I’m the CEO and founder of video marketing company Stada Media. Therefore, I have the responsibility – and accountability – of having employed over 25 staff; servicing over 150 customers; generating revenue of over £2 million, and dealing with the stress and anxiety of growing a business – including times where we almost lost everything.

Setting the scene

In this blog post, I’m going to set the scene for my entrepreneurial journey and tell you the story of setting up my first ‘business’. I’m going back to where it all started – when I had no idea what entrepreneurship actually was. In fact, I had no idea that business life was going to be my future.

Please note, I’m not trying to ‘teach’ – I’m simply sharing my experiences in the hope that they help current and future entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. We’re all in this together.

A bit about me…

I’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker. After spending 20+ years as a radio broadcaster, I realised I just wanted to do film. Radio really wasn’t the thing for me – I was happy at the time and I was earning a decent salary, but I wasn’t fulfilled career-wise. So, in my 30s, I picked up a camera for the first time.

However, I soon realised I wasn’t going to make any money out of being a filmmaker. Well, unless I became the next Steven Spielberg – which, let’s be honest, isn’t going to happen any time soon! So, I decided to go into video production.

I’ve spent most of my adult life self-employed or a business owner. I worked for someone once for about a year, but it didn’t go well – I think I’m just unemployable! I did the work, I thought I could do a better job of it myself, and I set up my first business.

The ‘spike’ moment

Right now, I’m the CEO and founder of Stada Media. We’re a video production business based in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. At the time of writing, there are 11 of us on the team. We’ve grown very much organically – from the very early days of me in my spare room at home. At this time, I was making low-budget corporate videos and TV adverts.

Then, in 2014, we had what I like to call a ‘spike’ moment. A client approached us around Christmas time and asked us if we could help them set up a new TV channel on Sky. It was a big, six-figure contract – and that was the catalyst for growth to where the business is today. It meant that I had to employ staff and take on office space.

Goals for Stada Media

To me, I have reached success if I can get the company to £10 million in revenue and the maximum number of staff and clients. Right now, we’re on course for about £500k this financial year. This is up significantly on previous years, and we continue to grow year on year.

Hopefully, if we keep going in the direction we’re going, we will eventually get there. The aim of Diary of an Entrepreneur is to share that entire journey – but right now, I want to catch up with you so we can get to the present day.

In this blog post, we’re going to look at two businesses I set up when I was younger and my journey to becoming a radio broadcaster.

I worked incredibly hard to finally get my break on radio. That sheer fight and determination to achieve my dreams has continued with me throughout my entire adult life. When I have a dream or a goal, I put everything I’ve got into it. It might take me a long time – it took me over a year to get on the radio – but I get there eventually, through blood, sweat, and a lot of tears!

So, let’s go right back to when I was around 12 years old. It was at this time that I made my first real attempt at making money – something that wasn’t a paper round, a milk float or measly pocket money. Yes – technically, this was my first ‘business’!

Danny’s Car Wash

We lived on a relatively quiet street, but I noticed that every weekend people would be out washing their cars. Not just that – arguing over the washing of said cars. I also noticed that we had quite a few cars travelling up and down the street – and I saw a moment. I saw a potential to make money.

Again, at the time, I had no knowledge of an entrepreneurial part of my brain. I had no thought of this becoming a business in any way. However, an opportunity presented itself – so I wanted to capitalise on it, and make my millions.

Lesson 1: Advertising is key

So, I grabbed my dad’s bucket and sponge. We also had a child’s toy cash register knocking around the house, so I grabbed that too. Dad was very kind to put 50p into it in change, in the form of twos, ones and, back in those days, half-pennies!

Now I had all the tools to set up my car wash. However, this was when the naivety set in. I thought getting customers would be as easy as grabbing a piece of paper and a pen and drawing an advert for ‘Danny’s Car Wash’.

I headed off to the local off-licence and negotiated with the owner, persuading him to let me put my advert in the window. He charged me 50p for a week to have the advert in the window – which, in those days, was extortionate!

I went back home and sat in our driveway on a deckchair, next to my till, my bucket of soapy water and sponge. I sat there and waited… and I waited… and I waited. Lesson number one, in the cut-throat industry of running a business, was learnt: advertising is key.

Entrepreneurial thinking

I thought that I would put this advert in the window and I would get a flood of customers wanting my services. However, this naivety has followed me all through my life to this day.

