I’m sure you’ve noticed that entrepreneurs and early stage companies in pretty much any arena fall into one of two categories.

First are the “Grinders,” These are companies that get to market slowly, hope to expand over time but remain vulnerable having less than a handful of clients representing the majority of their revenue.

Second are the Rainmakers - These are companies that appear to just crush it right out of the gates. They disrupt their market and quickly reach growth-stage, attracting acquirers and institutional investors along the way.

What is it that makes Rainmakers spring into the market like this, disrupt and gain share while Grinders just sputter along or even sputter out?  Here’s a few observations that may be useful to consider for your business;

As simple as it sounds, Rainmakers are just people who take less steps to get from point A to point B.  

They are less prone to that part of human nature that gets us stuck in our own heads and bogged down in details which lead to smaller steps.  

Another key characteristic all Rainmakers share over most Grinders is total clarity about what differentiates them in the market.  They test their differentiators in the market as a hypothesis and do this from the very beginning making iterations in response to data not emotion.

Rainmakers also understand that their first set of customers will have a compound effect (good or bad) and will impact the direction of their business. Accordingly, Rainmakers attract customers based on where their business is going, not where it is now.

Rainmakers are just people who have conditioned themselves (whether consciously or not) to ask better questions and stay out of their own way to get to point B. From the very start they set a strong foundation for their business by gaining total clarity about what differentiates them in the market (from the customers perspective) and by attracting customers based on where their business is going, not where it is now.