LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES
Rosie murray-west asks business leaders to share their biggest errors... and the lessons they learned
NOBODY’s perfect, and so when you make mistakes with your business you are in good company. Indeed, when you do get it wrong, it’s worth remembering that Harper Collins and Penguin both rejected Harry Potter, and Royal Mail once ill-fatedly rebranded its entire business as ‘Consignia’.
‘Don’t be deluded into thinking that being in business means that you won’t make mistakes,’ says accountant Mahmood Reza from Pro Active Resolutions in Leicester, listing a litany of errors he sees clients making – from treating a business like a hobby to weak credit control.
But while mistakes are easy to make, they also make you stronger, and there’s always plenty to learn from your own errors as well as those made by other people. ‘Talking to other small businesses that have been there can work wonders,’ says Michelle Ovens, head of Small Business Britain.
With this in mind, we asked successful business leaders to tell us about their biggest mistakes and what they learned...
MY MISTAKE: I DIDN’T PRIORITISE RELATIONSHIPS WITH CLIENTS
David Whatley is CEO of mishoplocal.co.uk, which manages local online presence for brands in Google Maps. Losing a major client due to lack of communication and care taught him a hard lesson, as he explains...
We had been serving a large UK brand for four years in a new and emerging service area. The board was delighted with our service and the performance and renewed every year. However, they took on a new marketing director, who had no experience of our services, and developed his own strategy using a competitor.
I only spoke to him six months after he entered the new role. I knew he was there, but I did not reach out to connect. That was the mistake. We lost the contract, which resulted in redundancies as well as forcing us to suspend new development plans.
WHAT I WISH I HAD DONE:
I wish I had reached out to say hello as soon as I was aware of the new appointment. I should have understood his new brief and offered to help explain the key drivers that would influence his strategy. I should have ensured that his team fully appreciated what we did and why. It may not have changed the outcome. However, I would have been better prepared and been able to plan accordingly.
WHAT IT TAUGHT ME:
I have learnt that you cannot assume or rely on a continuation of contracts when people change roles in a client organisation. It is up to you to establish and maintain a clear line of communication and relationship, so that when people do move on – and they will – you have an idea of who to speak to and that you get on their radar, asap!
MY MISTAKE: I LOST FOCUS ON PROFITABILITY
Nishma Mistry runs bespoke stationery business Doves & Peacocks (dovesandpeacocks.com).
My biggest mistake has been to sometimes lose focus on overheads like staffing, software and business running costs. It seems really obvious now, but in the past I have got lost in doing beautiful work and forgotten to make sure I was being paid properly for it.
Losing profit thoughtlessly meant that I was literally working around the clock. I had twins back in
February 2019 and for their first year I really struggled to take time away from the business to be with my baby girls. We had some amazing projects, including
design for two events at The Shard and some of grandest weddings at prestigious London venues like Grosvenor House, but because I wasn’t seeing the profits I had to keep working.
WHAT I WISH I HAD DONE:
I wish I had looked at my business in its entirety and been far more selective over the projects I accepted. I realise now that not every project is worth doing.
WHAT IT TAUGHT ME:
As a business owner, it is important to take opportunities, but it is far more important to take a step back and make sure the opportunity is the right one for where you want to take your business. It’s actually better to say ‘no’ more often than we think.
MY MISTAKE: I THOUGHT I COULD TAKE ON ANY MARKET
James Lloyd-Townshend (inset, top) is chairman and CEO of IT recruitment and training group Tenth Revolution (tenthrevolution.com). The company has been running for 14 years, but recently tried to move into an associated area, with little success.
We decided to take a shot in a market that didn’t fully align with the model we had created. After about a year of investment and time spent trying to build up our presence, we just weren’t making as much headway relative to our other brands at the same stage. It was difficult, but we had to dust ourselves off, learn from it, and get back to doing what we were best at.
WHAT I WISH I HAD DONE:
I think that bump in the road was a humbling reminder to stick, not necessarily to what we know, but to focus on what we’re good at. No business is infallible, and that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take risks, but it did reaffirm that we don’t have to have a finger in every pie.
WHAT IT TAUGHT ME:
What I took away from the whole situation was that we have achieved success by doing things our way, and we shouldn’t dilute our core offering to pursue new opportunities that might take us outside of that wheelhouse. And that’s OK. Now, whenever we take on a new territory or a new product ecosystem, we always aim to replicate what we already have: that secret sauce that’s got us where we are today.
MY MISTAKE: I DIDN’T BELIEVE IN MYSELF
Paola Dyboski-Bryant (inset above) runs Dr Zigs (drzigs.com) which make bubble toys for children. She says listening to critics held her back.
