One idea to Build your Business, one idea to Scale your life. Every Wednesday.

Welcome to Winformation Weekly. My 13 years’ experience of growing a business from £0-£100m, and the life that goes with it. All wrapped up, in one winning weekly email.

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Business

My 10 Biggest Mistakes in Business & How to Avoid Them

Since putting myself “out there” with my story, one thing I’ve noticed is there are far too many people in this game that talk themselves up. The life of a founder, entrepreneur, business operator, whatever you want to call it, is littered with more mistakes and issues than wins...mine is anyway. So, in the hope you gain some confidence that we all make mistakes, and maybe to give you a blueprint to avoid some of my biggest ones. Here are my 10 biggest mistakes in 13 years of business.

1. No business plan. The most fundamental mistake and one that I truly believe cost us any growth for the first 14 months. We set up our business 3 months earlier than planned because my co-founder hadn't prepared his end of year review at our previous workplace and walked out that day. Although this was funny at the time, we had jumped ahead and skipped the little detail of planning how the entire business would work. This led to a year of hell and a £200k issue that we almost didn't survive!

2. Marketing too early. The most common and understandable mistake everyone makes. It sounds weird doesn't it, but the key is to not market your business too early on. Marketing, and specifically advertising, will increase the eyeballs on your business. Until you have at least “semi perfected” the process and can provide a very positive experience to a very select and small number of customers, you don’t want to amplify the attention on your business. It’s like having a viewing on your house before you have tidied up and cleaned the kitchen.

3. Hiring for experience. In the early days we hired people that had done the job we were looking to recruit for before. If you didn't have experience, we didn't hire you. This was very short sighted. What we ended up with in a lot of cases, were people that could do the job but wouldn't. Nothing worse than people with skills who lacked the drive to perform. So, we flipped it, we hired ambitious, driven people, the stuff you can’t teach and showed them the job...the stuff you can teach. This is when our growth exploded.

4. Inflated job titles. Our first ever non-sales hire was a finance administrator. We ended up referring to that person as “Head of Finance”. Even informally, this is a big mistake. When you grow and have to hire someone with skills that exceed that person, it can lead to some big issues and upset people. Hire specific job roles and make sure there is career progression for everyone involved.

5. Allowing people too long to fail. We never wanted to be known (and never have been) as a hire and fire type company. We allow people long bedding in periods to ensure they get the best foundations to succeed. However, there is a line. Often in the past allowing people far too long without seeing any progress was an issue. When things are brought to an end, often you can see the relief on their face, it's a decision best for everyone that they were too nervous to make themselves.

6. Software is everything. When you are a business using a software system where there are multiple users, you HAVE to ensure every user is an expert. You wouldn't want to share a road with people driving a car that haven't been taught properly. It’s the same for a company CRM, database or SaaS system. There has to be a proven minimum standard before people are set loose handling your data.

7. Not fully understanding the motivations of my business partners. When you launch a business with a partner, you both / all want to be “successful”. But “success” is so very different from one person to the next. Some people want to work 60 hours a week until the business is sold. Some people want to work until they can drop to 2 days a week remotely from Bali and hold onto it until they can pass it to their kids. There is no right or wrong, but you have to understand the motivation of your business partners from day one so arrangements can be made so that everyone involved gets their ambitions met.

8. Hiring only when there is a need to do so. Ideally you want to be hiring about 3-6 months before you can see a real need for someone to be in post. We have made this mistake more than once, but it’s an easy one to make. Waiting until there is a real need leads to big issues. You start to get desperate and hire people that may not fit the culture. The person coming in then has far less time to get up to speed as things have backed up. 3-6 months out, means you can spend the time really selecting the right person, and they have a longer bedding in time before the workload hits.

9. Thinking too short term. To build anything of any real note, I now know takes a decade or more. You need to think in years and decades and not months and years. Execute in the moment, today, the next hour, but please believe me when I tell you, it's a long, long road, and you want it to be a long road too. The quicker success comes, the quicker it will disappear, because whilst you are taking a decade to build it, you are also building the skills to maintain it too. 

10. See everything we spent as a cost. I would fixate on the cost of everything we needed to procure to succeed, and often ignored the return that spend would generate. Do you get it right every time? Should you be reckless? No and no. But like a human need's oxygen, businesses need investment to breathe and grow. Don’t stand on the oxygen tube!

Life

5 Ways to Minimise Distractions & Regain Your Focus

We all have 24 hours in a day, but how much of our time is laser focused on the outcomes we need to achieve on a given day? Never have there been so many distractions, with numerous means of communication and entertainment we have at our fingertips, but we needn’t use these as excuses when it comes to the daily execution of what needs to be done. So, if you ever find yourself unable to focus, then follow these 5 ways to maintain discipline and on track to achieve.

1. Swap to do lists with calendar items. It might sound counterintuitive, but lists are no good, they occupy your thoughts and time and can cause stress. It’s far more productive if you schedule whatever you need doing into your calendar, then you have a schedule to follow instead of a written note.

2. Notifications off. This might sound like the equivalent of walking down the street naked to some, except it’s not really, is it. If you’ve set two hours to write up a plan or presentation you don’t need to check your email, or WhatsApp or anything else for the matter. And of course, you know this, but in case you are tempted, switch off your notifications.

3. Unwire yourself from distraction. In 2014, the University of Virginia did an experiment, putting volunteers in a room without their phones, where the only entertainment was a machine that gave electric shocks. They found 18 of the 42 volunteers gave themselves a shock as opposed to sit quietly. So don’t break from distraction to focus, break from focus for the occasional distraction.

4. Work for focussed intervals. Sometimes, setting aside more than a few hours for a task can mean that time can dwindle away. Methods like the Pomodoro Technique can help mitigate that. It involves doing focused work for 25 minutes before taking a five-minute break.

5. Take a break. It has become all too normal to go al-desko, and eat your lunch at your desk. You might think you are increasing productivity, but you’re not, you will end up effectively flogging a dead horse. Take a walk, take a nap, read a book, but don’t be that guy who has his pot noodle his desk while hammering away at the keyboard.

…Plus More!

Next Week: New Feature!

I am excited to bring you a brand-new feature. Launching next week, a resource that will grow over time. All of my knowledge gained in building a business from £0-£100m in a searchable databank outside of this newsletter. Accessible totally free and exclusively for subscribers of Winformation only.  

Until next week! 

Let’s win, together!