5 ways to improve your business experience
7 Jan
As a small business owner / entreprenuer who dropped out of my first semester at University, a huge majority of the choices and decisions I make are based purely on hands on experience. Which inadvertently means that I learn lessons the hard way, i.e, try something, hope hard, work hard and then watch it fail right infront of your eyes.
As they say, experience is the best teacher, because once you’ve failed miserably at something, especially due to a certain level of ignorance on what you’re dealing with, you’ll never repeat that mistake again. The saddest thing is to watch someone repeat the same mistake over and over again. It’s like a fly trying to get through a window and it just keeps hitting the glass and trying over and over again, sometimes until it dies.
You’re more intelligent than that.
If you’re a small business owner, and you find yourself constantly making mistakes that cost you, you might want to work on filling those gaps.
So how do you make up for your deficiencies in experience? How do you find ways of learning that which would either be too painful, or too expensive to learn the hard way?
Here’s my take on five ways you can do that.
1. Learn the old school way.
If you don’t have much cash or time, there are lots of small courses you can take to help you cover your weak skill areas. I have a friend learning Project Management to help him with his firm. There are also lots of seminars around town that offer short discourses from professionals and businessmen. The most common are organised by British Council.
If you have time and money, signing up for a proper university course in Business Administration or Marketing or Human Resource Management can be a big boost to your corporation or firm.
2. Learn from people around you or get mentors.
Mentors
Mentors can be a big help. Especially if they’re willing to give their time for free. They are invaluable for the experience and advice they give. Most genuine mentors are more interested in seeing you grow rather than bleeding you dry of your hard earned cash. Genuine ones can be hard to find, but if you do, cling to them, but respect them, remember that they have lives and business interests outside of the help they’re offering you. And reward them, mostly by taking their advice seriously and succeeding.
Friends and Family
Some people around you may not necessarily be mentors, but friends who can be extremely useful. You may have a friend who is a lawyer. Such a person can give brilliant legal advice. Others may be people in marketing, business development or sales. They may help you for free or may charge a small fee. Either way, they can help you get out of a tight situation when you cannot afford the services of a professional firm.
Do not abuse this privilege.
3. Read. Read. Read.
This is my favourite. For anyone in business, I cannot stress the importance of reading. There is technically no limit to the amount of information your brain can absorb, so why not take advantage of it?
The internet
The single biggest source of readily available content in the world is the internet. There are literally millions and millions of pages and resources online that are available at no cost. Learning how to filter the signal (true content) from noise (useless commercial dribble) can be the hard part. Find a good site and bookmark it, or subscribe to its RSS feed. There are hundreds of intelligent websites, discussions and blogs on business, management, innovation and leadership that will keep you occupied for years.
Some of these sites also provide podcasts for you to download and listen to at your leisure.
I’ll organise and publish a list of some of my favourite business sites in a later post.
Books
There are millions of books out there that can give invaluable advice on practically anything you’re interested in. Again, filtering signal from noise should be a priority as this option will cost you a substantial amount of money. Do research and read reviews online to make sure you’re getting the right book that’s respected by Industry leaders.
4. Hire the right people.
As much as there is no limit to what you can learn, there is a very real limit to how much you can actually do. Being a jack of all trades and master of none can be detrimental to your business.
This is where you take a seemingly more expensive route by hiring the right people. An accountant, marketer or human resource person can be a bigger asset than you initially think. If you cannot afford a full time staff member, either outsource your needs to a freelancer or hire someone part time, like an accountant who comes in once a week or once a month to look through your books.
By relieving you of the tasks you’re weak at, they boost your firm’s professionalism and improve the overall work experience, and with time, they will pay for themselves.
Make sure though, that you actually need they person you’re hiring, hiring a human resource person to manage a firm of two is extremely impractical.
And lastly,
5. Take risks, make mistakes and learn from them.
You cannot learn everything by reading. Besides, everything you learn has no value until you apply it. And more often than not, there is not better way to get experience than from experience itself.
The reward of succeeding from a risk you took is also a big bonus if your risk pays off.
So learn how to take risks, make mistakes and learn from them.
That’s where the key is, learn from them. I’m sure that image of the fly constantly hitting the glass window until it dies is not a pleasant one.
Have a blessed day people!
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Audio: Taylor Swift – Teardrops on my guitar.
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Offtopic:
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
- Warren BuffettIt’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.
- Warren Buffett
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RK, I am still waiting for the other post you promised to put up…
Nevender’s last blog post..The Picture
@Nev, still doing a little background work on something relating to the post. Will have it up as soon as I’m through.
Sorry for bugging u man….
Dude, no stress, it’s all good.
I like the selflessness on this blog. I promise to always leave a link on this blog that has business resources free of charge.
and King,
Excellent work.
PS. Here’s my first link: http://www.whywewantyoutoberich.com
Nice….Now:
Do you acknowledge that ur my Mentor or are we going to play Cat and Mouse for another decade?
TRP’s last blog post..Pools of 2009
Me too. yo my mentor for now.
Don’t throw me out when i call on you
for help. I promise ill take yo advise and
i will succeed.
@De La Rue, thanks.
@TRP, cat and mouse it is…
@Johnie, lol, anytime.
The SoloDawgKing
dude, yor are seriously spewing the business here!!!
glad i am one of your readers..
thanks for putting this up!
ask ask ask and keep on asking !!
you done with the book??
Maybe i can pick it up from you at the impromptu BHH..
P.S Warren Buffet’s truth about th3e 20 years is a bot long, but i think that was his point!!
taking all that time and then taking them 5 minutes to f**k up
Mr. B2B…’s last blog post..Informally formal
My 1st request from yu my mentor is to advise me on how to improve on my spending habits. I do alot of impulse buying.
This year i want to spend like those company auditors.
Over to yu S.K my mentor.
@ Jonny, As a Protégé to the King himself, i dare to say to you:
1. Do not walk with alot of money in you wallet/Pocket
2. Then open a savings account and purpose to deposit atleast 30% (Start small) of your monthly earnings…
@ King, Have I done you proud?
btw ur the mouse this decade….
TRP’s last blog post..Pools of 2009
@Bdawg, if someone can benefit from my spewing, then spew I will, hehehe. I’m bringing the book to BHH.
@Johnie, lol, I didn’t mean like start immediately. TRP has done me proud, lol.
Avoid having too much cash on you, or keep it where you can’t reach it. Like in a long term savings account that only allows you to deposit anytime, but withdraw say twice a year.
What I personally do is spend a lot, but on things that return value. Like instead of spending 200k on a wild night out, I buy say an office desk, or a hard disk or books, something that will benefit me/my firm in the long term.
If I have the money to spend, I make sure I don’t regret the purchase. Besides, once you’ve spent it, you can’t get the money back, but you’ll enjoy that new book for years to come.
Hmm… this might get long. Perhaps a post is in order.