3 Business Lessons I Have Learnt the Hard Way

A lot of business people talk about how they like and embrace failure. Personally I do everything in my power to avoid it. However, when I fail, I do my best to learn from the experience and not repeat it. This month I have dissected 3 costly mistakes that have taught me valuable business lessons:

Lesson 1 – Without systems and processes, success is likely more luck than judgement.

We went through a period of about a year where we had a high turnover of sales people in the business. We used psychometric testing and a very robust interview process, yet we kept employing duds… or so I thought.

We changed leadership personnel and the new team leader put in highly robust sales processes and systems. Almost immediately after this was implemented, almost all the new sales hires started to perform.

In hindsight, I learnt that we as a company had let down the previous sales people. I presumed that we were not hiring the right people. In reality, we were setting them up for failure by not providing them with the right tools and processes to succeed. As soon as the company got the right leadership and process in place, good stuff started to happen.

Lesson 2 – As a business grows, the type of people you need change

I am loyal to a fault. It is in my nature to look after people and try to find ways of helping them within the organisation.

However, when an organisation experiences massive growth (like Pure SEO has almost every year since inception), the people that were stars in the early days are not necessarily the right people later on.

There are a few people over the years I have overpromoted. In the early years when the company was small (sub 10 people), they were great. However when we had a bit of scale (layers and complexity), I was guilty of over promoting them thereby causing the business and the people to stagnate.

Lesson 3 – Make the hard calls quickly and decisively

Unless someone has done me wrong, I am not naturally a confrontational person. In the early days of the business, we employed a couple of people that despite their excellent technical skills, were not a good fit for the company.

It was apparent that their behaviour was corrosive to the cultural direction of Pure SEO, yet I let them stay too long because I valued their technical ability. Deep down I knew that they were wrong for the business and that ultimately I would have to do something about it.

Nowadays, I will make sure I have the difficult conversations early. As a leader, it is my job to protect the team and culture in a decisive manner.

One of the best business decisions I have made over the past decade was joining a business group called Entrepreneurs Organisations. As part of the organisation, we split up into small groups (called a forum). A big part of the forum is to share the highs and lows of our business in a confidential and Gestult manner (no advice, speak only from experience). Through this process, I have managed to avoid lots of mistakes by learning from the mistakes of others.