Anything new that comes along that I’m not 100% sure about, I’ll have a go – and 99.9% of the time, I will waste my time, money and resources. Now, a lot of people might be reading this and thinking, ‘What an idiot! Why doesn’t he just pay someone else to do the work for him?’

I have an old-school mentality of simply figuring it out, learning and not wasting time – and this is how a lot of entrepreneurs think, too. Entrepreneurs’ brains work by calculated risk – they don’t think about it too much, and just get on with it.

I look back on this memory of setting up my first business with fondness. Again, at the time, I didn’t know business was going to be my future – but the lessons have stayed with me.

Let’s get onto the next ‘business’ I set up – and from which I actually started making money!

At the disco

Now we’re heading into what I ended up doing for the next 20 years: DJing and radio broadcasting. The first time I actually started to make money from a business was when I got involved in mobile disco.

I was really close to my cousin growing up. He was 10 years older than me and he was a DJ. I went along to a few of his mobile discos and got really excited about it – I thought, ‘I could play records, talk nonsense in-between and get paid a load of money for it!’ I wanted a piece of that.

So, my dad bought a load of kit on the cheap. I was building most of it: tripods, speakers, lights. I went to car boot sales and bought records (there were only records in those days!).

While my friends were at school revising for exams, I was out earning money at mobile discos. We could be earning anything between £50 and £70 a night.

Music Made In The UK

Around that time, I was starting to see how popular mobile discos were – and I had an idea. I thought, ‘How can I make money from mobile discos without actually having to go and do mobile discos?’ So, I decided that I was going to set up a DJ agency.

I still remember the name of the company – ‘Music Made In The UK’. The idea was that we had a bank of mobile DJs, and clients would call up and book one of our DJs for an event. The DJ would do the work, and we’d take a 15% commission.

My mum and dad let me use their shed, which was an absolute mess, but I managed to renovate it into a little office. I probably spent more time setting it up with paper trays and stationary than I did working!

The Yellow Pages

However, I decided I wasn’t going to make the same mistake that I did with the car wash. This time, I needed traction and to get in front of potential clients. So, I paid £250 that I’d saved to get a small advert in the Yellow Pages (I’m showing my age again here).

The moment the Yellow Pages was released, the phones were ringing off. The. Hook. Remember, it was all landlines in those days, and it wasn’t long until my mum was threatening to kick me out!

That said, we were clearly becoming very popular. It was then that I learned the power of speculation and spending in advertising.

Lesson 2: Have a good business model

However, I also learned that my business model sucked.

On the surface, the model seems pretty straightforward. However, you’ve got to remember – we’re back in the day when there was no such thing as PayPal or bank transfers. It was cash and cheques – this meant that I had to either go and get the money, or wait for clients to send me cheques in the post.

Given that DJs all finish work at the same time of night, it was absolutely impossible – I was driving all over Yorkshire to collect my 15% in cash. At our peak, we had 10-15 DJs out at any one time, and most of my time was spent waiting for them to send us cheques. As you can imagine, most of them took forever – and some didn’t even send them at all!

This also introduced me to the world of customer service and client expectations. Often, on a Friday or Saturday night, I’d get a call from a client saying that their DJ hadn’t turned up. Or, they’d turned up and they only had 3 records in their entire collection.

In my first business – my first ‘proper’ business – I was learning a lot for the first time. What it was like to work with a team, work with clients, and handle all the transactions in between.

It’s safe to say, this business was also a complete disaster. Despite this, I’ve taken the lessons with me throughout my entire life. 

96.3 Radio Aire

While all of this was happening, I was still chasing my dream of becoming a radio broadcaster – on my local station in Leeds, 96.3 Radio Aire.

There’s one lesson that’s followed me from my first business at Danny’s Car Wash right the way through to today, and that’s persistence – but more importantly, self-awareness.

Lesson 3: Enthusiasm, persistence and self-awareness

I sent Radio Aire countless demo tapes and letters showing my enthusiasm for working at the station. One after the other, after the other. Back then there was no email, and I didn’t have a computer to print the letters off – instead, a typewriter! They’d write rejection letters back, and I could be waiting weeks before I heard back from them.

Even so, there was something within my confidence that meant this constant rejection didn’t affect me as it might affect most people. Most people would give up, but it had the complete opposite effect on me. I was made even more determined to succeed.

