Taking the viewpoint of a business owner. Ive owned many businesses and I consult with hundreds more businesses. Ive picked up a lot from my time helping solve problems in business for myself and others.
Here are my Business Tips for Building a Successful Business
Hiding Your Success: This might sound like a strange tip for an article about how to be a successful business owner. Trust me when I say people are clueless and will grab onto anything and anyone that shows signs of success. This is more of a strategic play than anything else.
I’m often in rooms with CEO’s, C-Suite and advisor and the like. Big brains very successful and what I pick up is everyone is out big naming and bragging of success very vocal. I often don’t say much in the first meetings I listen and learn, make my notes and hypothesise on solutions.
Confidence & Insecurity: Everyone feels insecure at some point in their journey, this is natural. It’s the learning curve where you feel overwhelmed. Even now there’s times I feel imposter syndrome about what I do, I’ve done it a million times over, but that feeling creeps in the moment something didn’t go to plan. This happens and I go through a reassurance process to ground myself and get back on track.
The journey:
- Starting out you feel overwhelmed but get by on your energy.
- Operating for a couple of months now and understanding the market landscape.
- With some success, you feel more confident and start to get the hang of it.
- First ding where you take a hit and lose confidence, feeling those insecure feelings again.
- Rebound success is where you overcome the problem you really understand the market now.
- Success becomes business as usual, but you keep an open mind to problem-solving as a boss.
If you feel overwhelmed, seek out a coach, mentor or other business owners in your area or category. You are not the only one having these thoughts, everyone has them. Opening up about these insecurities, rather than trying to mask them with a brave face, is the key to managing those feelings.
Create your productivity space: Your environment is everything in getting things done. I try to keep a clean desk, with minimal items on my main working desk. You want to have good energy in your workspace, uncluttered and comfortable for you to do deep focus work.
There are a couple of ways for this
- Create your space for deep focus work
- Create a space for work that’s not your main space if you have space to do so
- Find a cafe, co working space or public space for times when you need to get out
I still get energized every morning as I get up and head into my office space at my home. Theres some electric about knowing what you will tackle for the day and having a space you enjoy that allows you to get things done. I love what I do and there’s no better feeling than that.
Build Owned Distribution Channels: Successful business time and time again are the ones that own their distribution channels and do not rely on the Googles, Facebooks and TikToks of the world. Owning your traffic source is vital to long term success, creating email lists, databases, and stores that you own.
Building your reliance on a platform that can lock you out, shut you down and feeds on your data is a risk.
Instead of selling on Amazon build your own store and keep the customer data, use Amazon as an ease of purchase channel only! do not push people to Amazon if you do not have to. The same with Facebook and Google, understand this and focus on your own channels of customer acquisition and you will be building a valuable business.
Create Lenses: You will need to wear multiple hats as a business owner. This also allows you the super power of seeing things from different perspectives. I tackle super challenging things in my job and I have so many “a-ha!” moments throughout the work week. Solutions may not seem simple when you are in the weeds, but switching perspective and using the lense of xx helps me see the solution options available to me. Try it yourself when you get stuck.
Effective Research: research & planning leads to success. Map out the journey A to Z of how you will get to the end goal. Note milestones and key events that will help propel you forwards. If you do not plan then you are planning to fail. I stumbled with this a bit when starting out, how do you know what the end looks like when you are just starting out. Its like asking a kid what they want to be when they grow up they do not know.
Truth is, no one has everything figured out. You do not need to have everything figured out, you can learn as you go. I would bet that once you are knee-deep in that pathway you will pick up some insights that you would never of been able to predict some of these things.
My advice:
- Embrace curiosity
- Test – Learn and Refine
- Hire people who are culturally aligned (if needed)
- Surround yourself with people of similar interests
Without an open mind as a business owner you will become stuck real fast. Its going to take a while for you to know where to point the compass and follow the path in that direction.
Know your goals: Freedom is the real goal. Once you’ve achieved a certain level of financial success, everything becomes about a quest for freedom. Being able to do what you want, when you want, with who you want is what everyone prizes above all else, but few have it.
Create Value Without an Ask: I believe if you create value without expecting anything in return that’s when you have the creator’s freedom and voice that people will recognise and follow. The money follows, as long as you are helpful and authentic, people will gravitate towards you if they vibe with you and your style.
Those were my 10 key takeaways from the event.
