8 Things I Learned Running a Small Business This Year
The past year could be described using a variety of adjectives: quick, challenging, rewarding, educational, communicative, stressful, and in it of itself, unique!
For the past 22 months, I have been running my small business, Sean Miller Media (SMM), and it has taken several different forms. Sometimes, I was able to commit 0 hours a week to SMM.
Other times, it felt more like 60+ hours a week (weekends are supposed to be off time, right?), but more often than not, my time commitment fell somewhere in-between.
As I reflect on my year, which consisted of participating in 2 internships with Northwestern Mutual and Main Place Real Estate, working out 4-5 times every week, competing on a college baseball team, spending time hanging out with friends and family, and of course, running the business, I picked out 8 things that I learned specifically from running my business that I’d like to share today!
1. Managing and supervising employees is NOT a part of the job, but a job itself.
Never in a million years would I have guessed that I’d be managing employees as a 20-year-old student-athlete & business owner, and nevertheless, it happened on a whim!
One night in early June, I had finished client work and was scrolling through LinkedIn looking for potential clients. After aimlessly clicking for some time, I found that the platform offered free job postings!
What the heck? Let’s try it out!
I posted a position through my Sean Miller Media business page titled Digital Media Marketing Intern. LinkedIn advised me that my job posting was only expected to get 7 applications over a 30-day window.?
That could not have been further from the truth!
I received 64 applications in just under 5 days! LinkedIn Talent Solutions is THE BEST!
Here’s the proof:
Looking back on it, I should’ve been nothing short of excited! 64 unique applicants wanted to work for my company! However, I was plainly intimidated.
Long story short, I hired a part-time intern for the remainder of the summer who I could not be more complimentary of. She was excellent!
What I quickly learned after on-boarding her was that I not only had to ensure that client projects were being fulfilled to the standard I was satisfied with, but I also had to ensure that my intern was provided with tasks to complete.
I took a quote I heard from Gary Vee , serial entrepreneur and public figure, on his advice to leaders and managers :
“This one is hard for a lot of leaders to understand. Most new managers think that becoming a manager is the ‘graduation.’ Truth is, it’s the reverse. Leaders work for their employees.”
I quickly found out that there is a right and wrong way to manage people. I plan to get into the weeds with this in a future post, but for now I’ll keep it short:
2. Working in and on your business is a consistent and necessary struggle to attain success.
As with many of these so-called “insights,” it’s not that I didn’t know of them, but rather something that was expanded from a previous understanding.
This second point is the perfect example. Ever since starting my business, I had to balance client projects that pay versus internal business projects that didn’t have an upfront monetary aspect.
Many times over the past year, I’ve found myself saying, “If clients are going to pay for projects, why would I spend the time to develop my business?”
While this had some level of validity from a profit-driven perspective, I found myself in an infinite loop: client outreach – contract – fulfillment – repeat!
Unfortunately, when it was just me (in the midst of balancing multiple responsibilities nonetheless), only one step of the loop was completed at a time!
This meant I was EITHER working in my business on active projects or working on my business by trying to attract new clients or projects, not both! Which meant there was always time in-between projects!
In order to fix this problem, I had to understand that the problem was not about my business, but about my mentality as a leader.
Business management encompasses client outreach, business development, and project fulfillment, and I had to understand the following 3 choices:
Realistically, the outcome, as well as the initial problem, was all up to me as the leader.
3. Managing expectations internally and externally has a heavy time-price initially but an exponential payoff long term.
Prior to this year, I didn’t have a process. If someone wanted a video, I would let them tell me what they wanted, and then I would replicate it to the best of my ability.
I didn’t consider if the video was something that would benefit the client’s goals. I didn’t know how much it would cost to produce the final product. Honestly, I didn’t even know if I had the equipment to complete the job!?
This didn’t mean that I wasn’t working hard for my clients, but it did show me that I needed to understand where I was at as a business and where my value proposition rested.?
