Advice from me (now) to me (then)

Posted 7 months ago at 1:25 pm. 0 comments

A year ago, things were a lot different for me. This past year has been a great learning experience. One of the best things that happened was the launch of Zen. Starting your own company can be difficult and everyone can use a little advice. If I were giving advice to myself a year ago, here are a few things I would say.

1. You have to think of everything as a learning experience. It just isn’t possible for everything to turn out exactly how you planned, so at the very least, learn from your mistakes (and the mistakes of others). Failing at something once is okay as long as you did the best you could with the knowledge you had.

2. Be smart about the risks that you take. In order to start your own business, you have to take some risks. It is all about knowing the limits of those risks and thinking about the pluses and minuses. Good risks require some thought and planning.

3. Work on diversifying your skill set. As an entrepreneur you are going to have to do a little of everything (whether you want to or not), so study up on the basics of accounting, marketing, etc. You just need to know enough up front to get the basics down and know where to look for the right answers when things come up.

4. Study up on the culture, expectations, norms, etc. of your customers because you need to know how to appeal to them.

5. Know your weaknesses. Everyone has them and it isn’t possible to be good at everything. What you need to do is make sure that someone else on your founding team can balance them out. That’s the key to building a good team.

6. Networking is really important, not only with those in your target market, but also with business people, other entrepreneurs, and anyone else that might be willing to open doors for you. The more people you meet, the more contacts you have to answer questions, mentor you, make introductions to others, etc.

7. Don’t waste your time doing things you don’t love. Focus on your passion and cut out the things that aren’t adding value to your life. This is important because if you really don’t care, you’ll end up content to be average and average is for losers. If you aren’t going to go all in on something, then there’s no point.

8. You have to be flexible and act quickly. This is one of the biggest things in my opinion. Issues you never thought about are going to come up and there’s only so much you can do to prevent them. When they come up you just have to work the problem.

9. Focus on planning and organizing the things that you can control. You don’t want to waste time re-organizing if you could have done it right the first time with a little extra effort.

10. Surround yourself with positive people. Being positive all the time is really hard, so you need someone there to pick you up when you are down (and someone you can motivate when they need it).

11. Don’t give up. Anything worth pursuing is going to be difficult.