10 Of The Best Pieces Of Business Advice I Have Ever Been Given

As a mentor and investor in several high-tech businesses, I regularly get asked for my opinions and advice about how to scale and succeed in business.

As well as giving advice, I have been lucky enough to receive a lot of good advice which has helped shape and grow my own business strategy. Here are 10 of the most impactful pieces of advice I have received:

1. CHOOSE YOUR ATTITUDE

There are many things in life we cannot control, we can however choose how we react to things and our attitude in general. Having spent time with Debra Searle (look her up – amazing woman), she has put together some great free resources about how to choose your attitude.

2. LEARN TO DELEGATE

Stop being the bottleneck in your business. It is natural to think that you are the best at doing things. However, if you have to be involved in every decision or piece of work, your business cannot be scalable. Understanding the art of delegation and what is good enough is key to scale.

3. THE ACID TEST

Ethics and trust are key in business. A great piece of advice I was once given was to think of things in respect of PR. If this decision I made landed on the front page of the national newspaper, would I be comfortable with that? If the answer in no, don’t do it!

4. IMPOSTOR

Most entrepreneurs and founders suffer from imposter syndrome. We all have moments of self-doubt. Accept it and get over it!

5. DO IT

Most potential entrepreneurs fail before they have started as they never actually take the leap. Doubts and excuses have no place. Just do it!

6. COMFORT ZONE

Get out of your comfort zone regularly, push your boundaries so far that you are always creating new boundaries to break. In the words of Claudia Batten, “embrace vomit moments”.

7. YOU WILL HEAR ‘NO’ A LOT

Every ‘no’ you get (and you will get a lot), gets you one step closer to the ‘yes’. JK Rowling had lots of rejections before finally getting Harry Potter published. She never gave up and look at her now.

8. READ

This year, I have set myself the goal of reading a book a week. Reading books gives you other peoples knowledge and experience.

9. PATH, WHAT PATH?

There is no straight road to success, you have to be able to pivot, accept the highs, lows, going backwards, forwards and sideways until you find the way. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

10. SALES

If you can’t sell your product or service it doesn’t matter how good it is, your business will fail.