November 4th, 2024
While I'm no business tycoon and lot of what I have written here I'm still constantly working on, after fifteen years in business this is what I would tell myself on March 29th, 2009.
I was recently asked by someone that is starting a new business what advice I could share. I instantly said have a good bank, a good bank will help in multiple ways. I had a bank that I had a significant amount of money stolen from, never to be returned. Your bank should be helping not hindering your business. I say a good bank is one that you have good interactions with and has excellent security protocols. Multiple levels of authentication is key for good security. Securing your browser with no second level of authentication is a non-starter. We are in business to make money and mistakes at the bank are a no go for me. Bank mistakes can cause problems that will change your life.
Have a lawyer that you can call and get advice from, and not charge you exorbitant fees, they need to give you advice that you can act on. When necessary, engage them on a larger level to get the situation figured out. A good lawyer will help you and not gouge you, lawyers, while they have a bad name, will keep you out of trouble. A good lawyer should tell you they can or can't help you. A good lawyer when they can't help you give you a referral. When they can help they will give you an estimate of the fee.
I also recommended the book Profit First.Have a good employee handbook, a lawyer or HR firm can help give you the bones of the handbook. Having a handbook that you can always refer back to, when necessary, mostly during times of conflict, and there will be conflict.
Thinking further I would recommend the book The eMyth Revisited and Built to Sell. The eMyth tells you to systematize your business. Document everything so that you are not answering questions that you have answered before. Answer once and document the answer. Built to Sell says know your customer and product fit, don't try to fit your product where it doesn't fit the customer. Make your business a simple business by having systems, documented systems and know your customer.
Going further, have your vision for the company, why are you starting this business, what is your end game or purpose? Here is a good book on vision Vivid Vision. Your business is going to be stressful and probably the hardest thing you have ever done, understand why you are doing this to yourself. Having a mission and vision statement is highly valuable. You can share or not share these to employees or customers but when things get rough, and they will get rough having something that you can go back to review and reset is important.
Values, what values do you want to operate under, these are not your personal values. These values you will use to evaluate your customers, employees, vendors, yourself and anybody that you interact with in your business. Include as many people on your team as you have in the beginning, I recommend no more than five people. These are unique to your organization. I believe a value that can be explained in a sentence or two is powerful. Using AI, you can feed in your values and vision and get a mission statement. Use AI to riff with on all of this, I recently did it with our Operations Manager and we found the result to be close to what we were trying to say.
Find a mentor, anybody can be your mentor, they can be an author, a person you have no contact with, but you admire, anybody. Tough decisions can be evaluated by the statement “what would so and so do in this situation.” Imagine how they would act in this situation. I think of Warren Buffett when I invest, what would Warren Buffett do in this situation? Sometimes I conclude and do the opposite of what I think Warren Buffett would do, at least I’m conscious of what I’m doing. I have a business coach that I work with, This is my third business coach, use them as long as you are getting something from them, then move on. Do the same with mentors. I feel a business coach is a paid mentor.
No business is an overnight success, it is a grind. To be successful you must keep grinding, only then will gain traction and be able to make some moves. If you can’t grind, you should be an employee and be a good employee.
Last, delegate to elevate. You can’t do it all, which is what the eMyth will tell you. Do what you want to do and hire the rest out, learn to trust people and have solid boundaries. Take care of yourself, if you are mess your business will be a mess. I believe the morning routine is the key to a successful day. We humans are fickle bunch and we get good habits and then stop doing them. Once you break a routine and get bad habits, once realized you can go back to the good habits.