8 Things I Learned About Business in Less Than a Year

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businessEveryone that knows me personally think I started Invulgah years ago, the truth is Invulgah has been in existence just under a year. In this few months, I have learnt a lot of things that has influenced me and helped grow the company to where it is now.

It hasn’t gotten close to where it needs to be, but so far it has exceeded expectations.

Here are the few things I learned about business:

Rome was not built in a day

This is something I learned the first few months and it’s something I’m still learning everyday.

I knew that starting a company wasn’t going to be an easy road, but I never thought it would take as much hard work and strategy as it has.

It’s typical for every entrepreneur when starting out the first time (although this wasn’t my first startup) to think it’s all going to be easy and rosy and soon enough you will start earning good amount of money from it.

The only way you would make money from any startup is by hustling till you can’t breathe, learning a lot of things as you go along the way, hustle more, set goals, reach and exceed them and with a little luck at the right time, you will start seeing massive traction.

Bootstrapping

By putting every penny into the business, from organizing our first event to Facebook ads and email campaigns, I’ve been able to go lean on everything I do so that I can focus on growing the company and nothing else.

One of the ways I went lean was using Amazon’s SES instead of Mailchimp for sending emails to subscribers.

It was hard at first to configure, but since I was bootstrapping, I knew I had to make it work else I’ll have to spend hundreds of dollars using the simpler Mailchimp.

More Disciplined

I’m a very lazy person.

One thing was clear, I had a goal and I wanted to reach and exceed it so I became more disciplined in anything I did.

I was able to wake up earlier than I usually do, and stay all night working, reading or writing something.

I set more goals like writing an article everyday no matter how short it is, irrelevant or useless (didn’t publish this ones), I just made sure I wrote something.

It was hard to do, but I had two options – Do it or fail.

I wasn’t ready for the later.

Books, Reading and more Books

There’s a saying that if you want to hide knowledge from a man, put it in a book.

Books are too important and if you are not developing the habit of reading, you are slowly on your way to failure.

In a few months I had read more books than I did all my life.

Doing this opened me to new levels of knowledge that I wouldn’t have gotten from anywhere else.

I also developed the habit of reading articles from many sites and blogs, I also spend at least 3 hours everyday on Quora.

You can’t do something you don’t love

I enjoy sleepless night, and when I finally sleep, I love when I wake up with a slight headache.

You know why? Because I loved every bit of what I did that kept me awake!

If you are always waiting for the weekend to come, that means you don’t love what you do.

Drop whatever that does not make you happy and start doing things that will make you wear a smiling face.

People that do things they don’t love are never productive and would never grow at whatever they do, they will hate Monday and always TGIF.

Drop everything that isn’t productive

I started with dropping non-productive friends.

They say if you hang around with 5 fools long enough, you will soon become the sixth one.

I wasn’t ready for that, so I had to do something.

Next, I moved to dropping what I watch that wasn’t doing me much good.

Now I watch quality and amazing shows that will educate me.

Shows like The profit, Shark Tank and Mega Factories are some of my best.

I have since been happier and more productive.

You are in control of your life

Nobody owes you anything.

Whatever you are today or become tomorrow is as a result of what you did yesterday.

I knew that if I wanted to live a stress-free life and do something that I love and make money while at it, I need to take control of my life, take risks and hustle hard.

As simple as that!

Be better than yesterday

James Altucher always talks about improving 1% on something every time.

It’s that simple. Just 1%.

If you can read 1% of more books than you did yesterday, if you can run 1% more than the Kilometers you did last week, if you can hustle 1% more than you did the last month.

Just 1% better than what you did previously, will make you better at everything you do.

I have used this principle and it hasn’t failed me, I still continue to use it.

I hope this inspires you to hustle more, learn more and reach more goals.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this in the comment section.

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