The Entrepreneur's Toolkit: 5 Critical Lessons From Growing Up in a Family Business
Today, entrepreneurship has become a romanticized idea.
Gurus will tell you that if you follow these few steps, you'll become successful. It's unfortunately not that easy. Starting a business is full of lessons, hardships, and failures.
Only a few can truly be entrepreneurs, and that's because they're willing to learn these five critical interconnected lessons.
Skill Acquisition
Eye for Opportunity
Resilience
Adaptability
Able to Learn
There you have it; I suppose you don't need to read any further, as you have what I've learned in a nutshell.
Okay, I'm kidding, we'll need to dive into these and understand how they all link together.
But first, a little history.
My parents have been building small businesses since before I was born. Always striving to do more, to do better, to be more than what they were yesterday. They handled a range of businesses, from public relations, newsletters, other printed material, web copy, and more.
I picked up these lessons by learning from their example and from experience when I joined the family business.
Skill Acquisition
To start a business, you need a skill. That skill can be a service, or it can help you produce a product. Entrepreneurs skill stack, a process that involves continuously learning new skills.
Skill building is one of the most important aspects of being an entrepreneur, especially if you're going to be a solopreneur.
My first steps into the family business involved the more annoyingly monotonous tasks. I stuffed envelopes and folded print materials, such as booklets and brochures, and performed other duties. As I developed various skills, including proficiency with tools like Photoshop and HTML, I was able to assist with more complex assignments, such as graphic design work.
This experience taught me the value of skill acquisition and led me to pursue freelance graphic and web design.
I love to think of skill acquisition as leveling up in a video game. Each new skill unlocks additional abilities on your skill tree, which brings more opportunities. (Any gamers reading?)
Eye for Opportunity
Entrepreneurs have a keen eye for opportunity. You need to understand when one is presented. Early in any entrepreneur's career, there is a limit to what they can see as an opportunity. The good news is that this is a skill that can be learned with experience and education.
Notice how the interweaving has started with these lessons?
I recall how my parents would get excited when they found a new opportunity, you'd think they discovered the lost city of Atlantis. As I learned more from them, my perspective shifted, enabling me to see more opportunities. It's an incredible feeling when you finally understand the excitement of seeing one yourself.
It's like finding a secret area in your favorite video game that no one else knows about yet.
Did my parents jump on every opportunity? No.
When considering each opportunity, assess whether it's within your grasp to invest the time, capital, and effort. Some opportunities are within your realm to find success, and others aren't. If you're an expert in public relations, but see that there is a need for high-quality general contractors, you may not have the skills to capitalize on that opportunity.
In some cases, with enough success, others will bring ideas and opportunities to you.
Not every opportunity will bring success; that is why you need to be resilient in the face of failure.
Resilience
Entrepreneurship brings highs and lows. To handle this, you need to be resilient. Setbacks are a part of the game. Understanding how to weather the storm will help you succeed in the long term.
Failures will happen; it's pretty much a guarantee when building a business.
Educating yourself with skill stacking is the key component to becoming more resilient. New competition can offer the same services at a discount, but if you can provide more and/or better services at the same value, clients will want to stick around. If you find new ways to produce a product at a higher quality and cheaper costs, it gives you more opportunities to weather those storms.
This is something I had to learn the hard way. I had a client that I couldn't make happy. They needed a new design for their website, and none of my ideas or concepts seemed to meet their requirements. I ultimately lost the client.
I felt defeated, questioning if I should continue with my freelance work.
Sometimes you do fail, but it's no reason to give up. You need to get back to it and find another client, or explore alternative ways to keep your business going.
A hard lesson to learn in resilience, but one I needed to know. I learned better approaches to the skill of client communication. This provided me with more opportunities with other clients.
In video game boss fights, you don't always defeat them on the first try. Sometimes, you need to level up further; other times, you need to change your strategy.
Resilience compels you to adapt to achieve success.
Adaptability
Adapt or die.
The one thing that will always be constant in the business world is that change is inevitable. That change can be driven by technology, the markets, or the skills required to conduct business.
My parents experienced changes like these over the course of decades. Due to the nature of their work, the technology required has evolved. Starting with typewriters and traditional printing presses, to computers that not only assist with writing copy but also design layouts and digital publications.
They needed to adapt to the times by upgrading hardware and learning new skills, software, and processes.
Looping us back into the chain of how these interconnect, skill acquisition is the key to adaptability. It allows you to pivot when needed for any reason.
You need to be flexible with the times. My dad would tell me stories about how the transition from typewriters to computers in the newsroom was almost comical. Reporters were so accustomed to the loud sound of typing that they would smash the computer keyboard keys as hard as they could because the sound wasn't as satisfying to them. The same reporters would struggle to concentrate on writing due to the lack of noise in the newsroom.
In gaming, we often encounter various types of boss battles. Each boss would have a distinct weakness, forcing you to adapt your approach and learn new abilities in the game.
If you can't adapt, that affects your ability to learn.
Able to Learn
The ability to learn is the most critical aspect of being an entrepreneur. This is the component that enables you to acquire new skills, understand how to grow your business, develop resilience, and adapt.
This is what brings us full circle, connecting each lesson today.
My parents have taught me that education is the most essential aspect of growth. The second is that I needed to learn from multiple sources, better sources, ones who have achieved more. These don't need to be specifically school teachers; they can be a mentor, an expert in the field you found on YouTube, or anyone who has the experience you need to learn from.
As you advance in your knowledge and abilities, you will need to find more experienced teachers.
Unfortunately, there is a limit to what anyone can teach you. If you're learning martial arts from a yellow belt, you will max out at a yellow belt level. That is when you need to find a black belt to take you to the highest level.
Each of these lessons is a link in a chain that interweaves with the others. The strength of that chain is based on the weakest link, highlighting the importance of maximizing all of them.
I have a bonus lesson for those who have made it this far. That lesson is to "Take Action." You may have all the knowledge and skill in the world, but they mean nothing if you don't act on them.
Now you have it all, the lessons I've learned over the decades of experience from a family of entrepreneurs.
Who inspires you as an entrepreneur? Why do they inspire you? Let me know in the comments.
