THE TEN THINGS I WISH I’D KNOWN TWO YEARS AGO

It’s good to take a pause, every now and then, and reflect on where you’ve been and where you are going.

I’d argue that’s especially valuable when it comes to learning some hard lessons about your business, how you run it and where you want to take it in the years to come.

I’ve just marked the second anniversary of the relaunch of LeBoo Media to reflect my reincarnation as a copywriter working for clients in Kingston, Richmond, London and beyond.

On the first anniversary, I looked back and came up with the 10 things I wish I’d known on the day that relaunch took place.

So now, another 12 rambunctious months or so further on, I’m doing the same thing. While all the points I made in 2018 still stand, the focus has changed slightly.

The first five points reflect the inter-related behaviours I believe the person in charge of a successful small business needs to demonstrate.

I pulled these together a few months back in a blog about the need to be BRAVE. In short, you have to be the following:

Bold: Running a business is simply not for the faint-hearted. It requires a significant degree of guts and gumption to strike out on your own and believe you have something that people will want to buy in numbers significant enough to make your business a going concern.

Resilient: There are going to be bad days. Days when your self-belief and self-esteem face significant challenges – not least from the demons in your own head that say you simply aren’t good enough to make this work. You just have to knuckle down and keep pushing.

Agile: In the last 12 months I’ve added some different elements to my skill set. I’ve written a book and I’ve started writing speeches. I’m also trying to monetise the fact that I really enjoying speaking in public. At the same time, I’ve learned the desirability of failing fast – if something isn’t working, or a client is resistant to your charms, walk away sooner rather than later.

Visionary: Look ahead and achieve a clear sight of where you want to be in a month, a year, a decade. One of the most valuable actions I took was to write down an annual plan for 2019 with some clear goals and targets. Simply the act of writing them down put them in much clearer focus – and made them harder to ignore.

Energetic: There is no escaping the fact that you need to go above and beyond in terms of putting the hours in. There are going to be days when you start at 5.30am and finish just in time for the 10 o’clock news. Working at times when other people are relaxing is simply a part of the picture. For instance, I wrote this blog in my office on a sunny Bank Holiday.

The next three pieces of advice sprang from the fact that every so often I’m approached by people thinking of launching their own business who want to know how it’s done.

Without wanting to suggest I have in any way cracked the whole piñata, I’ve got plenty of advice to people on the start line. But it’s best expressed in the form of three questions that you should ask yourself – and answer with unflinching honesty:

1/ Does the market want what you want to sell?Ask around. Find out if there is a demand for what you have. If you are crafting top-quality longbows but the world wants only Uzis and AK-47s, think again.

2/ Are you outstanding at what you do?If you want to be a copywriter, for instance, but your spelling and grammar are not perfect and it takes you an hour to write a sentence, think again.

3/ Most importantly of all, do you love what you do?As I wrote above, there will be days, sometimes weeks, when you have to work in your business and on your business from early until very late. This is not a nine-to-five existence. It’s hard enough when you adore what you do. If you don’t, definitely think again.

The final two points are things I should have done that I didn’t do and that I really regret not addressing before now.

The first is to optimise your website. My focus from the start has been on growing my customer base through networking and referrals. That has worked, and the growth of LeBoo Media has been pleasingly steady across the last two years.

But I now realise that growth would have moved at a faster pace if I was also open to being found organically through web searches. I’ve now rectified that and have put some proper SEO in place.

The second is to make sure you have some form of written agreement in place before working with a client. It seems extraordinary to me now that I have done so much work without any signed contracts, costings or heads of terms in place.

The overwhelming majority of my clients have been decent, honourable people who have been happy with my work and have paid the agreed rate for it without demur. But every so often I come across someone who takes an awfully long time to send the money through.

I’ve now got the relevant paperwork in place that will, I hope, save me a lot of time and energy that was previously spent following up unpaid invoices.

Overall, setting up and establishing LeBoo Media has been an extraordinary roller-coaster ride. I’ve said many times that I am in a business development phase; it has become clear to me that the necessity to establish a smooth pipeline of customers ensures that phase never really ends.

But at the same time I’m now working for some really splendid people and finding that you can truly savour business relationships with the right sorts of clients.

I’m excited by the next 12 months – and no doubt, when LeBoo Media hits the three-year mark of its copywriting existence, there will be more things to reflect on and learn.