Lessons from an entrepreneur
The path won’t be easy, and you must be responsible for every aspect of your business
I was recently interviewed by an online media platform about what I’ve learned in my 35 years as an entrepreneur. It made me really stop and reflect on that question, and I came up with some key points that summarize what I’ve learned along the way.
Now while this list by no means definitive, it comes from tens of thousands of hours working on my business, working with thousands of people and writing 13 books on the topic of doing business.
Here are 10 lessons to consider in your own business:
We live in a world where we need to be known for something. We need to be the go-to person or the go-to business in our particular niche. This means being the best at what you do, and the best way to achieve this is to master your craft. Being the go-to person means an endless supply of referrals, better customers, more money and a business you control, not one that controls you.
People who master their craft, who aspire to be the best in their space, enjoy the rewards that brings.
Change is the buzzword that we are sick of hearing. To me, change is a defeatist term, meaning we have to change to survive. I much prefer the concept of evolution, or the need to evolve in business.
To me, this means reacting in a proactive way to any changes in our environment, which will in turn help us thrive in the new environment.
Everything catches up with you eventually. Putting off the big and difficult things in your business is a major mistake. The longer you ignore them, the worse they become.
I’ve made many mistakes over the years: not sacking a client, not sacking a member of my team, ignoring my tax responsibilities, not chasing outstanding accounts and so on. They all caught up with me and, ultimately, they were far worse when I finally took responsibility and action.
Deal with the tough stuff quickly.
Many, if not most, small businesses under-charge. For some business owners, the entire marketing strategy is to be the cheapest. If this is your strategy, you will never get ahead financially. Someone has to be the most expensive, so why not make it you?
But if you are the most expensive, you have to exceed every customer expectation, and this most certainly doesn’t happen by accident.
Many small businesses don’t know how much it costs them to operate each month. This is the simplest, most basic of financial questions, and if you can’t answer it, you can never know if you are making money or losing money at any point in time. Not being into bookkeeping or understanding your figures is the equivalent of driving a car with a blindfold.
It is your responsibility to know your numbers, and if you don’t embrace this responsibility, it will cost you dearly.
I can’t emphasize enough how important your peer group is. If they are smart, motivated, energetic and supportive, stick to them like glue. If they are negative, lazy, critical and, most importantly, not successful, get as far as away as possible as quickly as possible.
Having a powerful peer group doesn’t happen by accident; it takes time, work and commitment.
No one ever said that running a small business was going to be easy. The grass always seems greener, every other business appears easier than ours, every other business owner seems more capable, makes more money and so on. But in reality, it isn’t the case. I think we just need to harden up and get on with it.
I think that as business owners, we actually develop really good intuition that can serve us wonderfully well in many situations. The problem is we tend to override our intuition with logic, and it rarely works out well, at least from my experience.
I think we need to learn to listen to our intuition in every business situation; the more we use it, the more it will protect us.
This is a big one for me. It’s absolutely imperative to treat everyone with respect. This means your customers, your staff, your suppliers, your advisers, your competitors, your community.
Spend as much time as possible learning from those who have gone before me. There are so many incredible people who are incredibly successful, often under our nose, who would gladly share their wisdom if we asked.
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