31 Things I Learned From Running a Business

A few months ago, I was asked to give a talk to a group of University of Toronto engineering students who were interested in entrepreneurship. This is the list of “things I learned” that I presented to them and I think you’ll find it useful too – no matter if you’re just getting started or if you’ve been doing this for a while.

1. Have an exit strategy.

2. If you have a business partner, get a good buy/sell and shareholder’s agreement in place. Talk to a lawyer. Get it done right.

3. Get a good accountant and take the time to learn how accounting works. Take the time to really understand your books and how it all works, especially taxes.

4. When you hire vendors, trust them to do their job. You hired them for their expertise.

5. Don’t always go with the cheapest option, sometimes the cheapest can cost you a lot of cash down the road.

6. Document your processes like you’re going to be hit by a bus tomorrow. It’ll help if you end up selling the business later (or if you actually do get hit by a bus). You need to make it easy for someone else to do what you do.

7. Sadly, a good product will not market itself. You will need to market it. Bad marketing can ruin a good product.

8. Marketing isn’t like “Mad Men”. Be nice to people, be honest, give people the information they need to feel like they are making an informed decision.

9. Spell everything correctly. Use good grammar. Use a copywriter if your language skills are subpar, they’re worth it.

10. Explain how your product will help your customer. Do not talk about yourself and how awesome you are. Talk to your customer. Your product/service should help your customers feel more awesome.

11. If you make a mistake (and you will) be honest about what happened, apologise, promise that it won’t happen again, and then make whatever changes you need to so that it actually doesn’t happen again.

12. Be upfront about delivery dates. You will struggle with this. Everyone underestimates how long things take, especially in consulting.

13. Treat every customer like your first.

14. A bad customer can kill your business. If you can’t identify them before they sign on with you, figure out a way to have them go with a minimum of hurt feelings at the first availabile opportunity.

15. At networking events, listen more than you talk. If you think you might be talking too much, you are. Stop.

16. Get out there and meet people. If you’re an introvert (like me), I know it’s hard. Make goals for yourself – at this event, I will meet 5 new people. Find an extroverted friend who will start the introduction (that’s the hard part for me) and then let you have a conversation.

17. When you meet people, get their business cards. Enter them into a contact database (I use Highrise). Email them the day after you meet them and thank them for the connection, follow up on anything you discussed. Don’t put it off.

18. If you’re at a networking event and you meet someone interesting and say “we should go for coffee”, actually set that up! Nothing is more insincere than saying that and not following through.

19. Thank your customers regularly. Mean it.

20. You should always be doing business development, even if you’re so busy you’re not sure where you’ll find the time to fit it in.

21. When you’re marketing, don’t think in terms of numbers, think in terms of clients. For example, website traffic – you can have 5 million visitors who will never buy your stuff, or 50 visitors who will all buy your stuff. Sheer numbers of impressions will not sell your product.

22. Don’t write anything on the internet that you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see. Or worse, your customers.

23. Buy the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen and actually read it. That being said, don’t spend more time figuring out your productivity system than being productive.

24. If you’re sitting in your work space, not being productive but feeling like you should be there, go, do something else, come back later. Busy work isn’t productivity.

25. Set limits on how many hours you work in day. When you hit it, you’re done. Put down your work, come back tomorrow. If you leave your work in the middle of a task, it’s that much easier to get into it the next day.

26. Track your time – not in 15 minute increments, but write down what you do each day. Make sure you’re using your time wisely. Time is the most valuable resource you have.

27. Control your cash flow. Gross is not net.

28. You’re always learning, especially from your mistakes. Failure is good, it teaches you a lot.

29. Don’t burn your bridges, no matter how tempting it is. It’s a small world and you don’t know who somebody knows.

30. Don’t go outside of your business’s core competencies to make extra cash, no matter how tempting it is.

31. Be humble.