7 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My Business

A wise man once said ‘’entrepreneurship is the greatest self-discovery process ever made, with the highest possible compensation package attached’’. I believe in this statement so much, it’s one of the reasons that being an entrepreneur is so exciting to me. You get to chase your dreams every day and learn what you are really made of. As you begin your business journey you will face many challenges along the way. Below I want to share with you 7 of the most important things that I learned, which I wish I knew before I started my business. Hope this saves you from learning them the hard way.

Number 1 – The Importance of Setting Goals: Many people start a business just because it’s something they would like to do and that’s great, I was one of these people. But in my opinion, it’s critical to start with the end in mind. Do you know why you really started or want to start your business? Where you want it to take you? What you want to achieve? Your business is simply a vehicle that exists to get you closer to where you want to be. Without goals however, It’s like getting in to a car and driving across the country without a destination in mind – If you don’t know where you want to go, you can never get there. So be sure to set your goals from the start, the more clear you can be the better. I would recommend you set your big massive goals and then break it down into goals for the year ahead. Based on the yearly goals, you should set out milestones into quarters, months and weeks. This way you will regularly know if you are progressing as you should be and not just ‘’driving for the sake of it’’.

Number 2 – How To Take The Right Advice: As you go about running your business day to day, you will encounter many different people trying to give you advice on what you should be doing. This might include your uncle John, your sisters cousin Mary & a few people online claiming to be gurus and encourage you to buy their course. The main thing to remember is you should only take advice from people who have what you want and have successful experience in what they are trying to advise you on. Anyone else cannot be trusted and it’s best you disregard whatever they say. Look for good people who are where you want to be and listen to them carefully. I always find books a great source of knowledge from leading experts. Once you learn how to take the right advice, everything becomes much clearer.

Number 3 – Massive Action: Eventually as most entrepreneurs do, you will discover things that work for you in your business. It might be a particular kind of marketing that generates quality leads or a particular kind of sales script that closes a huge % of people. Once you discover these successful actions, you will want to repeat them in MASSIVE amounts. Often times you don’t need to create 100 different ways to make something work, you just need to find one and you this can be all you need. It’s all a numbers game and the more action you take every day in the right direction, the more likely you are to find success.

Number 4 – The Art of Delegation: At the beginning I was doing every single job within my business but there came a time that this was no longer sustainable and that time will come for you too. When you begin to discover tasks that generate say €100 per hour, there will be no need to do tasks that you can hire someone else to do for €10 per hour. Outsource this or hire someone to do these kinds of tasks as soon as you can afford to do so. And this will free you up to spend more of your time on the high revenue generating tasks and increase your profitability.

Number 5 – You Cannot Please Everyone: If you are anything like I was at the beginning, you will probably try to keep everyone happy as best as you can, and that is great. However, no matter how hard you try this is simply not going to happen. As you begin to take massive action and put yourself out there not everyone will like you. You will face criticism and you may even get sued. In my opinion, these are all signs of success, you are making enough noise and moving in the right direction. Keep going strong and by all means do the best you can do for everyone, but don’t try to please everyone because there will be always at least one person who just won’t like you and that is perfectly fine.

Number 6 – Money Management: This is so critical, I cannot emphasize it enough. I truly wish I knew more about managing money before I started my business. There is so much to keep track of – income, expenses, profit, owners compensation, tax, VAT and possibly more depending on how your business is set up. In the early stages money came in and went, and I never properly separated it or even understood it the way I should have. Once I implemented a system, this helped me in the huge way. There are lots of systems you can use, I personally use the ‘Profit First’ system by Mike Michalowicz and I find it to be absolutely perfect for me. Whatever system you decide on, setting this up and implementing it from day one is going to be critical to your future success.

Number 7 – How Hard It Really Is: I’ve often heard of the grim statistics on how many businesses fail after the first few years, but I never really understood why until now. Running a business can be an intensive, life-consuming activity. It can require you to work long hours, it can mean no weekends off, missed family events, massive levels of personal sacrifice and a high level of risk and uncertainty in your life. Even so, I can’t imagine doing anything else. Is it the same for you? Typically, if you are the kind of person who likes to stay in their comfort zone, work no more than 40 hours per week, hates uncertainty and avoids risk, then this may not be for you. However, if you are willing to step out of your comfort zone, put in the hours, make sacrifices, adapt when required and withstand whatever is thrown at you no matter what, then I am quite confident you are going to be just fine. Understand that this is going to be extremely difficult but remember this one thing: you can’t fail if you do not quit.

By MARTIN EASTWOOD who is an Entrepreneur, TV & Social Media Personality & Public Speaker. His company Wide Variety manage the online marketing of businesses across Ireland and abroad. You can connect with Martin on the social media links below.

Twitter: twitter.com/martineastwood1

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/martineastwoodentrepreneur

Facebook: facebook.com/OfficialMartinEastwood/

Instagram: instagram.com/martineastwood1/

TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@martineastwood1

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