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Your people, your team are everything. You can start a business on your own, but you can’t grow it on your own. Your success depends on the abilities and attitudes of the team you put together. Find good people that are smarter than you, better than you in their field and get them to work with you. Your business becomes the sum of the people's talents that make up your team.
In an age of tech it is easy to think that the best machines make the difference, and sure they help. In our case we have a fantastic new coffee roaster, but if our competitors wanted to they can go and buy the same machine so what advantage are we left with? It is only the skills of the people operating it that can keep us in front. .
And If you look after your people, they will look after your customers. The other part of the people equation that will see your business sink or swim by your ability to look after them.
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Passion and hard work may not be enough. Hard work is the default setting for owning a business. Few businesses fail because the owner doesn't work hard enough or care enough. When you are starting out you think passion and hard work will make you successful, and it will get you a long way.
However, it is your financial state, cash in your bank so you can pay your bills that will allow you to keep doing what you love. Setting up your financial back office is tedious and boring but essential to running a successful business. Staying financially afloat is the way that you can reinvest and grow your business.
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Make constant improvements. Always look for a better way. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it is a philosophy that leads to mediocrity and a slow painful business death. Pull things apart, your systems, your products and put them back together better.
4. Get good advice from people that have done it before or know how to do it. Get a good business advisor, coach, mentor, board whatever you want to call it. It literally is lonely at the top and you will need someone to talk to. They will also stop you from your worst excesses and be a sounding board for decision making.
5. And be picky about advice. The easiest business to run is someone else’s. By this I mean that from the outside looking in everyone will have an opinion on what you should do. You will get lots of well meaning advice from nearly everyone.
Be careful about whose’ advice you take. “Everyone that has ever drunk a schooner thinks they can run a pub” a publican friend of mine once told me.
6. Your business will start to reflect you. This can sometimes be disturbing to look at! If your business is chaotic and swings from crisis to crisis then some heavy self-reflection needs to take place. If you are organised and customer focussed then your business will generally steer that way too. “Know Yourself” think about your strengths and weaknesses and whether you are fuelling the chaos or reducing it.
Working for yourself means being your own boss but, in my experience, sometimes that boss can do stupid things. When this happens, pick yourself up, work out what you did wrong and vow to not do that again. Don’t beat yourself up either, just acknowledge the error and learn from the mistake.
“Businesses are a self improvement exercise masquerading as profit making operations.” James Clear.
Finally, being successful in business requires no small amount of luck. Being in the right place at the right time. People have told me I must have seen the great social trend coming towards coffee drinking. I have no such power, I just love coffee.
Success can blind you to your own failings and convince you, falsely, that you have some business ability above those around you. Witness to this is the few people that manage to run two or even three different, successful businesses.
