Starting and then running my own business has been fun, exciting, rewarding – and the biggest learning curve of my life so far. Back when I launched in March 2017, I barely knew any other entrepreneurs. I was basically clueless when it came to everything, from the differences between a sole trader and a company, to how to maintain a healthy work/life balance (spoiler: I didn’t). If I’d known back then what I know now – well, there are a few things I might have done a little differently… These are possibly the biggest lessons I’ve learned so far, and if you’re contemplating making the leap to self-employment or entrepreneurship then hopefully they might help you!
You can do everything yourself ... that doesn't mean you should.
I took a bootstrap approach to my business – I tried to spend as little money as possible and build as much myself as I could. I learned the process of making a sewing pattern, but also how to take and edit photographs, how to code a website (with HTML and CSS), and even how to hand-craft my own pattern envelopes. Some of this hands-on approach was incredibly beneficial – the cost savings, the ability to put products out on the market with very little investment, and the flexibility to adapt the products/website/processes etc. But did I really need to spend hours learning code in order to build the website myself, when products such as Shopify or Squarespace could have done it for me? Sure, I saved money doing it myself – but only if you don't count the time I spent as worth anything. If you have absolutely no cash to invest in your business at the beginning then you can do everything yourself – that's what Youtube tutorials are for. But with hindsight I would have spent just a little more money upfront and saved myself hours of stress and effort, especially as I can’t really remember any of that HTML three years on…
Your time is valuable.
This sort of follows on from the previous point, and it can be a surprisingly difficult lesson to learn. I know I'm not alone in having only counted the tangible costs of running the business – the materials, the web hosting, the couriers. I didn't factor in my time or effort – the man-hours that were being spent. If I had, at the start I almost certainly would have found my business was making a substantial loss and perhaps concluded that it wasn't worth it. After all, I was working 15 hour-days, sometimes 7 days a week, and barely drawing a salary. I'd never been so poorly paid in my life – and I used to do a paper round!
But the key thing is to remember that your time is valuable, and that maintaining a business in the long-term that ignores that fact is a recipe for professional and personal collapse. The business will not be able to grow if its output is reliant on the number of hours you're putting in, because no matter how hard you work you do indeed have the same number of hours in a day as Beyonce (and everyone else for that matter). Also, there will come a time when you either burn out or for practical reasons cannot continue working for free. The answer: track your time, and look at ways you can outsource tasks that don't need your specific talents (I now have someone else managing my fulfilment – going to the post office and handling couriers).
People are very nosy.
This is one of the things that continually surprises me. People are much more comfortable asking personal questions about self-employment and running a business than they ever would about a 'normal' job. I've had someone ask if my boyfriend was supporting me financially, if there's actually any money in what I do and even how much money I make. I understand that people are interested in something that might be new to them but I don't think they realise how very personal and intrusive these questions are – your business is not some big faceless corporation whose staff bonuses are published in the newspaper, your business is your life and when they question it, it can feel like they're directly challenging your life goals and decisions. At first I found these sorts of questions really demoralising, because I took them to mean people had doubts about what I was doing. Now I use them as an opportunity to surprise people – I tell them my products are stocked in over 50 shops in the UK and abroad, that I'm part of a vital movement towards more sustainable fashion, and that the craft industry contributed £3.4 billion to the UK economy when last measured in 2018. That usually keeps them quiet!
Keep proper accounts from day 1.
This is so basic but I didn't do it and boy, I wish I had. Keep a track of all business expenses and income – not only will this make filing your tax returns much, much easier, but it will also enable you to see how well your business is doing at a glance. If possible, set up a separate bank account for your business – it doesn't have to be a 'business account' (they usually cost money); I simply opened a current account with a different bank to my personal one. Knowing the numbers is key to improving them. And you'll never have to print out a year's worth of bank statements and go through them line by line with a set of highlighters and a calculator…
It will be really, really hard work.
Yeah, yeah, we've all heard that before. I wasn't afraid of hard work, and I wasn't going to let my business take over my life. Until my business did suddenly take over my life, and I didn't have a weekend off for the best part of a year. I began to feel guilty any time I wasn't working and it was taking its toll on my increasingly squeezed personal life. What I should have done? Paced myself, so I was working to a realistic plan rather than just trying to grow my business by slaving away all the hours God sends. Scheduled time-off. Switched off work emails and deleted Instagram (where I also get a lot of customer messages) on my phone during aforementioned time off.
Yes, running your own business will almost always be hard work, but with a bit of planning and awareness it doesn't have to be at the expense of everything else.
***
(Nina, Founder of The Career Girl)
