10 Lessons Learned through 10 Years of Entrepreneurship
The journey of 3650 days with struggle, pain, blood, sweat, and tears.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of my journey as an entrepreneur in digital business. My company is focusing on helping startups to digitalize their business process to be competitive globally.
Building a business from scratch is not easy. We are often too optimistic about how fast and easy a company could bring us to the ultimate success. The truth is, it takes perseverance, time, unconditional hard work, and sacrifice. Only an entrepreneur can relate the true meaning of the entrepreneurship journey.
There are at least 100 lessons learned throughout the years, and I have picked the top 10 lessons every entrepreneur should know.
1) Prioritize to get sales, revenue, or investment, because of no money, no talk.
Unless you are running the company alone and have sufficient capital to feed yourself, money is essential because everyone has bills to pay and family to sustain. Even if your partners, investors, or employees are willing to sacrifice for you, there is always a limit they could endure.
If you are to venture into your own business, do prepare to sacrifice most of your time and funds before expecting a return in the future. Aside from achieving the company's business vision, maintaining your cash flow should be the ultimate goal.
2) Good communication is King.
A true story as an entrepreneur, you take on different roles from time to time. For examples:
- A founder in your business.
- A leader in your organization.
- A vendor for your customers.
You would need to give endless presentations, speeches, conferences, one-on-one meetings, motivational talks, and team buildings to keep everyone on the same page as you are.
Employees are like soldiers. They seek a sergeant to lead them the way to battle and achieve something bigger than themselves. Thus, a lot of communication is necessary to clear their doubts, provide absolute direction, and most importantly, let all the employees and customers deeply understand the company's purpose. Because when you focus on “why,” it tends to goes on forever instead of “how” and “what.” Read more on “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek.
3) Focus on execution first, strategy second, and perfection later.
In real life, everything is about making things work. An idea will always stay as an idea if there is no action to develop it into a reality.
Likewise, I started taking small actions in my journey like posting my first ads, setting up my first chatbox, providing new service to the first customer, etc. It doesn’t matter how amateurs are your products or services.
Along the way, you would gain your experiences and results from your execution, create a strategy after that. Gradually, your results would become perfect. It is just a matter of time.
4) Fast action, fast result. Do not hesitate to take action.
The result comes from action. Making faster decisions would yield faster results regardless of good or bad results.
For example:
- When you foresee the company not sustaining the number of expenses starting the next quarter, you should have reduced the cost immediately by cutting down the workforce or other variable costs.
- When employees don’t perform in your organization after multiple guidance, or they are creating a toxic environment for the other co-workers, you might need to make a fast decision in getting rid of them for the sake of the company's future.
Note: The employee might not perform in your company, but it might perform better in another company! Plenty of opportunities out there.
5) Content Marketing is the THING.
Most people could be one of your possible customers, would like to know the development, values, vision, and progress of any company they are interested in working with. Hence, it is best to show more content about your company’s stories, behind-the-scenes situations online.
Imagine putting yourself in a customer's shoes; before you purchase a product or service from a company, you may check the reviews, videos, or any community on the social media platforms to find out if the products or services are good. In other words, making content would generate a sense of accountability and reliability of your company to the customers.
6) Personal branding > company branding.
I used to focus on building the company brand by advertising, being visible on company social media, and sponsoring events in the company's name.
The truth is, company branding is harder to build than personal branding. People tend to tie up a familiar face to a brand, for example, Apple (Steve Jobs), Tesla (Elon Musk), and Alibaba (Jack Ma). Branding yourself on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok by sharing tips, lessons, progress, experience related to your industry might yield greater attention compared to putting up your company's logo at the start.
7) Make sure all terms, agreements, arrangements in business are documented in black and white. Best to recognize by law.
In this world, undocumented promises are considered invalid.
There are a lot of different people in this world. You never knew who you are working with. It is best to have everything recorded to abide by the law. If anything goes wrong, there will be fast, square and fair resolution among the stakeholders.
8) You must love what you do and enjoy.
Work is life.
Entrepreneurship could take up most of your life to build one. You never know how long you will live on this earth. Remember to find joy at any stage of your entrepreneurial journey.
For example:
- Provide great value to your customers.
- Help your employees increase their standard of living.
- Explore new technology.
- Embrace failures and learn from them.
- Build your company branding.
9) Treat yourself better.
Yes, as an entrepreneur, taking care of our team is essential. Most of the time, entrepreneurs tend to reward the employees without putting themselves into the picture. It would be best to reward yourself with reasonable compensation like a bonus, gifts, and some trips between small successes to celebrate.
You are the heart of the business. It would help if you treated yourselves better, because employees may come and go, but you are the one that needs to lead this company for your whole life. Save cash flow for the company and own self instead of rewarding all of it to the employees.
10) Build a business system and process.
A country needs a system and process so that it can prosper and grow in harmony. The same goes for a company. Set up system and process for:
- Sales and marketing.
- Staff performance, onboarding, and appraisal.
- Operation standard operating procedure (SOP).
Business systems and processes serve as essential building blocks for automated business growth and stability.
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