I built the multi-million-dollar national company, Lemon Squad.
But I never went to business school. Never had an internship. I was a mechanic, driven by anxiety and an over-active mind, so you better believe I learned a lot of my entrepreneur lessons the hard way.
Today I want to share three of these lessons with you – in case you’re a self-made entrepreneur, too. Maybe it could save you some of the heartache I went through to make my business succeed.
1. Expand Your Technology Mindset
Okay, we all know technology is crucial to a successful business, no matter what that business is. But how you think of technology is the key. Because it’s not just having a good website or online marketing and SEO. The critical piece is your technology mindset. That means looking ahead to the future. Not only do you need a robust website that can support your work today, but you need to have a website that can do more than what you think it should do. Look five years into the future. Get what you need today, but make sure it has potential to support your needs in the future.
(*Bonus question: Ask the programmer what the site can do that you haven’t even considered – that can lead to all kinds of opportunity for your business, as it did for Lemon Squad.)
2. Learn to Communicate
Again, this may seem obvious – we all know communication is important. What I didn’t know, and what took me a long time to learn (I’m still learning, to be honest), is that listening is most of communication. Whether it’s an agitated customer on the phone, or an employee who is falling behind, or someone approaching me to buy my business, listening to everything they say – and don’t say – has opened all kinds of doorways for me to move through. I saw opportunities I would have missed had I been totally focused on making sure I was heard.
3. Make a Decision – Even a Bad One
This might surprise you, but my experience has taught me that the bad decisions aren’t the worst that can happen. The real enemy is Indecision. I’ve seen business owners sit on indecision for months, weighing the options, talking back and forth, going ’round and ’round. They don’t move on anything. Or if they do move, it’s months later, and they’ve lost a lot of the powerful energy that business owners need to succeed and move forward. Here’s the thing: we can almost always recover from a bad decision. We can usually recognize that it’s not working, then take a different path that will work. If we sit paralyzed in indecision, nothing’s going to happen. And nothing happening will tank your business faster than anything.
So keep it simple: Consider the options, ask feedback, trust your gut, then make a decision and move forward.
*Image courtesy of StartupStockPhotos