However, I was also self-aware enough to know I wasn’t perfect. In fact, I wasn’t even good. I just knew I had the drive – and my enthusiasm, confidence and persistence about getting work on this radio station got me further than the talent itself. Read that again!

This also plays a big part in marketing and advertising – it’s about selling yourself and making regular noise. That’s the only way people will remember you.

Change of plan

I knew this method of sending letters wasn’t working – I was sending them to the same person every time, and I just wasn’t getting an answer. I knew it was time to get innovative and creative.

So, I decided to approach the radio presenters that were currently on the radio station directly. Specifically, I approached the ones who did shows in the evening, because I knew the rest of the studios would be empty. I told them I’d love to come and shadow them – make tea, do the photocopying, answer phones, whatever – anything to get a taste of being at this radio station.

One of the evening presenters invited me in, and I spent a while hanging around with them. I made tea and everything else I said I’d be willing to help with, but I knew what I really wanted to do.

So, one night I plucked up the courage to ask if I could have one of the studios for an hour to get to know the job. They agreed, and I started spending one night a week in that studio, refining my art.

About 6 months later, I produced a demo reel that I thought was better than it’s ever been, and sent it to the boss. That’s what led me to present a couple of overnight shows – and the rest, as they say, is history.

A ‘no’ is not a ‘no’

Keep going. A ‘no’ is not a ‘no’ – it’s a ‘yes’ or a ‘maybe’. Have confidence, but guided confidence. I didn’t go into that radio station thinking I was brilliant and entitled to the job – I knew I had a lot to learn, but this was backed up by my undying enthusiasm. This is why now, as an employer, I love it when people approach me with enthusiasm.

Lessons learned…

1. You have to spend money to make money. You’ve got to speculate to accumulate.
2. You don’t know what you don’t know. Getting to know is the only way to learn.
3. Making mistakes is a compulsory part of the journey – embrace it.
4. Whatever your vocation in life, you have to be a great salesperson. Selling yourself is more important than ever before. It’s a very noisy landscape out there, and if you’re not willing to shout about what you do, you’re not going to get very far – it’s as simple as that.
5. Utilise and take advantage of all your experience to help you achieve everything you want in life. What’s happened in my life outside of business has steered me in business.
6. Finally, one analogy I love comes from the film Karate Kid. Mr. Miyagi gets Daniel to do all of these crazy, miniscule tasks – paint fences, wax his car, clean the floors – repeatedly, for weeks on end. Daniel has no idea that Mr. Miyagi is actually training him for his fights – and he ends up winning spectacularly. The same goes for business: getting your team to do those smaller, attention-to-detail tasks will solve wider problems. 

So, that’s my story of setting up my first business. If I’ve motivated you in any way, shape or form in this blog post – my work is done! Please share this post with anyone in your network if you found it helpful.

If you’d like to contact me directly for a chat, you can email me at dannylacey@stadamedia.co.uk.

The post Setting Up My First Business – Let’s Start At The Beginning appeared first on Danny Lacey.

Here are a few points to consider when choosing the perfect soundtrack to your video…

Define the mood

Music has the power to engage the brain on a subconscious level, and different styles can evoke very different emotions. Defining the mood you are trying to create should be your starting point when choosing a soundtrack. How do you want your viewers to feel when they watch your video — upbeat, excited, inspired, melancholy? Try a few options and see which one best fits the mood you’re looking for.

Think about your target audience

Every element of your video should be tailored towards your target audience — including the background music. If you have a niche market, choosing a genre of music that caters specifically to your audience will add extra impact. On the other hand, neutral music with a broader appeal is a safer option for wider audiences.

Foreground or background?

In many cases, you want your background music to stay in the background. If you’re including a voice over, for example, you don’t want to choose music that gets in the way. In which case, you should pick a track with a steady pace and no sudden changes in mood or instrumentation.

Consider the length of your video

Finding a song that perfectly fits the length of your video isn’t easy — and neither is cutting a track to size without any noticeable seams. If possible, choose music that loops. That way, you can seamlessly combine individual loops and construct a soundtrack that’s the ideal length for your video.

Understand copyright laws

As a rule, you need to obtain permission or a license to use any copyrighted music. Failing to do will only have negative consequences! When in doubt, stick to one of the many online music providers that have entire libraries of licensed background music at a range of different prices. If you are on a tight budget, YouTube Audio Library is a fantastic resource full of royalty free music.

