I made it to a year in business: 3 lessons I learnt along the way

This Friday will mark 365 days to the day when I walked out of Nationwide Building Society’s head office for the final time to take the leap of faith of running my own business. Although, there have been many ups and downs plus many steep learning curves across the year, I’ve enjoyed every minute of it and have no regrets about my decision.

Here are the 3 key lessons I have learnt in my first year of entrepreneurship:

Lesson 1: You will make mistakes: Accept it, learn from it and evolve

I have made many mistakes in my first year! From doing Google ads before I was ready, to making deals which weren’t right for my business to not starting networking straight away. The biggest lesson has been to accept that I have made a mistake and that I will make more. Next, make sure I take a learning from each mistake I make and evolve so that I don’t make that mistake again.

For example, when I first started out my business, I started doing Google ads straight away and they did not work. I ended up wasting about £1,000 on them. The lesson I took away from it was that I didn’t understand my ideal client and I needed to develop a strategy in order to understand who is my ideal client, what are the best channels to reach them, what are their pain points. I would recommend writing this down whether it be with pen and paper or saved down on your laptop, so you can get it out of your head and then come up with actions to deliver on that strategy. It allowed me to think more clearly as well as prevented what I call “Sharks” looking to take advantage of me as I was new to running your own business. However, if you have a strategy in place for your marketing, sales, operations and finances then this reduces the risk of this issue happening.

Lesson 2: Network like your life depends on it!

This one has especially been true in my position where I came from working at Nationwide and my network I had built over the last ten years did not translate into the business I wanted to build working with small businesses. This meant that I had to build my network all over again. I’ve attended many different networking events but I believe I’ve now settled on a few networking groups which are going to help grow my business.

Whether that be people in my circle of influence such as bank managers, HR consultants, solicitors etc to people that can help my business such as marketing businesses, IT etc or people that may know my ideal client leading to a referral. This rule may not apply to everyone starting their own business but this has been one lesson that I have learnt which has improved my business the most even if it hasn’t led directly to sales yet because I now have a group of contacts that I know who could help me with any business problem, while also building potential strategic partnerships to scale my business.

Lesson 3: Behaviours of successful entrepreneurs

A few key behaviour traits I have noticed with successful entrepreneurs are not necessarily that they are the best at what they do and know everything from day one. The most successful people I’ve seen are the ones that have a curiosity to learn, are consistent and persistent so that success is almost inevitable.

This is something I have tried to incorporate into my own business, whether that be when I’m networking by being curious about other people and what they do or learning new systems and tools that can automate my business to be more efficient as well as help improve my client’s financial processes or when making social media content, making sure I am consistent with my message, tone, value provided to followers and consistency of posting once a week. As long as I maintain these behaviours, I believe that success, which to me means taking on more clients leading to more revenue and profit, will almost be inevitable.

If you’re thinking of setting up your own business one day, I hope you found this useful.

If you are a small business owner, I hope you were able to resonate with these lessons. What's the biggest lesson you've learnt running your own business? Comment below and let me know, I'd love to hear it.