Get my free New Biz Jumpstart Kit!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nLesson 4: Mistakes are only as good as the lessons that you learned from them<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The fourth lesson I’ve learned starting a new business is that mistakes are only as good as the lessons that you learned from them. They often say that done is better than perfect. And it’s true. Launching is always better than just sitting on your hands, trying to create something perfect. The reality is that you’re never going to get customer feedback until you actually launch. And inevitably, you’re going to make mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Something that I’ve found is that it’s honestly fine to make these mistakes. It’s you trying something new for the first time and learning about what makes a really great customer experience. However, if you keep making these mistakes, then your business is never going to grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back when I ran a college admissions business, a mistake that I made early on was by selling packages of credits. Pretty much the concept was that students could always use these credits and flexibly for help in their college admissions essays. The big problem came when every single student essentially hoarded their credits until a week or two before the application deadline. So as a result, the two of us were essentially heads down, just editing essays, nonstop, and working with our clients in order to make sure that we met their respective deadlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was something though where we wouldn’t have understood that everybody was going to do this customer behavior. We first came out with that concept of credits. We were super naive and thought that students are going to be proactive in their application process and use these credits steadily throughout the fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Boy, we were wrong. Needless to say, we learn from this mistake and we adapted our models that we no longer offered credits with the next batch of applicants after the early application deadline. It’s okay if you make mistakes, as long as you’re learning from them. But if you’re not learning, then you’re not growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lesson 5: What your customers experience is ultimately what’s most important<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The fifth lesson I’ve learned, is that what your customers experience is ultimately what’s most important. Whenever I’ve started a business, I’ve always had a plethora of advice provided to me as to what I should be doing. There’s always two big reactions when it comes to starting a business, either people are super excited for you or they have some sort of unsolicited feedback that they want to give you about your particular idea. Sometimes the advice is good, but oftentimes it’s bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Either way, ultimately, what I’ve learned is that it really doesn’t matter what anybody tells you when it comes to this sort of advice. And the reason why is because these people are often just part of your bubble and they’re not actually part of your ideal customer profile or your ICP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until you understand the actual customer that you’re aiming to build your business around, it doesn’t really matter what all the people around you are saying about your business idea. Taking this a step further, sometimes when your customer tells you they want and what they actually want are fundamentally different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Notice how I said this lesson was all about what your customers actually experienced that matters. Make sure you listen and watch what your customers tend to like. It’s those companies that always obsess about their customers that ultimately build sustained value that leads to more sales and more customers in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big takeaways<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
There are two big takeaways that I want you to remember when it comes to the five lessons that I’ve learned in starting a new business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
- The first one is that when you start a new business, everybody’s going to try to sell you something. So do your own research.<\/li>
- The second thing to remember is that standard operating procedures keep you sane. If you don’t map it out for somebody else in an SOP, then you should have no expectation that they’ll be able to do that particular task for you the way that you would actually like.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
And if you have nobody else helping you out on your business, and you’re simply a jack of all trades, that’s stuck working in your business as opposed to on your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you’re just getting started with your business and still trying to nail down what you’re selling, how you’re selling it more, feel free to get my new business jumpstart kit in which I provide you with 15 questions that you can ask yourself to help you get started with your business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you found this article helpful, be sure to check out my YouTube channel<\/a> to get new videos every single week I’ll help take you from zero to self-starter as you grow your business, get more customers, and hone your business acumen. Also, feel free to share it with anybody else that you know is thinking about starting a business and wants to avoid making some costly mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the next article, I’m going to share how I started a business as a teenager and some of the lessons I learned there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n