I established 2 business practices this summer that have carried my business to a higher level of success than any former period:
The business practices allow us to treat all of our clients with equal respect and efficiency, while creating products to achieve success!
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4. Clients of service-based small businesses buy into the person over the product, and this isn’t going to change!
As I expanded my business into a full digital media marketing company over the summer, I considered changing the name. I kept telling myself that changing the name would make me sound more professional, or potentially wash out the fact that I am still a college student.
I ended up deciding against that, and there was a specific reason why…
I want my name on the product!
I want clients to know and enjoy doing business with me, rather than with a company that I run. There are several companies who are larger than I ever want to be.
The reason business owners, non-profit leaders, and other clients choose to work with me is ultimately because they like and trust me to complete digital marketing work to promote their brand!
Although I do want to continue to grow the business and help more leaders with their business endeavors, I don’t foresee wanting to be large enough to have others meeting on my behalf for the discovery process.
I want my existing and future clients to continue to interact with me, ask me questions, and form a relationship with me!
And the truth is… I don’t see this changing. Even as the combination of the pandemic and technology have disrupted the way consumers view and interact with small businesses in local markets, behaviors haven’t shifted away from trusting in people.
5. Work/life balance doesn’t exist, but a work/life relationship has to.
Perhaps the biggest thing I’ve learned this year is that defining your working hours is vitally important to avoiding burnout.?
These hours, however, don’t necessarily need to be contiguous.
Balancing 19-credits, playing a sport, working two internships, and running/managing my business was undeniably time consuming.
I quickly learned how to adapt and make slim amounts of work time productive. Sometimes this meant squeezing in an important email on a 15-minute break, while oftentimes it meant combining early mornings with late nights.
In doing this, I learned that having an expectation of not bringing work home is an outdated definition of work/life balance.
It’s far more important to have the work/life harmony to balance pleasure and work (and yes, it is truly a balancing act).
A side note… If I had to bet, this is also the way I see the corporate world turning nationwide. If 8 hours is the expectation, why can’t you work 5-6 hours during the day (reserved meeting & office time) and 2-3 hours during the evening after family festivities have died down (individual work/emails/etc.)??
6. Sometimes, it takes turning away or putting off good ideas to build something great/better.
Over the course of this year, I wrote down over 15 ideas for potential new business.?
All of them, I think, were good ideas.?
Unfortunately, there was a hard truth that I needed to accept for these ideas: someone needed to take them from idea to reality (or at least test the feasibility) and that person couldn’t be me… yet.
In order to continue to build my business, I needed to dedicate time towards that and avoid taking on? new challenges.?
In other words, I had to say no. I had to recognize that the short-term excitement of new projects would quickly fade, and that I would be responsible for the success of each venture I decided to take on (balancing my work/life relationship, if you will).
And that takes TIME!
7. Organization and failures to communicate are the root of all problems!
This one is simple, but true.?
When I was starting out, I didn’t need to organize because I could keep track of all my tasks on a paper to-do list.
As work grew, I even had the genius idea of taking a picture of my paper to-do list, so I had a “mobile” copy. (I know… groundbreaking!)
I quickly got to the point of no return and had to make a change. I started using a service called AirTable (they run on a very generous freemium model).?
I really enjoy how the platform integrates with other services, including Slack and the G-Suite and its simultaneous user support!
There are a ton of organizational tools and management software to use, and as of recently, I’ve also been looking for alternatives to test in 2022!?
My best suggestion is to start early, be diligent, and find a tool that works well for you. It doesn’t have to be the best option up front but starting early is always better than having to catch up later.
I have another story on communication, but I think I will save that one for next year!
8. I love every minute of it!
Last, but not least, I will say that I love running a business!?
It’s taught me things that I simply would not have experienced in the classroom.
I like to make impactful decisions, create intriguing projects, and provide opportunities to my employees.
The entrepreneurial experience is stressful, challenging, exhausting, impactful, motivating, and fun!
I can’t wait to continue learning and growing both myself and my business in 2022. There are very exciting times ahead!