15 Business Lessons I've Learned The Hard Way

Source: http://stanfy.com/approach/

1. Entrepreneurship is more like science than I ever thought. It isn’t simply failure or success. It’s the scientific method at work. (Click to tweet this)

2. School lied to us. You don’t have to be good at everything. If you hate accounting, hire someone to do it for you. That would be cheating in school but in the real world it allows you to focus on income-generating activities. (Click to tweet this)

3. There is no right or wrong way to run your business (aside from basic ethics). (Click to tweet this)

4. There is no such thing as work/life balance when you are 100% in love with what you do. (Click to tweet this)

5. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to market well. (Click to tweet this)

6. Those who have been there, done that are the best teachers. The internet makes them more accessible than ever. (Click to tweet this)

7. You don’t have to follow any set formula like in other careers. If you want to work 1 day per week, you can structure your business in a way that makes that possible. (Click to tweet this)

8. You can’t expect to grow (both in business and as a person) unless you continue to learn. (Click to tweet this)

9. A traditional business plan is worthless if it isn’t actionable. This type of a plan only interests banks. It’s important to keep your goals visible so that you can be sure you’re keeping on track and that won’t happen if you have a traditional business plan sitting in a drawer somewhere. (Click to tweet this)

10. Don’t get married to one way of doing things. If you find a better way to achieve your goal, do it that way. (Click to tweet this)

11. Build it and they will come is a load of bullshit. It’s important to know what your customer wants before you spend time and money building it. I learned this from The Lean Startup. (Click to tweet this)

12. You only learn by taking action so stop overanalysing and launch something. Business is one big continual experiment. (Click to tweet this)

13.  people say they want and what they’ll really pay for are often two different things (Click to tweet this)

14. Your business is not for everyone, so stop trying to make it appeal to everyone. (Click to tweet this)

15. Observe what the entrepreneurs you look up to do regularly and see if there are commonalities that you can emulate. (Click to tweet this)

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