I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was passionate. And the mistake in listening to other people’s voices was that it affected my confidence and did set me back. I’m also dyslexic and I struggle with numbers, and absolutely everything – from Dragons’ Den to The Apprentice – will tell you that numbers are fundamental to success. It made me question my decisions and my abilities. I realise that I wasted a lot of time and energy listening to people, and questioning my ability.
WHAT I WISH I HAD DONE:
I wish I’d learnt a lot sooner not to worry so much about what other people thought, or to listen to those voices.
WHAT IT TAUGHT ME:
It turns out it’s OK to be a girl, and a mum in business; it’s OK to do things differently and to not know your numbers. And it is OK to want to change the world by selling giant bubbles!
MY MISTAKE: I DIDN’T DO ANY MARKET RESEARCH
Chris Haycock, who has gone from being homeless to being a successful entrepreneur with a portfolio of digital businesses including CliqToMedia (cliqto.com), knows a bit about learning from his errors.
I launched a new business idea called ‘Visitr’ in 2015, it was a dot-com aimed at hotels to allow them to add local tourist/travel information to their websites. I spent almost a year building it. It appeared to have huge potential. I was previously a hotel manager and assumed I knew all about the target market, so I didn’t bother undertaking any market research. My marketing failed to connect with the target market. I kept being told it was ‘before its time’, despite being incredibly easy to set up. At the end of 2015, I was eventually forced to stop marketing it as I had run out of money.
WHAT I WISH I HAD DONE:
If I had conducted proper market research, I would have been able to convey what the product was all about, and connect with the market in a much more effective and convincing way.
WHAT IT TAUGHT ME:
It was a big wake-up call for me, and I realised that failing to undertake proper market research before launching would have stopped it from becoming an expensive failure.
MY MISTAKE: I TRIED TO BE A ONE-MAN BAND
Photographer Jonathan Self (inset above) set up a new photography course for children at the beginning of lockdown, but didn’t learn to delegate. I made a big mistake as I launched my new online business (cultivating wonder.co). It’s been a big success with over 800 parents and children doing the course this year, but it almost killed me due to the workload involved. I tried to do everything myself and also micro-manage people. I sold 368 tickets to my first course but was shattered afterwards, literally in bed with exhaustion.
WHAT I WISH I HAD DONE:
I quickly realised that I needed to let go, buy in some real experts and just allow myself to breathe.
WHAT IT TAUGHT ME:
I believe in the esprit de corps model rather than the oligarchy model of centralised power, and now we have a team of five people, sharing the profits, and it’s really lovely. We are flourishing with a Facebook group of over 1,000 parents.
MY MISTAKE: I HANDED OVER THOUSANDS TO A COMPANY THAT DIDN’T DELIVER
Bridget Daley (inset, above right) is founder of the Parents in Biz platform (parentsinbiz.co.uk). When setting up her second business, a fashion website, she was approached by a marketing company.
I was struggling to get visibility for the business and getting the brand name out there. Naively, I just took the company at their word and handed over thousands. They never delivered on their promises. I was relatively new in business and desperate to get the brand name out there and never carried out any due diligence. As a result, the business lost £4,000.
WHAT I WISH I HAD DONE:
I learnt to always research anyone whose services I use. I look at reviews and testimonials, as this is a good indication.
WHAT IT TAUGHT ME:
To never act from a state of desperation and to always carry out due diligence on companies I use.
MY MISTAKE: I WENT INTO PARTNERSHIP WITHOUT A PROPER CONTRACT
Shilpa Panchmatia
(inset, right), business growth coach at shilpa-p. com, wanted to create a dedicated Facebook ads agency.
I met a man who was an expert in that sector who said he would teach me about it. But the business relationship morphed into a different sort of relationship when we agreed that we would set up a proper full-time agency. And we got funding, and interest from a Google partner. We created an understanding when we talked about it. We decided on a business name, and he agreed that I could go and set up a business entity of which we would have 50-50. But he never completed his side of the paperwork. I didn’t think too much of it because, as business owners, we were very busy.
When the man pulled out of the business, he did not pay my expenses. I had lost face, because I had tied up with a Google partner to run this business, and they had put a tremendous amount of trust and faith in me without signing agreements. And we had given them an equity share in the business.
WHAT I WISH I HAD DONE:
I wish I had not given so much away. I wish we’d had clear contracts right from the outset, even though we both said that we would suck it and see.
And I wish I had been a little bit more mindful along the way, and noticed he never picked up my expenses, that he wasn’t serious and never worked late, while I often did.
WHAT IT TAUGHT ME:
To be very clear if you decide to work in partnership with someone.
Do your research fully and do not invest any time, money or resource until you are completely sure of the business opportunity – because it takes nothing less than 100 per cent dedication to make it work.
And you can only give that when you have a clear framework of working together, such as a business contract.