They say that shopping is fourth discipline of triathlon. Very true observation indeed. I remember sitting once with my fellow triathloners while on bike training and talking about bikes.
4 Hours a Week? Forget It!
Probably the biggest misconception about having your own business I meet is this.
“You start your own company. Work hard for like a half a year and then you have people working for you. This means you don’t have to work anymore, you only check your bank account from time to time to see how your big pile of money is accumulating. You are basically on constant vacation earning money any given moment without even thinking about your business.”
Nothing can be further from reality.
As with most of “hard work” farming is a place to look for great examples.
You start with the seeds. Plant them and then take care of them. Then you harvest and you sell your crop – which is basically your reward for a year of hard and consistent work. If you don’t buy new seeds or keep part of your crop to plant again, you don’t harvest next year. Same with your company.
If you don’t constantly re-invest and re-invent your business.
It is destined to fail.
Sooner or later, any business will. Just like crops would without you taking care of them.
Even if you employ gardeners, it is still you as a driving force – leading, motivating, envisioning, setting example. No one would ever have such high emotional stake in your business as you. Which I believe is single biggest motivator for entrepreneurs.
If you go for your own business with the idea of half a year of hard work and then lifelong vacation. You better think again. It will not happen. Guaranteed.
Make It Simple and Keep It Simple
One would assume that most of my time I am spending telling people what to do.
Actually, most of the time I am telling people what not to do.
With growing business I see two main challenges:
i) maintaining quality
ii) managing complexity
Where Good Business Ideas Come From?
Ever tried to come up with some great business idea or creative solution to a problem that you’re facing? The more you tried the less successful you were. This is how I develop my business ideas and solutions to a problems.
How Much You Need To Know
As entrepreneur you need to cover many aspects of the business you’re running.
Be it finance, marketing, people management, administration, accounting, taxes, logistics, operations, buying etc.
Depending on industry you are in you need to dive into other areas as well.
You need to deal with suppliers, customers, agencies.
How much of these things you should really know?
Do you need to be expert in all those areas?
Is it even possible to be an expert in everything?
Nobody can cover everything in depth.
I think you need to know enough, to be a solid partner in discussion with whoever you deal with. You need to know enough to ask good questions and be able to challenge their proposals and suggestions. You need to know enough to be able to make good decisions.
How to go about knowing all those things?
First of all, I am big believer in books. So I suggest you read books on those topics.
Better yet, if you don’t have that much time, read blogs, articles where people digest it for you.
Although I am not fan of technology, I am regularly checking websites with latest info on technology to keep myself up to date. Reading interesting articles on blogs about SEO and on-line marketing is my habit since I build my first website.
I subscribed to newsletters not to miss new interesting articles from many areas of business.
Facebook can be a good source of info if you “like” good, informative pages and people.
It is also great to meet and go out with people who have passion in some of the areas you are interested in. They will be more than happy to tell you what’s new and what you should know. Ask questions, listen and learn.
Recommended reading:
Related posts: Reading is the answer; Who Do You Spend Your Time With
4 Easy Ways How To Make Your Employees Think
Thinking is one of the most difficult things to do – that’s why so few people do it. Most employees think that their job is to do things and managers / founders job is to think. If you want to have time and mental energy for important things you need to teach your employees how to think, otherwise you will be buried under all thinking you need to do for them. Here are 4 easy ways how to make your employees think.
Setting Expectations for Employees
Setting expectations for employees is one of the most important tasks for a manager. Without clear expectations you can’t evaluate employees and also they will not know what is expected of them and how do they do in their job.
Expectations must be clear and well communicated. Ideally they are in written form so there is no misunderstanding. The more specific the better.
Continue reading
Teach Your Employees To Get Job Done
Here is the list of answers I am getting most of the time when asking about progress on our projects:
“I’ve sent them an e-mail”
“They didn’t pick up a phone”
“They said they will call us back”
“I am waiting for them to xyz”
Getting To Zero Inbox – Everyday!
Getting to “zero inbox” may seem like a dream (or a nightmare) but it is not that hard and scary. Every given working day I finish with zero messages in my inbox.
That means there is no unread and unanswered email in my inbox. To get to zero inbox all you need to do is to follow these simple rules.
Stop Before You Fail
Couple months ago I came up with brilliant idea.
At least I thought it was brilliant.
Name of my new would be business venture was “Success Library”.
Assumption is simple. Many companies would like to offer library with business and self development books for their employees as a benefit.
But having a library is big hassle. Administration, choosing and ordering books, reminders etc.
We would take care of all this. We would select best business and self-development books and provide company with full bookshelf (app 170books) and take care of everything.
Library would be fully automatic with beacons, our mobile phone app etc.
We would have secondary business as book sellers.
With all this I went to couple companies to talk to people from HR departments.
They all loved the idea and told me to come back once we have prototype of library ready!
With this we started to work on technical solution. Ordering beacons, finding suppliers all over Asia, drafting app etc.
Fortunately I also started to investigate possibility to get to some start-up accelerator, which we didn’t do but in the process I was fortunate to have skype conversation with Peter from Startupbootcamp in London.
He recommended book called “The Mom Test” which is about interviewing your potential customers.
After reading the book I stopped working on “success library” idea as I realised couple things.
i) if people said they love the idea and we should come back they didn’t mean they will buy it
Everybody will be nice to you when you present your idea. They will promise anything as it doesn’t cost them a thing.
ii) there is no problem for solution we want to provide
Yes, having library is a hassle and they don’t like it.
But, they can live with it and are not willing to pay for something that would make their life easier.
iii) $30 for this book saved us like $10k that we didn’t invest into app development etc
Make sure you do your research properly and ask good questions.
That will help you stop before you fail and save you money and time that you can invest into something else.