’ve learned as we launched TailHand was that this is not something we can do without graciously accepting help. Learn to be comfortable accepting and showing appreciation for any help offered. 

That being said, it is critical to lean on passionate, self-driven people to be part of your official team. A start-up team has no room for thought-leaders and big talkers. We had the privilege and good fortune to work alongside Chris Joyce, CEO of Gusher.co and founder of seemingly countless start-ups, on our journey. Chris pushed us to be unwavering in what we believed we needed from each team member and to trust the TailHand team to handle the work we brought them on to do. Without this sage advice, Michael and I would have found ourselves drowning on a daily basis with work our team was hard-wired to do. Why agonize for hours trying to develop a forecast spreadsheet when your CFO is tailor made to create this and better than you can? Trust that you’ve partnered with the right people and they will produce amazing results (and take quick action when you realize you have the wrong partners onboard). 

The Imposter Syndrome may never really go away, but…

There is something naturally humbling about bringing your own idea to light. The life of a startup founder is an emotional (and financial, but that’s a different post altogether) rollercoaster. For every day you feel like you’ve figured it out, there are five more waiting behind it in which you feel like your leadership might be inadequate. This feeling doesn’t necessarily go away after you hit any particular milestone, but that you can choose whether it chips away at your success, or it pushes you to be better. You’ve likely heard of productive stress; that’s the stress that can be harnessed into healthy activity and pushes you to move forward and get things done. Imposter Syndrome is the same when you’re launching a new business. If you can learn to recognize when it’s cropping up and use it to propel you into productive action and thought, you can use it to further your team and your business. But, just like unproductive stress (the kind that creates anxiety and high blood pressure), Imposter Syndrome can be like an anvil tied to your ankle, keeping you paralyzed and weighed down, and can jeopardize your business, if you let it. 

You have to want the journey more than the destination

We all daydream about the day when our business has become so successful that money is no longer a concern, marketing is utterly unnecessary and people are banging down our door to buy your product, at any price. While you’re waiting for that day, there are a million great things going on that you can miss if you’re only focused on a specific end result. When you decide to start a business, you are essentially making the choice to prioritize it over everything else in your life (at least a lot of the time.) When Michael and I made that choice in early 2020, we knew it would mean compromising, like saying goodbye to carefree weekend days with no plans and using PTO to go to a trade show rather than take a “real” vacation. We would never have made that choice if we didn’t believe that we would gain so much from the journey.   

And it’s been well worth it. We were a top 10 finalist in the 2021 SEMA Launchpad competition for automotive accessories. We were (unexpectedly) awarded TORA's Best New Truck Product of the Year award. We’ve got an incredible US-based manufacturing partner and sales partner. And we have big plans for how to continue expanding how we transform the way you work from your tailgate.

Want to hear more about our journey?  Hear about our inspiration to create TailHand. 

We hope hearing about these incredible lessons will help you in your start-up journey!  What lessons have you learned? Share with us--send us an email at hello@tailhand.com or reach out to us on your favorite social media spot--we’re on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.