I’m the CEO & Founder of video production agency Stada Media. If you need video, drop me an email directly – dannylacey@stadamedia.co.uk. Keep checking my blog for more video advice and insight!

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For conventional employees, this change can be easy to ignore. You have defined duties, fixed working hours, and on a normal day it might feel like not much is different.

The same is not true for entrepreneurs. If you’re trying to build a business, standing still is synonymous with going backwards. You need to embrace change on an ongoing basis, grab a hold of the opportunities it presents to you, and steer its trajectory ever upwards.

In this article I’ll share some of my own insights from building my video marketing agency, Stada Media, and how I dealt with the rapid pace of change during the early growth phase.

Why you shouldn’t fear change

Change itself can be scary in many parts of life. Often change represents an ending, or some other unwelcome event outside of our control.

In business there are positive and negative changes (and in some cases, neutral changes). You can anticipate some of these and mitigate their impact but in the end, what defines you as an entrepreneur is how you respond to the changes you can’t avoid.

This starts with how you perceive change. Instead of fighting change, embrace it. Recognise that in every change, there is an opportunity: a chance to grow, to become more robust, or to bounce back stronger from a negative impact.

Remember that when you’re launching a business, change is something you should be looking for. Stability is a long-term goal too – change is not the same as chaos – but you should always be looking for ways to make progress.

What is change?

Let’s take a moment to understand what change actually is. For change to happen, you need three things:

• A starting point
• A (different) end point
• A passage of time

No change is instantaneous – it takes time, so if you’re trying to make change happen, you need to give it time too.

Equally, if time passes and you’re still where you were, nothing has changed. It takes an external force – either from you, or from a third party – to make change happen.

Remembering these simple principles can help you to cope with change and even to guide it in the direction you want, by exerting some force on it and allowing time for that to take effect.

Fast and constant change

You can think of the rate of change as being the size of change, divided by the time taken. A big change that takes a very long time is still ‘slow’ change overall, whereas a small change in a very short space of time could still be quite ‘fast’.

It’s often the case that the fastest change occurs in the early days of a new business. A lot of different things are changing all at once, you’re building an entire workforce from scratch, setting up your supply chain and finding your market niche.

Careful planning can help – this is why you should have a business plan – but either way, a lot is going to change in a short amount of time as your new venture finds its feet.

This is a running theme in my Diary of an Entrepreneur podcast, where I address some of the growing pains I encountered when taking Stada Media from a new start-up, to moving offices, managing my workforce and setting ambitious revenue goals.

Don’t neglect slow change

Fast change can deliver rapid results, and being able to pivot when the market demands it is crucial to ongoing survival. But slow, incremental change can build to deliver massive return on investment, so always have a long-term plan in place for those slower goals.

Slow change can be harder to keep track of. You might be looking for relatively small trends over long periods of time, in quite erratic variables like website traffic, customer numbers, turnover, revenues and profits.

At the same time, slow change gives you longer to average out those values. So even though the margins for error may be larger, it should be possible to spot the upward trends you’re aiming for – or to identify if you’re not achieving those goals.

Unforeseen changes

You won’t always see change coming. The way you cope with unexpected change – such as the loss of a key member of staff or a big client contract – can define your career as an entrepreneur even more than the way you deal with planned changes.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the perfect example of unforeseen change. The impact on businesses was very large and very fast, with some sectors hit more severely than others, but everyone affected to some degree.

Good leadership, combined with the ability to move into the lucrative new markets that appeared overnight, allowed some entrepreneurs to thrive while less adaptable businesses (both big and small) did not survive the periods of lockdown.

It’s worth noting that this did not necessarily mean exploiting consumers. Many businesses started selling face masks, hand sanitiser and other consumer-grade PPE at reasonable prices; it was just about responding quickly to the overnight demand.

What have we learned?

Let’s summarise what we’ve learned. Change isn’t always something you can foresee, but it is something you can plan for – and even something you can control, as part of your business plan.

Change is opportunity. Without it, things would stay the same. Growth is change, profit is change, even recruitment is a form of change. Learn to embrace the positive potential that this unlocks for your business.

Some change is fast, some change is slow. Big change in a short space of time is the fastest of all. You can use this to prioritise opportunities that offer you the quickest (and biggest) return on investment.

