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"We Didn't Have a Plan": An Entrepreneur's Success Story

Published: Aug 08, 2016

 Job Search       MBA       Networking       Workplace Issues       
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If you're a regular Vault reader, you may know that we're always on the lookout for examples of careers and businesses that are a bit different. Not because we think they’re better, but because we recognize that not everyone can tread the same career path or check the same boxes—and, because of that, there's no one method of getting ahead or finding success in life or business.

Case in point: this tale of how Noosa Yoghurt emerged from a taste of a new product on a trip to Australia into an enterprise that serves stores all across the US, in just 7 years.

Told by company co-founder Koel Thomae, the most startling admission in the video is that "When we launched Noosa, we didn't have a business plan, we didn't have a real strategy and it just felt like, well, we should say yes to every opportunity."

Unfortunately, that approach seems to have led to the firm getting in over its head in terms of marketing and logistics at a time when it simply wasn't ready.

But that was ultimately followed by a period of retrenchment and reevaluation, which, in the long term, seems to have done the firm no harm at all: Noosa is now available in more than 25,000 stores nationwide. Check out the full video, courtesy of Bloomberg, here:

As with so many success stories, Noosa's success seems to boil down to spotting an opportunity, seizing it, and figuring out the rest along the way.

Whether you're an entrepreneur or a traditional employee, there are some useful lessons in that. Among them: growth (business or career) isn't linear; you don't necessarily need to be unique to succeed; there will be times where you'll overextend yourself and suffer setbacks; and it's not always necessary to have every detail of your journey mapped out before you set off. 

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