As an entrepreneur, starting a business is going to be embarrassing (at some point) because you’re going to screw up all the time, whether you realize it or not. The best mindset you can have when trying to grow a company is to not worry about the mistakes and keep pushing forward.

(fill in your preferred motivational generic quote here)

Now, this doesn’t mean you ignore them. In fact, you always need to be searching for the mistakes. This is especially difficult during all the times when you have no clue what you’re supposed to be doing.

In other words, be aware of mistakes and try to fix little things on the fly.

So, in the meantime, know you’re going to look stupid occasionally – or wear the wrong suit/tie combo- or make a quasi-business pitch to a friend’s parent while stammering like Chris Farley, in the movie Tommy Boy.

Lastly, understand that in some way your business will suck at some point. Realize that your product or service will have its faults and welcome the fact that your future clients might see these faults, its ok.

One of the best things we learned how to do was to be honest and always call a spade a spade. That lets us do our job – which is to make sure that mistake gets fixed and figure out how to avoid doing that again. Rinse and repeat. That’s how we keep getting better and keep our customers happy.

Starting a business while being a college student and why you need to take advantage of it.

The title of this section summarizes one of the most important lessons we have learned since starting the business. Don’t worry about being college students.

beer taps

We could list hundreds of times when simply being college students with a big dream has given us opportunities that we never imagined would be possible. We would not be where we are today, if it weren’t for so many great people who were happy to help a couple college kids out.

Ignorance is Bliss

In the beginning, we tried extremely hard to convince potential clients that we were credible and knew exactly what we were doing. We thought this would be the most important goal to achieve in order to gain clients. It’s not easy proving your credibility when there really isn’t anything you are credible of. To make it even worse, we were students. Ignorance is bliss…

We have found that entrepreneurship takes hard work but it really isn’t complex: return the wallet, hold doors, don’t upset mom, make a friend, don’t fake anything and don’t worry about being young and inexperienced. These phrases are the foundation to why our company has gotten where it is today. To clarify, we are not a huge company pulling in multi-millions in sales each year, nor is becoming that a big concern to us.

Now, Don’t Get Us Wrong

We would be bankrupt liars if we said money and sales were not important to the company whatsoever. However, what we do realize is that we don’t control or decide how much money our company will make each year. Our clients do. All we worry about is making sure we provide valuable services and a great experience for our clients. We believe that focusing on consistency and continuous improvements in these two areas gives us the best chance for future success. The rest is out of our hands.

A few Concepts & Ideas we live by

This is the fourth installment in a series of posts called:  How We Started a Company in College with $400, No Experience, & No Clue What We Were Doing.

Comments

“I might not always say what you want to hear, but I’ll always tell you the real deal” – Barry Labman (Brandon’s Dad)

TRICKS ARE FOR KIDS

Some businesses cut corners in order to grow fast. We don’t believe a company can be great if it does this. We have worked extremely hard the past four years taking the long way. It’s not easy to do when running a small business.

Every day there are dozens of times when opportunities to cut corners are dangled in front of you, and doing so is tempting. Sometimes it seems that there is no other choice but to give in and do so.

The bottom line is that it will catch up to you and hurt the business in the long run.

We Call Your Bluff

Lying to people about your business is a waste of time. Unless you have multiple World Series of Poker championship bracelets, you’re not a good bluffer anyways. Lying about the smallest things like doubling your number of clients will only lead to taking credibility away from the things that you really do great.

It’s easy to say that they will never find out, but why risk it.  Some of our best clients have come from us being overly honest about our operations. Being honest and trustworthy will always surprise you.

Just Get the Job Done and Do it Well

There’s nothing wrong with not having 100 people on staff; they don’t need 100 people. They need the least amount of people to get the job done; nothing more, nothing less.

When we speak to people, we don’t bring up all the great things we may or may not have done in the past. Really, who cares? It’s over.

The only thing that matters is what we are doing now and how we are helping the person in front of us at that moment. We are either ready or we are not, simple as that.

Return the Wallet and No Cell Phone Contracts

As much as we don’t look at the past to judge our performance, we also do the same with the future.

We don’t believe in long-term contracts, set-up fees, or early termination fees. If the customer wants to leave, we screwed up somehow or they found something better. Why should they owe money if they didn’t get what they were expecting or were unsatisfied?

Our approach: suck it up and “return their wallet.” If you need clarification or reason why you should always do this, simply take a clean sheet of paper and write down what you think of your cell phone company and what you think they should change.

A few Concepts & Ideas we live by

This is the third installment in a series of posts called:  How We Started a Company in College with $400, No Experience, & No Clue What We Were Doing.

Make a Friend, Not a Sale

Vin Diesel closing a sale in Boiler Room

When I used to visit my dad at work, I never once witnessed a customer leaving his office unhappy or angry. No matter the personality or mood of the person who entered, minutes later… BOOM!  A happy customer emerges shaking my Dad’s hand “thanks for all  your help Barry!” It was like a magic trick.   Now I’m sure there were times that this didn’t happen and someone walked out disgruntled, but I never saw it.

One day after seeing another 180 degree customer walk out, I finally asked my dad: “How’d you do that? How did you make that sale?”

He looked at me and said, “It’s easy, I made a friend; I didn’t make a sale.”

Concepts and ideas we live by: Part I

Not to sound like bad people, but we hate the phrase “business ethics.”

Don’t get us wrong, we do like and respect the phrase’s meaning and what it describes. We just don’t like when those 14 letters are in that exact order.

For some reason, we always confuse that phrase with something that sucks: a miserably boring class, that basically teaches common sense, we had to take (and spend thousands of dollars on) because of required credits.

Instead, we just make sure we do the following:

• Hold Doors: Find ways to help other people out, even when it doesn’t benefit us at all directly.
• Return Wallets: If we don’t feel right about something we did, we admit it and do something about it.
• Don’t Disappoint Mom: Don’t do anything that would possibly upset our Moms, even if she wouldn’t find out about it.

So, to keep things simple, we prefer to say: “Hold Doors”, “Return Wallets” and “Don’t Disappoint Mom.”

A few Concepts & Ideas we live by

This is the first installment in a series of posts called:  How We Started a Company in College with $400, No Experience, & No Clue What We Were Doing.