October 5th will be a date that sticks out in my mind for a long time.  Ten years ago in 1999 we formed Canada’s Web Shop.  In looking back it has been a long road to build this business and there have been many lessons learned along the way.  One thing for sure is the only people that think running a business is easy are the people who have never done it before.  Its tough but rewarding at the same time.  Here is a list of the top 10 lessons learned on our 10 year business journey:

1. Start you business with a plan, business plans force you to think about every angle before you are in the trenches.  Understand that your business is going to go through changes at the beginning until you nail down your business model.
2. Be extremely careful when you are putting your team together.  I would advise not to hire friends.  Ensure there are no more than 2 shareholders at the beginning of your business.  Small businesses with lots of shareholders is a recipe for disaster.
3. Have some capital behind you as these days you cannot count on the banks.  Our first line of credit was $6,000 that is all they would give us.
4. Owners have to be 100% involved in the company, part time models do not work in my mind.
5. Pick your advisors carefully, a good adviser can help you make good decisions that would otherwise be costly errors that is just going to set you back.
6. Service the heck out of your clients and good things will happen.
7. Devide on your niche and stick to it, don’t be a jack of all trades and be an expert on very little.  Focus and stick to your niche.
8. Build a good working atmosphere in your business.  Try to motivate employees to work hard but to enjoy what they do and ensure they feel appreciated.
9. Utilize a yearly budgetting process and set goals that are hard to exceed to motivate you each year to do better, measure as much as possible and review your expenses at least once a year to ensure they are necessary and you are receiving value.
10. Be a sales driven organization at all times.  If everyone in your business focuses on generating revenue your sales goals will be accomplished much easier.

By the way there were many more lessons learned in those 10 years and there will be many more learned along the way.  The key is to not make those large mistakes that cost you money.  As your business gets older it does not get any easier.  Just like with kids as they grow up they always say “bigger kids bigger problems” sort of the same in business, the decisions remain tough especially if you are growing and Canada’s Web Shop will always continue to grow.

Once again thanks for listening.

This entry was posted by John McDonald on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Business, Sales and Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.