Things I Wish I Had Known Before Becoming a "Young Entrepreneur".

In the modern age of business, social media is more inextricably tied to business than ever. From this, a new era of "young entrepreneurs" can be seen posting about all of the successes and luxuries that their forays into the world of business have afforded them. You know exactly what I'm talking about, nice cars, beautiful offices and meetings in high-flying locations.

Seeing this and starting my own business for the first time at nineteen years of age, I immediately thought that this was the level that I needed to get to within a couple of years for myself to truly see myself as a success. It's only now that I have eclipsed the age of twenty-one, personally experienced the business world on the level of a business-owner and learnt about the fallacy of social media that I feel differently.

Of course, you need to aim high and hope to achieve great success in a short amount of time. These hopes and aims can serve as a powerful motivating force to help you achieve great heights. Although, you need to temper this by having realistic expectations of yourself and the world around you. I had great plans for my business this year, however, COVID-19 caused me to rethink my timescales.

These are some of the things that I wish I had known before becoming a young entrepreneur.

You Should Learn From Someone With Experience

This is one of the things that I quite, fortunately, fell into. Before striking out on my own and attempting to make a business work, I worked under the tutelage of two individuals who greatly influenced my growth as both a person and a business owner. These are people that I still speak with regularly and I will always seek their counsel when stumped on certain issues.

You don't want to learn from someone that will never challenge your ideas or creations, as you will be unlikely to improve. Rather, you want to learn from someone that will be consistently honest about their opinions of your efforts and will give you advice on how to improve certain aspects of your operations.

You can reach out to people for mentoring in a variety of ways, firstly, LinkedIn as you already know is the premier platform for connecting with individuals in a variety of sectors and messaging people to ask for mentoring is not a bad idea, so long as you are polite and accept rejection well. There are also a number of websites which promote getting business people in touch with mentors.

You Need To Brush Up On Your Business Knowledge

One of the first things that I quickly realised when starting my first business, WriteEasy Ltd was that despite the fact that I had the necessary talent and skill to offer a great service for copywriting, my overall knowledge of the business environment was lacking. I didn't know the best avenues to get sales for my business and navigating the way business tax worked was like a minefield for me.

This quickly made me realise that I had to learn as much as I could about the way businesses operated and to supplement the vocational knowledge I was gaining, I enrolled on a BA (Hons) Business course to provide more theoretical knowledge to underpin my general understanding of the business environment. Eventually, things began to make more sense very quickly and I found myself thinking of realistic and creative ideas for my business, which eventually led to me creating my second business, Driven Media Solutions Ltd.

That's not to say that you need to go and get a degree to learn about business, this is far from the truth. Enrolling on a degree programme was simply the best route for me to do this. There are a variety of short-courses and other learning materials that can be accessed to help supplement your knowledge. It is also important to remember that learning is a never-ending marathon rather than a sprint.

Understand The Sacrifices You Will Be Making

This is one of those things that everyone seems to know before they get started in the business world, I was very much the same. Despite this, understanding these sacrifices is very different from simply knowing that they will exist. I experienced many late nights and even more early mornings, I had to rearrange plans that I had previously made to fit around my clients and generally speaking, my schedule was incredibly hectic.

I remember one particular time where I was working with a client that I got on very well with and we had done a considerable amount of work together. One day, I was moving house and was unavailable for the whole day; this client got in touch with me and said that they needed me to write content for a number of different landing pages. Once I had advised them that I was unavailable for the day, but would immediately work on it the following day, I was instantly dropped by them and we never worked together again.

This is one example of the sacrifices that you will be making and sometimes you will be expected to do things that throw your personal life into disarray from time to time. One thing that I have learned, however, is that you should always temper these sacrifices with your own needs, work hard, but don't burn yourself out by taking on too much and being eager to please.

Your Journey Is Different To Everyone Else's

This is a very powerful thing that I wish I had learned much earlier on. As previously stated, social media has given new business owners the opportunity to flash their success and achievements to the world at large, including you. It can be very easy to see these successes and compare yourself to these people, especially if you are struggling or haven't hit what you want to achieve yet.

The worst thing you can do is compare yourself to those on social media. Firstly, there is no guarantee that these people are actually doing as well as they claim; a photo in Canary Wharf could simply be from a one-off event, rather than being the norm for that person and that Lamborghini could easily be a hire car.

Don't be jealous of the success of others, you can use their perceived success as motivation to reach that level, however, you must also understand that everyone's entrepreneurial journey is different and yours will follow its own path, leading you to your own success in your own time, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to get there, so long as you don't stop.

Networking Is Critical To Success

As the old adage goes, "it's not what you know, it's whom you know". I didn't truly understand the veracity of this statement until I spoke with a friend of mine who owns his business and realised how many of his sales had come from referrals from his own clients and people he had previously worked with. He built up real friendships and relationships with these people, which resulted in greater sales for his business.

This is just one example of how networking is critical to your success. There are other reasons for the importance of networking aside from gaining sales, you can gain valuable knowledge from the individuals that you meet and you may even gain future business partners for other endeavours; the possibilities are honestly, endless.

You can begin networking in a number of different ways, there are specific websites that advertise events such as business networking and the likelihood is there is one local to you. Furthermore, simply putting out posts on LinkedIn and getting actively involved in conversations on the platform can be a great way of introducing yourself to new people and getting new ideas.

Conclusion

Those are some pieces of advice that I wish I had access to before becoming a young entrepreneur, hopefully, they help you understand the importance of working at your own pace. Your time will come, you just have to continue to work hard and take advantage of the opportunities around you, without needlessly comparing yourself to others.

There will be naysayers who put you down and will tell you to get a real job, they may even be your family and your friends, but those before you who were also successful were so because they disregarded that line of thinking and decided to try and to do something more. You should too.

I wish you every success!