3 Key Lessons From Jumping Into My Business Full-Time.
Conversations with your closest loved ones are never to be taken lightly, especially when those conversations provoke thought, provoke insight and provide clarity.
Recently, after conversing with my brother and significant other, it dawned upon me that I have not quite found my niche — niche in life and niche in career. While I am not one to want to work for someone else (because there’s a sense of freedom to create, act and execute to your own song), I continue to understand that practicality reigns supreme.
I took the risk to jump full-time into my venture in 2018. With open eyes, a focused mind and an optimistic outlook, I dove in. It’s been one of the greatest experiences possible — yet, I failed.
It’s hard to admit that publicly, harder still to admit that to myself. It was hard because it hits the very core of what you sought, what you believe. The “failure” was rooted in our lack of ability to make our major revenue service flexible enough for us to be remote, along with not focusing on one specific service, but shifting too early to a full-service business. This combination led to a drastic decrease in client acquisition once I left Canada.
Yet, there may still be a silver lining in all of it.
Both confidants enabled me to voice my concerns, my fears, my stresses and my confusion. And while this wasn’t my first business venture, it was the one that I believed would set me up to do more.
My latest failure may still prove vital in years to come, as there are benefits that have come about from diving in, from failing and from picking up the pieces.
LEARNED A SKILLSET.
All education is not created equal. Sure, we all go through our lives being educated in some way or form. If you grew up on the streets, your education, while not formal, can be vital to life stills. In school, it may be specializing in some industry, like medicine or law. There are others who are educated to learn skills — hard skills that are as important as they are difficult.
Diving into my latest venture full-time allowed me to get out the office, get away from the mundane educated guessing about marketing and customer segments, and move into the streets, where I have real conversations with real people, conducting real market research. It allowed me to build a repertoire for interviewing and asking the right questions to find out the hidden and most often subdued problems surrounding my clients and audience.
It allowed me to learn a hard skillset of video content creation and marketing campaign execution. Being full-time enabled me to understand the full process from ideation to execution and follow-up. It taught me how to create content with the end-user in mind — without glamor or all the bells and whistles.
UNDERSTOOD WHICH INDUSTRIES BROUGHT ENJOYMENT.
While I tremendously enjoy the marketing process, the truth is that not all marketing is done the same way in all industries. Working with multiple small businesses within certain industries, it’s allowed me to understand some of the challenges that they encounter, and also gave insight into how the marketing process may be.
The way we market for fitness customers would be completely different to manufacturing or real estate.
The benefit of knowing which industries are interesting allows me to focus my next venture, project or job search in an industry that makes me smile. It also enables me to focus my expertise and interest to get to know this specific industry better than serving multiple customers across the board.
KNOWLEDGE THAT TIME AND EXPERIENCE COUNT MORE THAN EDUCATION.
I, by societies standards, can be counted as educated. With a Masters and Bachelors degree, I can be seen as accomplished. Yet, through the experience of my ventures, be it this one or my previous fails, I’ve come to understand more than most that (formal) education is a very small part of the process if a part of this particular process at all.
Experience and timing count for more in today’s market than anything else. Not everyone will be an automatic success. Maybe you started your business in 2012, but the market wasn’t ready for what you offered until 2018. Maybe you haven’t quite niched well enough. Maybe your experience needs to be honed more. Maybe your knowledge of the market is incomplete.
Experience and timing have helped with every decision I’ve made, and the lack of it has also hurt.
These 3 lessons have given me a better perspective about myself, enabled me to learn new things and develop new skills and knowledge, and could save me from making time-consuming and unfocused opportunities later in my life. Before you take the plunge, make sure that you’ll set yourself up to go the distance, whether in knowledge, skill, or passion (determination and perseverance really).
