16 Things I wished I’d known when I started my business

 
Hurray! Project Complete is 1 year old! My mini business, which I’ve grown from nothing, has reached this significant milestone. I’m not going to say it’s been easy, it hasn’t and it still isn’t. But I’m still here and more determined than ever to make it a success.
 
One of the activities you do as a Project Manager is an exercise called ‘Learning Reviews’. What are 'Learning Reviews' you ask?
 
They are a Knowledge Management exercise all about:

• Recording what worked, learning from it and repeating it in the future
• Recording what didn’t work so well, learning from it and NOT repeating it in the future

 
Here are my learnings, from my first year running my own business and I’m sharing them with you. Hope you find them useful and slightly amusing!

1. Don’t expect your family to understand what you are doing. In their minds if you are not sat in an office all day getting paid every month, they think you are not really working.  
2. Working for yourself, is the best thing ever! I just love the freedom it gives me.
3. Working for yourself is like a roller-coaster. There are lots of ups and downs and it’s fun and scary all at the same time.
4. Being able to choose when to work and what to work on, will give you the best rewards in life.
5. Getting work is hard……much, much harder than you think it will be!
6. You will get most work from either people you know or people they know.  Strangely often from people you don’t know very well. So make sure you keep in touch with everyone you know and let them know what you’re doing and keep updating them.
7. Getting work will give you a BIG buzz.
8. Doing the work will give you an even BIGGER BUUZZZZZZZZ.
9. You need to be a jack-of-all-trades: marketeer, accountant, sales person etc. etc.  But if you only learn 1 of these, learn marketing!
10. Marketing is the most important skill to have. It’s even more important than what you do. If you’re not good at marketing, people won’t know you’re there and you won’t get a chance to do what you do!!!
11. Social marketing is where it’s all at. You will need to become an expert at social marketing!
12. You can’t do ALL social media; it will take over your life! Concentrate on the social media where your customers hang out.
13. You need to get good at learning new tools. There are lots to learn: Twitter, Facebook for business, Mailchimp, LinkedIn, writing blogs, creating & maintaining a website, Canva for images, Trello to organise your work. This is without Instagram, Pinterest, Evernote, etc.etc.
14. It takes a long time to get established or where you want to be. Much, much longer than you plan or expect. Patience is a virtue!
15. Things will change, your ideas will change but that’s all fine. Adapting is good, it just means you’ve moved on.
16. But mainly….Don’t give up – the rewards are huge!

 
I picked out the above 16 points by doing a ‘Learning Review’ exercise on what I’ve learned in the past year from starting my business, Project Complete.
 
Want to know more about Learning Reviews and how to extract lessons from any aspect of your business and how you can use them to grow your business and do things better?

I want to know more about Learning Reviews