Crafting a blueprint for success

Creating a successful small business takes much more than capital and a great idea. It takes a-ha moments, challenges, creative ways to regroup when things go south—and a few hard-won life lessons. That’s according to Fabien Rielle, CEO of Steady Solutions, a full-service design and build commercial contracting firm.

At the 2025 Inc. 5000 event celebrating some of the fastest growing private companies in America, Rielle talked about his unique journey to building Steady Solutions and the three pieces of advice he’d share with anyone building a business today.

Steady Solutions was founded in 2016 as a design-build firm that serves the construction industry across the western United States. The firm focuses on complex exterior and interior projects for industrial and commercial needs, such as tenant improvements, parking upgrades, ADA compliance, and electrical scopes.

Rielle says that with Steady Solutions being the third startup he’s founded, he’s learned a lot about what it takes to get a new business off the ground. “Obviously, you need to be resilient,” he said, adding, “There's a lot of grinding… you need to show up every morning, long nights, weekends, and all that… it's not easy.”

For Rielle, one of the surprising realities about starting Steady Solutions was a new and unexpected emotion: loneliness. “What I mean by loneliness is that you're often alone in believing in what you're doing, believing in your ideas. Sometimes (the people in your life) are wondering, ‘What are you doing? What are you working on? How is it going to turn into something?’ And sometimes, you just don't know.”

If you believe in what you’re doing, Rielle said, it’s worth it in the end, stating, “At the end of the day, you just keep doing it. And even if you feel lonely, you just surround yourself with (trusted) people that will help you, lift you, and hopefully lead you to better days.”

Reliance on people and partnerships is a throughline across everything Rielle does as a business founder, with him stating, “I can't build a business myself. It's impossible. Even though I'm the founder, I need partners. Partners on the financial side, partners on the strategic side, partners on the commercial side…. knowing that you have people you can count on is critical.”

In his estimation, partnerships help round out your own skillset, thereby giving your business more perspectives and experience to draw from. Said Reile, “It's very important to rely on people who are much better at what they do than you are.”

As they build their business, every founder runs into roadblocks – the trick is how they regroup and reset after encountering problems. Rielle shared an example of one of those setbacks for Steady Solutions, saying, “We had just gotten a big Fortune 500 customer, we were ready to start the project, and they just canceled an order on us.”

He reflected that rebounding from that experience was a difficult experience, saying, “How can you keep the teams motivated? How can you keep yourself motivated? It helped us really prepare for the next time where we needed to have a plan B, a plan C, a plan D to be ready for the unexpected.”

For all the business founders we spoke to at the Inc 5000 event, we asked them to share three insights they learned along the way that ended up changing their business. Here’s what Rielle had to share about his journey to building Steady Solutions:

One way that Rielle likes to reset things is to offload some of what’s on his plate to his employees by “firing” himself from some of his duties when his plate gets too full. Said Rielle, “I like to fire myself from the job….by that I mean I empower people to do a portion of what I was doing.”

At the beginning of building a new business, Rielle said that he’s learned what works for him every day is to start with the hard tasks first, saying, “Start your days with whatever is difficult, whatever is the most complex on your to-do list, get it done early in the morning.”

Rielle said that he’s learned a lot about what success means, in the process of building his business, saying, “When I was younger, success was defined maybe by a bigger title, a bigger achievement. What will the others think about it?”

Nowadays, Rielle has a different attitude, saying, “Today... I'm having fun every day. The team at the office is fantastic, and that's how I define success now.”

As he was starting Steady Solutions, Rielle said he was looking for ways to streamline his finances as they grew bigger, saying. “We started working with Capital One Business two years ago. I was growing the business, I was using different credit cards, but I was looking for a solution, something that can help me with my growth.

“With the help of Capital One, we've been able to grow our business and smooth our process extensively. Particularly with my employees being on the go, all of them having a credit card in their hands. I have employees that are traveling…. And I had a hard time keeping up with their expenses. Capital One really helped me figure out how to control and track those expenses.”

He stated that by working with Capital One, the whole process has been simplified, saying, “(Employees) are now receiving a text message every time they procure an expense. They text the photo of the receipt, we get that at the office. That makes all of our accounting and all of our bookkeeping way more simple. That was a really big win, a simple one, yet very transformative for us.”

Capital One Business is here to support founders like Fabien Rielle on their journey to building success in life and business. How could the right support help as you create your own business story?