If you haven’t picked up on it already, startup life is not for the faint of heart… Starting, managing, and growing a small business is a feat few can check off their bucket list.

And as multi-time entrepreneur Sean Chou will explain, it’s easy to tell the story of your company after it has seen success. The arch is clear, the hero’s journey obvious. It’s when you are stuck in the trenches, riding the ups and downs with your team, that you’re haunted by the big question of “What’s next?”

“We were constantly being forced to innovate along multiple dimensions. And I say in retrospect that we were innovating, but at the time it felt a whole lot like we were just making stuff up as we went along, which is of course what we were doing.”

Today, Sean is the CEO and Co-Founder of Catalytic, a company transforming how people work. But before he was helping other business leaders fine-tune their operations, communications, and accountability systems, he spent two decades identifying what works for him and his teams.

And as Sean shares today, it’s investing in the creation of that fine-tuned business machine that makes it easier to not only enjoy the good times but to survive the more ‘innovative’ ones as well.

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The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it’s part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy.

See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney.