Starting an online business feels a little like standing at the top of a hill with a skateboard—full of possibility, momentum, and the exhilarating “this could actually work” energy. The creative spark is real. The ideas come fast. And the freedom you’ve been chasing suddenly feels within reach.

But today’s digital environment is also louder, more competitive, and more demanding than ever. Customers expect seamless experiences. Technology evolves monthly. And the strategies that worked last year may already feel outdated. In conversations I have with founders and business leaders across EMEA, one theme is always consistent: growth in the digital age requires clarity, adaptability, and systems that support your momentum—not ones that drain it.

Yet it’s exactly these foundational pieces that new entrepreneurs tend to overlook. Not intentionally—just because the early stage pulls you toward the shiny parts: branding, design, content. Those matter, but they’re not what stabilises a business long-term.

Here are the essential elements modern entrepreneurs need to get right from day one.

Starting an online business feels a little like standing at the top of a hill with a skateboard—full of possibility, momentum, and the exhilarating “this could actually work” energy. The creative spark is real. The ideas come fast. And the freedom you’ve been chasing suddenly feels within reach.

But in that rush, many new entrepreneurs skip the fundamentals. Not intentionally—just because the early stage focuses your attention on the shiny parts: the branding, the photography, the website aesthetics, the Instagram feed. Those matter, but they’re not the foundation of a business built for scale.

In my work with founders and digital operators (and in my own experience launching small businesses), I’ve seen the same pattern repeatedly: excitement creates momentum, but momentum without structure eventually turns into chaos. And the pieces entrepreneurs tend to overlook are the ones that end up determining whether the business stabilises or collapses when things get busy.

Here are the most common blind spots—and why addressing them early sets the stage for long-term success.

5 Must-Focus-On Areas as a New Business

For a long time, I believed leadership flowed from authority. Titles, reporting lines, decision-making power — these seemed like the essential ingredients for influence. It took working in highly cross-functional, high-stakes environments to realise that leadership is rarely about the position you hold. Instead, it’s about the clarity you bring, the trust you earn, and the consistency of your communication.

There was a point in my career when I had zero direct reports, yet my responsibility was to coordinate and drive execution across a room full of senior leaders across EMEA — VPs, regional leads, seasoned executives. None of them reported to me. All of them had competing priorities. And yet the projects needed to move.

That experience reshaped my understanding of what leadership really is.

Automation has become a central theme in modern Customer Success. As organisations search for greater efficiency, scale and consistency, automation quickly rises to the top of the priority list. It promises speed, accuracy, and relief from administrative overload. Yet there is a risk hidden within that promise: when automation is introduced without a clear strategy, Customer Success becomes mechanical and customers begin to feel processed rather than supported.

Customer Success has never been a function defined by tasks. It is defined by relationships, judgement and trust. You can automate steps in a workflow, but you cannot automate empathy. And this is where many organisations go wrong. They introduce automation before they have clarity on which touchpoints require human nuance, which interactions can be automated reliably, and how customers actually want to engage. The outcome is predictable: generic communications, poorly timed triggers, inconsistent sentiment, and ultimately a deterioration in the relationship rather than an improvement.

The reality is that automation elevates Customer Success only when it strengthens, rather than replaces, the human experience. Automation should free CSMs to be more available, more strategic and more thoughtful—not less. It should create space for real conversations, deeper discovery and more proactive guidance. To achieve this, organisations must treat automation as an enabler of human work, not a substitute for it.

This post explores how to design automation in a way that enhances authenticity, builds trust and protects the relationship at the heart of Customer Success. Ultimately, my advice in this post is about how to scale intelligently without eroding trust.

7 Tips to Automating Customer Success Without Losing the Human Touch

Customer Success leaders love the promise of AI — faster insights, smarter prioritisation, automated admin, better forecasting.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth few organisations want to admit: AI doesn’t fix broken operations. It amplifies them.

If your data is scattered, your processes are inconsistent, your playbooks are unclear, or your teams work in silos, AI will simply automate the chaos. You’ll get faster output — but not better outcomes.

That’s why the real work of AI transformation doesn’t start with AI at all. It starts with building AI-ready operations: the workflows, governance, and data structures that allow AI to actually deliver value.

Because AI only works if your foundations work. 

In this post, we’ll break down what AI-ready CS operations look like, how to build them, and what mistakes to avoid when modernising your CS engine for the AI era.

5 Steps to Designing AI-Ready Customer Success Operations