3 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting My Small Business

I love being a small business owner. I have the freedom to make my own decisions, follow my own vision, develop an outstanding team, and make a difference in so many lives. This isn’t my first company, though – and although I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit, there are several things I wish I would have known years ago when I started my first small business.

I went into this journey more prepared than many; I grew up watching my mother run one of the first vineyards in Oregon Wine Country, and I helped in several ways as I got older. I also had my own entrepreneurial endeavors as a child and teen, and I loved the opportunities they offered.

As a young lawyer, and I quickly found out that there were a lot of things I didn’t know about running a business. . I had the tenacity and drive, and I was a really good attorney, but many of the logistics and details were things I didn’t even know to ask about.  Bottom line, law school sure didn’t prepare me for juggling all the “business duties”.

For a while, this was extremely challenging. I had a lot of sleepless nights, missed a lot of family events and vacations, and worked myself into burnout. The worst part was, for a long time I simply accepted this as “paying my dues” – doing what it took to run a successful business.

But one day, it finally hit me: that just wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. I didn’t become a lawyer so that I could spend every waking hour trying to keep the business running.

Something had to change. Eventually, I learned how to step into my role as CEO, become a good money manager, and build the strong systems my team needed, but that took a lot of time. If I’d known even some of those lessons from the start, I could have saved a lot of stress and become profitable much sooner. That’s why I’d like to share some of them with you!

Lesson 1: Build Your Business Plan

When I graduated from law school, I had a general plan of what I wanted to do, but I had no idea how to write a strong business plan. I thought that it had to be a long, drawn out process filled with numbers I didn’t understand – and that just didn’t seem like a great use of my time.

As I went along though, I noticed that things weren’t falling into my “general” plan. In fact, a lot of them were heading seriously off track. I was stressed and I was working 85+ hours a week for very little pay.

So, I started digging. I researched, I talked with coaches and other business owners, and I began to understand what a business plan really is. It doesn’t have to have all the charts, graphs, and forecasts; it needs to have your vision, your goals, and an outline of your strategy – how you plan to reach your goals in plain English!

Past that, it needs to be something you can update and revise on a quarterly basis. As much as I like to have a plan and follow it – and I teach all of my coaching clients to do the same – the plain reality is that things change. When they do, you have to be ready to adjust your plan and pivot.

Lesson 2: Become a Good Money Manager

A good CEO is a good money manager. There really isn’t a way to get around that fact. You will have your Financial Team to help you strategize and stay on top of the numbers, but at the end of the day, it’s up to you to use those numbers wisely.

You can’t do that if you don’t know what they are.

There’s a misconception that many people have: when you have money coming in, you’re profitable. Oh, how I wish this was true!

Profit is not the same as revenue, however, and money tends to go out as fast as (or faster than) it comes in. If you don’t keep a close eye on that, you can end up losing money, fast. And if you don’t know how to read and use your financial report, you might not even realize it’s happening.

This is why you need strong Financial Systems and a Financial Team who will support you in reaching your goals. I’ve been without both…and when I started my current company, they were two of the first things to be put in place.

Lesson 3: Build and Equip the Right Team

When you first start your business, you’re going to end up wearing a lot of the hats yourself. You’ll be your EA, your Marketing Assistant, your Billing Clerk, and your Client Happiness Coordinator. You’ll handle a lot (or all) of your sales and client service. On top of it all, you’ll be the CEO, COO, and pretty much every other position.

That’s sustainable for a little bit, but as you grow, you’ll need to start building your team. As your schedule starts to fill up more and more, you’ll likely look for anyone who can take the job – and when they start, you’ll likely have no idea how or what to delegate to them.

You’ll just want them to take things off your plate, yesterday if possible. (Yes, I’ve been there too.)

This isn’t a feasible plan, though. Put yourself in their position: it’s you first day at a new job, and you’re excited for the opportunity. When you get to your desk, however, you find that there’s no training materials, no onboarding schedule or employee manual, and your stressed-out boss wants you to take on a ton of tasks with very little direction.

Do you think you would be successful? I sure wouldn’t.

This is why you need to have a hiring strategy and at least your basic systems in place before you bring on team members. Your hiring strategy will determine who you’re looking for and what you can afford to pay them, and your systems will give you a way to clearly communicate expectations, processes, and any other details you’ll need your new employees to know.

It’s never too late to build your systems – we help multiple business owners do this every day – but it’s also never too early. You don’t have to build your entire systems manual at once, but when you’re intentional about getting started and building that foundation, your team will be much better equipped to help you grow!

If I could have told my younger self 3 things, they would have been:

1) write that business plan early on

2) be a good money manager and understand your numbers, and

3) build basic systems so you can bring people on to help you. 

I know how miserable life can be trying to do this all myself, which is why my team and I are so passionate about helping business owners get these key pieces in place so they can regain their free time and THRIVE!