Peer Robbert Maas shares three of his top lessons he learned being an entrepreneur himself.
1. Employees can’t be your business partner
When his former business partner stepped away from the business, that left him without an equal partner. No one to sharpen ideas with. No one to take strategic decisions together with. And having to carry the load of the business alone.
Robbert hired new employees and tried to replicate what he had with her with them. But that didn’t work.
It can’t.
You can’t expect employees to care as much as you do. It’s not their idea and they don’t have a vested interest in it.
And while you can ask them for input, there is a hierarchy and they expect decisions and clarity from you.
You’ll need to look inside yourself and outside for that wisdom, companionship and guidance.
(note, a coach can help with some of it.)
2. Crises make clear what’s important.
You can make the case that our intelligence evolved because we faced difficult things. Change, hardship and even crisis.
But even though they’ve been valuable, that doesn’t make them easier.
Crises are tough. Uncertainty can be paralysing. Decisions have shitty consequences.
But there is a small golden piece of value in them.
Two actually. First, what once was non-negotiable becomes more flexible. That creates possibilities.
And, they make it really clear what’s important.
If you can only do 1 of the options, which one?
What is the most essential part of your brand to bring forward in your work?
If it needs to happen tomorrow, what can you do?
3. Being headstrong. But not too much.
Any valuable business is scarce for a reason. It’s hard to change the way things are done.
You need to be quite headstrong to keep going with your vision.
But, when you want to go farther together with your founding team, you’ll also need to know when to give in.
Either they’re just as headstrong. Expect collision.
But it’s possible from that counterbalance to go forward wiser.
Or they’ll say yes, because you keep pushing and give in for the sake of peace. But you won’t get your way.
In this case, you’ll need to be your counterbalance. Know your tendencies and inquire for their reasoning.
