10 Things We Learnt In Our 1st Year As Business Owners

We can’t believe it is already a year since we pressed the green button…?

Beacon Business Commercial Services, our business, is one year old!

The definition of a business is the activity of making, buying, or selling goods or providing services in exchange for money, and although it’s quite simple, it’s not always straight forwards.

We both have a track record of delivering excellence and driving growth in our careers of 30+ years to date. We completed the paperwork, we finalised our business plan, we developed a service offering to cater for small and medium businesses, a sales process, a customer journey and a lead generation strategy.??We set up our website, emails, social media accounts, developed some branded templates, etc.?

On the 1st of April 2021 we launched our business… It took us a couple of weeks to be brave enough to publish on LinkedIn… we knew from that moment that “this is now real…”

However, we often describe our first two months in business as if “we were chasing our tails”. We knew what we needed to do, but we were lacking direction…?

The journey so far has been scary, frustrating, exhausting, fun and exciting. We’ve learnt so much, to adapt quickly, to take more risks and to be prepared to say no more times than we have done in the past, and we're enjoying every minute.

Reflecting on the last 12 months, these are the things we’ve learnt.

#1 - Stay Focused

"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones."-Confucius.

Did you ever complaint about the senior management in your organisation who didn’t give time to new initiatives to produce the results and they moved on because the competition was doing something different?

Well, when you are under pressure to achieve results and uncertainty is all around you, it’s is so easy to fall into that trap.

Once we got our head around what we wanted to do and what we needed to do, we set ourselves only one objective for the year ahead.

Increase visibility & credibility

Yeah, we didn’t focus on profitability, selling or the commercial return of our actions. We decided to play the Long Game. Developing our network, showing our expertise and how we can add value would help us build momentum.?

Staying focused on our main objective, helped us when getting customers felt elusive and our self-confidence was a bit shaken.

#2 - Consistency is Essential

How does it feel when you spend hours preparing deliver a 30 minute webinar and when on the day of the event, only one of the registered attendees turned up??

Yep, you wonder… should I bother putting so much time and effort into the preparation? Next one, should I ramble on for 15 minutes about the weekend, deliver 10 minutes of well recycled content and use the last 30 minutes to sell our service? Or just simply give up…

“We are what we consistently do, Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle

Aristotle is right, Excellence is a habit, and yes, we’ll keep organising more webinars and we will continue delivering high quality content and we will tweak it every time based on attendees’ feedback, and we will continue delivering excellence in what we do, because put simply, that's what we do.

#3 - Focus on things you can control

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”—?Viktor E. Frankl

We’ve all been here, worrying about the things we can’t control (the pandemic, war, the financial crisis, the weather, other people’s opinion, etc.) However, when you decide that you will focus on the things you can control, you’ll start every day with on the right way.

Things we can control:?

• Our attitudes
• Our opinions
• Our efforts
• Our actions
• Our thoughts
• Our view of ourselves
• Our work ethic
• Our schedule
• How we treat others

#5 - Networking is not optional

“The currency of real networking is not greed but generosity” Keith Ferrazzi

We’ve mentioned this topic on multiple occasions. Networking is not optional, it seems it never has been but somehow not everyone is / was aware.

Despite the rapid acceleration of digital transformation that occurred in the early months of Lockdown, there are four realities of business that didn’t changed.

·??????People do business with people they know, like and trust

·??????Business does not just come in; it must be gone after

·??????If you are not asking your customer for business, your competitor is

·??????People who don’t know you won’t refer you

Since moving back to Ireland at the end of 2020 and setting up our business in April 2021, much of our time has been spent establishing our network.?We knew that in order to build life and a business in a new country, one of the foundation stones would be having a strong network. Although on paper we did, at least if you looked at LinkedIn we did, both of us had well over 1,000 connections, the reality is that building a meaningful network takes time, effort and consistency. Yes, proximity bias is also a thing when you talk about networking.

Our approach is quite simple,?Focus on learning, easier to ask someone about themselves than to talk about us. Identify common interests, Think broadly about what you can give and?find a higher purpose, in our case, we want to grow roots in Ireland.

#6 - It’s not personal

It’s difficult when that person ignores your contact request, when in a networking event, someone turns her/his back to you, when your email is not answered or your help request is forgotten.

You poured your soul and heart in everything you do. You know, other people benefit from your knowledge. You are passionate and believe in the results they will get in 6 months, 2 years, 5 years’ time after working with you.

How are you not going to take it personally?

Well, we should not. Because it’s not.?

But we do…

So when that happens, we just simple go back to review our #3 learning and keep going.

#7 – Don’t give up

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” Dale Carnegie

You are consistently doing what you’ve set to do, it has brought positive results for you, your customers but lately it’s not gathering the momentum you expected.?

You wake up in the morning, after a terrible night sleep and it’s raining and cold and dark… and internet is gone… and 1 hour later… electricity is also gone.

And you think “Seriously?!"

We’ve also been here, once we had to cancel four Zoom calls and we’ve never managed to reschedule three of them. Sometimes it makes you think, would it be easier to just join another multinational and focus on coaching a team??

Luckily for us, we are business and life partners, you know, if one goes into the dark tunnel the other will pull you back to the sunny side, kicking and screaming if necessary.?

We’ll talk about the problem, we’ll focus on the things we can control, we’ll review our goal and our plan and maybe we’ll go for an extra long walk or run or breakfast.

But the few times the thought of giving up crossed our minds, it quickly disappears. We know which our higher purpose is and we are here for the Long Game.

#8 – Ask for help

“Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new.” Barack Obama?

Since starting our business, we constantly reach out to our connections from our previous professional lives either for advice, to learn something new, bounce ideas or simply to provide them with a referral.

As many of you, we are not too good on asking for help, although we know their support could mean a big break for us. This is one of the areas we need to improve and we’ll definitely will be more direct on asking for your help.

#9 – Keep Calm

“You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.”?—Timber Hawkeye

Yes, we also learnt that breathing in and holding your breath for 4 seconds, not only work for meditation but also as a business tactic. It reduces arguments, misunderstandings and bad feelings.

#10 – Celebrate The Small Wins

And yes, celebrate the wins for small that they seem. The first webinar, the 1st?prospect call, the 1st?invoice, the 1st?paid invoice, the 1st?recommendation, etc. etc.?

Every evening we look for the positives of the day and write them down to read them at the end of the year. When you focus on the positives and you are thankful for your blessings, things will only get better.

We know we are at the beginning of our journey, but we’re already part of the businesses who made it to their first year, so that’s something to celebrate!

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."?--Mark Twain