My 5 Business and Career Learnings From 2022

1. Be the easiest person to deal with in the room, it will bring good things to you.

I must admit this one has stuck with me for a few years now, it was first highlighted to me by an old boss and good friend David Eccles. If your customers, partners and colleagues find you easy to deal with, you will be included in more projects, activities, events etc. and with that comes more opportunity.

You see this play out in all walks of life. There are thousands of examples of sports stars with all the talent in the world, but move from team to team as they are too hard to deal with and detract from the wider team morale. Cristiano Ronaldo’s recent move away from Man United being a recent example of this.

When someone is trying to identify a person to get involved in absolutely anything, being easy to deal with will naturally bring you to the front of their mind. It's a simple one but has always stuck with me.

2. Don’t underestimate the value of your product or service and discuss that value with your customers at every opportunity

This is a trap that many start-ups fall into, and some customers may try and exploit as “the new kid on the block”. This is especially true with complex products where the customer may only speak with you if there is a problem.

In 2022 I sat in on many meetings where a customer could spend a large amount of time putting forward ideas of how we could improve our product, which is always exceptionally valuable feedback to receive, but I found that this could blur the immense value Mr Yum brought to their business.

After taking the information on board, I was often astonished when I asked some follow up questions about what they loved about Mr Yum and what value the product was bringing to their business. They would tell me how:

• "Mr Yum has increased our revenue by 20% through higher average order values"
• "Our staff are so much happier, They have more time to provide an excellent customer service instead of writing down and entering orders"

It was epic to see business owners quickly shift focus on how the product had literally transformed their business at a financial and a human level. Your product and hard work have value. Don’t underestimate it.

3. When you identify a metric which supercharges business growth, go all in to crush it

There are literally thousands of data points, OKR's and KPI’s which startups use to track their business, this can become overwhelming and lead to apathy amongst your team. I’ve found that it's better to focus on a small?number of key metrics that you know have a huge positive impact.

“To find signals in data, we must learn to reduce the noise”. Stephen Few

Once you've discovered this metric/s go all in on putting resources, time and people into improving it. In 2022 it took us time to refine and identify this metric of metrics.

Since then, it’s been impressive to watch how multiple stakeholders and teams are laser focused on driving exponential growth by smashing this metric.

4. The value of getting to a text level with your customers/leads (When appropriate)

This is something I’ve always tried to do over the years and is especially important in any customer facing role. Again, it’s such a simple, but ridiculously effective way to develop a much deeper relationship with your clients (when done in the correct manner) that allows you to go beyond the ordinary company to company level you start out at.

Being able to send and receive texts accelerates a quicker level of trust and opens opportunities to add value or discuss a mutual interest when appropriate. Not to mention, people read text messages a hell of a lot more than emails (98% open rate).

If you aren't doing it already, try it and you will notice a much higher level of engagement, protect against churn and develop a stronger network for yourself. I enjoyed Gabe Larsen's deep dive on the matter.

5. The importance of building your personal brand (especially at a start-up)

Like a huge number of tech start-ups in 2022, Mr Yum was forced to make redundancies due to the drastic change to start-up capital raising.

It was surreal to watch exceptional operators lose their jobs; it became crystal clear that a redundancy can happen to anyone, at any time, whether you’re an entry level grad or a VP.

A strong personal brand within your current company can lead to greater visibility, recognition, and opportunities for advancement. Or as Jeff Bezos put it your personal brand is:

“what people say about you when you are not in the room".

Externally it can help you build a network of contacts and relationships within your industry, which can be valuable for finding new job opportunities if you are made redundant.

Your personal brand sticks with you whatever happens, or wherever you go, so get working on it in 2023 (I know I will ??).

I would love to hear what your learnings from 2022 were in the comments below ??