5 Necessary Lessons My First Year as an Entrepreneur Taught Me. Things every new business owner should do and learn from.
The part where I give you a brief backstory so that the rest of the article makes sense
April 24th, 2017, I officially launched a company: ROX Jewelry. I had money saved up, a dream, and a burning desire to make a difference. I had all the drive, passion, and hope in the world. Today, I sit here knowing that I had imagined a thousand different ways my first year would have gone, and none of them came remotely close to the reality which unfolded.
My goal in writing this is to share some key knowledge that I've gained, which has been immensely important in my success over the past year. The hope is that by writing this, you won’t have to learn the lessons the same way I had to. This article originally started with 25 topics, however, for the sake of brevity, I have selected the 5 ideas which I believe are the most useful, and universally applicable across industries. These 5 ideas could easily compose of 5 separate blog posts, but again, for the sake of brevity, I have parsed them down to their most relevant and useful components.
1. What’s in a name? Quite a bit, actually.
You’re picking your name. You have one that comes into your head. Now what?
- Put the name (if not a common word, etc.) into google translate, make sure it’s not offensive to any group of people (aka limiting your market) Side note: I’d additionally advise that you urban dictionary it.
- Actually say the name out loud to a friend. Make sure that it doesn’t sound like another brand or word(s)
- See if the domain name is available (without some crazy stipulation that you have to give them a percentage of profit– yes, people do that).
- If there is another company that has the domain name you want, I’d urge not to choose that name. For example, I chose www.roxjewelryshop.com, I wanted roxjewelry.com, I couldn’t get it since it was another store’s name. I didn’t start getting to the top of landing pages on search engines for 8 months, and had to work my butt off to build brand recognition.
- See if the name is available on ALL of the social media platforms that you want to be on (instagram, pinterest, tumblr, twitter, facebook, etc.)
- Check trademarks for that name
- Check to see if the name of that company is available (LLC, inc, etc.)
If you’ve done all that, then you’re good to go.
2. Today, One Month, Three Months, Six Months, One Year
To do lists will likely end up becoming your new best friend… And you probably have a lot of great ideas. I felt that way too, but, it took me six months to realize I should have probably been thinking six months in advance to execute some of them. Hindsight is 20/20.
I’ll concede; organizing to-do lists may sound redundant, but stick with me here. You’re going to have great ideas that come up and you may want to act on them asap. I strongly suggest that before taking decisive action, you take a second to pause and see what the effect of shifting gears may have on your current goals. Next, assess the time this new idea will need. If the idea will be in line with your current goals, and you decide is a good use of your time, then act.
We’ve recognized the importance of setting goals, but how does one organize the tasks you need to do to achieve them?
After much trial and error, I suggest organizing your action items into lists based on Daily tasks, One Month Goals, Three Month Goals, Six Month Goals, and Yearly Goals. Keep them readily available on a google drive (or something equally as accessible) as separate documents so that when you have a new idea or inspiration on how to achieve a goal, you have an easy-to-find place where you can immediately write it down.
Setting up your daily to-do list
My daily to do list is split up in personal to-do’s (laundry, pay bills, etc) and business to-do’s. For the business ones, I look first at monthly goals, and add action items that will get me closer to them, then I do the same for the bigger lists. Keeping your daily tasks working towards big goals is immeasurably important.
NOTE: Try to keep you personal to-do list to have 20–40% of the items on your daily to-do list. It sounds like a lot, but this is how you get to have a life too (which is important for your health, living conditions, and sanity.) For example, every day on my personal to-do list I put read one chapter of a self-help book. Which leads us to our next point…
3. Mindset over Matter.
I had a professor in college that would yell at the top of his lungs “WAKE UP, THIS IS IMPORTANT!” right before he was about to cover something that would be a test question. In your first year of business, you will run into any number of ways that life will try to test you. Trust me–life can get reeeeal creative with this.
In the spirit of that professor, I’m going to tell you:
WAKE UP, THIS IS IMPORTANT!
Your mindset is arguably the most important thing to overcoming these obstacles and being successful. You will need to be resilient. Determined. Unwavering in your commitment to make this dream a reality.
I love these words by Winston Churchill: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
If you’re new to the world of self help and business literature, wondering how the heck you’re supposed to build up a mindset of steel, then you’ve stumbled upon the right place. The secret to doing this is actually super simple: Put the good stuff in. Every. Single. Day.
What’s the good stuff? That’s different for everyone, but it boils down to doing (at absoluteminimum) one thing each day that gets you really excited about your business and the life you’re creating.
Don’t know where to start?Download the free printable for this article on my blog. I’ve listed examples of possible things you can do. Scan the list, write down/circle/highlight the ones that speak to you, and do them. ACTUALLY DO THEM. You can thank me later.
Remember that to do list? Add it there. No excuses.
Think you don’t have enough time? Then keep reading.
Continue reading for a free printable of ways to get yourself excited about the business and life you're creating every day!
4. Time, and having enough of it.
As an entrepreneur, you’ll find that the easiest excuse is usually something about not having enough time in the day to do everything. It comes out as “I’m only one person how am I supposed to run a business, work out, and make time for self help…” yada yada yada…
For those of you who love to blame time, I have a story for you.
I fell trap to blaming time my first year. Then my lung collapsed. When that happened, I was the sole person operating my business. Pretty big blow, right? But, the business still ran. How? Well, that (finally) made me realize that it was not absolutely necessary that I was the only one doing everything. In fact, in many cases there was literally “an app for that,” (which I was conveniently ‘too busy’ to ever look for until then). I literally couldn’t do everything, and that’s when alternative ways of doing what I was doing became clear as day.
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to wait for s*** to hit the fan.
Here’s an exercise that you can use to “make” a ton of time.
- Look at your to do lists.
- Figure out what takes you a lot of time to do.
- Figure out if that’s a valuable use of time.
- Cut the unnecessary items.
- Cut the things that don’t align with your goals (personal and business).
- Find people who would love to do the things you don’t.
- Stay open to, and keep looking for, new ideas to increase effectiveness.
- If you need to hire someone, hire someone.
- If you need to replace video games with reading before bed, sell the console.
- If you need to wake up earlier and avoid traffic, stop hitting the snooze button.
Figure out how to make it work. Cut out the crap. Give up the excuses. Set the intention. Follow through.
I’m going to have the audacity to put into words something you won’t want to accept:If you “don’t have enough time” for something, then at least a small part of you (perhaps even a large part) doesn’t want to do it.
5. Say goodbye to your comfort zone.
It no longer exists. It cannot coexist with growth. Remove the idea from your internal filing cabinet. Risk is one of the many costs of doing business. It’s not always easy, it’s not comfortable, but once you make pushing out of your comfort zone a habit, the rewards are enormous.
Get ready for your to do list to be changed, get ready become a master at ‘crisis’ management, get ready for life to throw you a curveball. Get ready to kick some serious ass.
We are the only people capable of preventing our own growth.
