The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster Highlights

As promised, please see below for my recap and highlights from “The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster” by Darren Hardy.

My Favorite Take-away

The point I found most powerful was with regards to passion for your business. In my last business, we focused on managing confined spaces with technology. This is a relatively niche business that I knew nothing about when I entered the business but by the end was fighting passionately to spread its adoption and acceptance across Canada! I get most passionate about the “who” I do business for. I love being in business to build an ecosystem where people can grow. At my last business, we were able to progress field staff into management and beyond and seeing their growth was extremely rewarding. I am hopeful to have the same opportunity to build a finance ecosystem at ROC Advisors where we can grow financial experts while benefiting our customers at the same time!

Other Take-aways

• Passion for your business – You don’t have to be passionate about what you do. You can also be passionate about why you do it, how you do it or who you do it for.
• Define success for yourself – It can be money, prestige, a house or just saying you own your own business but be absolutely clear what success is for you and don’t do it for anyone else
• You need sales to have a business – It’s easy to get lost in social media posts and refining your sales documents but you need to reach real people who have real needs and sell your product or service. A business is nothing without sales
• Don’t waste your resources, Hire A-players – A-players seem expensive until you hire B/C players and realize the costs of hiring and firing them. Do yourself a favor and invest in A players. They pay for themselves
• You need to lead your business – Make the tough calls, put the work in. This is your business and until it isn’t you have to lead by example, make the tough calls and give credit to the team, not yourself. This is what you signed up for
• Determine key metrics and follow them – It’s not until you know your key metrics that you can define where to spend your time. Define key metrics, spend time focusing on them and watch your business grow!
• Fear is just part of the gig – Owning a business will always be scary and that’s ok. Fear can be healthy if you know that it’s coming. Treat it like a rollercoaster, don’t fight it and enjoy the moment because excitement is usually on the other side
• Know why you’re doing it – The days can get long and tough when you’re in the middle of it. Make sure you are clear on why you want to be an entrepreneur and lean on that in difficult times

I love to devour books and so will be highlighting a new book every two weeks. Your engagement with these posts both keeps me motivated and also allows me to determine what the community is interested in. Please let me know if there are specific books you’d like reviewed or other topics you’d be interested to see from ROC Advisors