entrepreneurs

5 Things Every Entrepreneur Should Do

I’ve learned so much over the last few years. When I was in school I used to sell things on eBay and I’ve always known I wanted to work for myself. I’ve never had a contracted job and now run a Facebook advertising agency, aged 22. I guess some people would describe me as a textbook ‘entrepreneur’. I wanted to write this article, not because I deem myself an experienced entrepreneur, but because I want to share my learnings from the past few years.

1. Don’t forget about your health:

When you run a business, it’s so easy to focus all your energy on the business and forget about your health. If you’re a business owner, I guarantee you’ve skipped lunch or a gym session to get an extra hour of work in? Or maybe you’ve picked up a sandwich on the way home, rather than having a proper meal? Mental health is also a huge problem amongst entrepreneurs. In this study, they found that 72% of entrepreneurs have been affected by mental health issues.

It’s simply the nature of what we do. It’s high pressure and high stress. But by looking after our health, we can improve our productivity and generally perform better. Simply like an athlete eats well to fuel their exercise, we need to eat well to fuel our brain.

2. Remember to take some chill-out time:

This links in well with my previous point. Since we’re always under insane amounts of pressure, it’s so important to take time to chill out. No checking emails, no picking up the laptop. It’s hard – especially if you love what you do. But it’s vital if you want to avoid burn out from those 15+ hour days.

I’ve burned out a few times and it’s not great. Why not simply take 30 mins out your day to go for a walk or relax on the sofa? When you work, work harder. But when you relax, relax harder.

3. Create content:

Moving away from health and on to something more tactical: creating content is so important in today’s market. If you’re not creating content, you don’t exist. Start creating blogs, videos or podcasts around your industry. Start answering your customers questions and solve their problems. As you do this, you start to show people that you know what you’re talking about. They start to trust you and when they need your service, you’ll be their only choice.

That being said, almost everyone is creating content these days so your content needs to be great. It needs to be high quality. Otherwise, you’ll simply get lost in the noise.

Quotes by Warren Buffett

4. Focus on your one thing:

As entrepreneurs, we tend to have shiny-object-syndrome. We find another business opportunity or idea and we jump at it. I’ve been guilty of doing this in the past. For example, when I first launched my business, we launched as a social media management company and I was always looking for other services to provide, rather than sticking to one thing and nailing that.

We’ve pivoted since, and now provide Facebook advertising services. That’s our one thing. We’re fully committed to becoming the go-to agency for all Facebook ad services. Anything outside of that can take a back seat. There’s a great book on this, called The One Thing.

5. Always be learning:

Being an entrepreneur, your probably are obsessed with learning already, but it’s so vital. Not necessarily just learning more about your trade, but learning about anything and everything. I’ve got a huge interest in psychology and that’s been really helpful for me, being able to understand how to communicate effectively and learning why people buy etc.

Also, the more you learn, the more you can teach, which links into your content creation.

In summary, you don’t need to do these things. But these are the 5 things I’ve found to be super important to me in my entrepreneurial journey. They’re all interlinked and will help you to become hugely successful.

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