Things I wish someone had told me before I opened The Ruby Orchard!
1// Don’t learn to rely on any member of your team. Once they are trained up and running your business day to day, they can and will move on… that’s life! Look for someone new with different skills and a different view on life, business and customers. Learn from every person that works for you and use their strengths while you have them.
2// People will copy what you are doing. Take it as a compliment, vent your frustrations by hunting for something new. Be a leader not a follower!
3// In the words of Dr. Suess – ‘The more you read, the more things you will know, the more you learn, the more places you will go‘. My previous career required reading local authority papers, government and education policies, which I tried to avoid at all cost! Reading blogs and websites and has become part of my everyday, there is always something new to learn and someone to learn from.
4// Marketing is REALLY hard work. It does not just happen overnight, it is doing a little something consistently every day.
5// Your businesses brand is not just a name and a logo. It is what you are, what you stand for, what you offer, what makes you different, what you want to be, what people should expect from you and what people perceive you as. Your brand takes hard work to develop, grow and sustain.
6// Some of the things you do won’t work… at all!! Or in my case, some of the products I purchased for resale have not sold… at all!! Knowing this at the beginning of The Ruby Orchard would have prevented the feelings of disappointment that followed.
Good Luck business owners… No one ever said it was going to be easy!
[…] 5// My Business tips series continued in March, I wrote about ‘Things I wish someone had told me before I started The Ruby Orchard’. […]