It’s not an either-or scenario. Capitalise on rapid change to deliver ROI, but remember to keep working towards the incremental gains and organic growth outlined in your business plan.

Everything changes, including people, businesses and market dynamics. By recognising this and reacting to constant change, you can avoid being left behind and make sure your business comes out on top after riding the wave.

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Failure is your chance to learn and to grow; to fail less in the future, you have to become bigger and better than you already are. These growing pains aren’t always easy to take, but if you recognise them as an opportunity rather than an enemy, failure becomes a lot less scary.

Let’s take a deep dive into failure from an entrepreneur’s perspective and see if we can learn to embrace our shortcomings, rather than fear them.

What is failure?

First of all, what do we mean by failure? If a customer is 99% happy with your work, but makes one small complaint, have you failed? Is failure an entirely cancelled contract? Or if your business as a whole is doing well, do you chalk individual clients up to experience?

The answer is that there are shades of grey in failure. Just as an exam has a pass mark, you need to learn to set your own benchmarks for success. Devise ways to measure this, whether it’s through customer satisfaction surveys, company revenues or some other metric.

You can choose your own definition of success and failure. You can even set levels – ‘excellent’ for your best performance and ‘very poor’ for your worst, but with ‘satisfactory’ bands in between.

What are you afraid of?

In order for failure to be a significant threat to your business, it needs to have material consequences. Examples include lost clients, lower revenues and profits, and bad reviews or negative word of mouth.

Decide which of these are existential threats to your venture, especially if you’re just starting up a new business: poor reviews in your first months can be hard to recover from.

Try to keep your risk analysis separate from any emotional fear of failure. Again, we’re all programmed by life to be afraid to fail, but no business has a 100% success rate.

By setting your emotions aside, you can take a more systematic approach to addressing the failures in your business, to resolve them faster with less anxiety.

Recognising failure

Not all customer complaints represent a failure on your part. Some (and in certain industries, many) will be spurious attempts to get a discount or refund. Some will be legitimate complaints but not your fault.

Again, by defining what you consider to be failure, you can choose how to react to complaints and other incidents as they arise.

This can prevent knee-jerk reactions such as giving a customer a full refund over a minor issue that was beyond your control (e.g. late delivery by an independent courier).

It’s sometimes hard to get perspective when you’re in the middle of an incident or when an angry supplier, customer or stakeholder is on the phone – having a clear notion of failure beforehand can help you to avoid making costly snap decisions.

Dealing with failure

When you encounter an incident that meets your predetermined criteria for ‘failure’, put your plans into action and take a dispassionate approach to resolving the problem in a positive way.

This might involve dealing directly with an unhappy customer, but can also include some more general responses, for example:

• Damage limitation
• Customer service/complaint handling
• Reputation management
• Changes to processes/culture
• Supply chain improvements

It all depends on what went wrong. If the problem is with physical goods supplied by a third party, for instance, it may be out of your control to improve the quality of the product; instead, you could look for a better alternative from a different supplier.

Reducing your failure rate

While negative incidents will inevitably occur over the course of your business, it’s good practice to try to reduce your failure rate to a minimum and to use those remaining inevitabilities as learning opportunities.

You can think of failure in three main groups:

• Foreseeable failure
• Forecastable failure
• Unpredictable failure

So what are these groups, and how should your response differ to each?

Foreseeable failure

These are the specific failures it’s possible to anticipate. They might be easily quantifiable (e.g. missing a sales target) and it’s often easier to see how to respond (e.g. make more calls or change your marketing methods).

Forecastable failure

These are the ‘known unknowns’. You can’t necessarily see a specific incident coming, but you can guess that one will arise eventually. There may be a human element that makes these failures harder to pin down, such as a third-party supplier or a customer.

Unpredictable failure

These are the issues that arise out of nowhere, such as a trusted supplier going out of business without warning, or an overnight economic collapse like the 2007-08 credit crunch. You can’t prepare for them, but you can build a robust business with a positive approach to problem-solving, to help you to find a solution in the shortest amount of time.

Best practice for responding to failure in business

Before I finish, let’s put together a checklist for failure in business (how to respond to it, and how to avoid it in future).

• Predicting failure
  • Identify specific failures you might encounter
  • Predict more general risks of failure
  • Acknowledge some failure is unpredictable
• Defining failure
  • Set numerical targets where possible
  • Consider negative impacts on your business
  • Know when an issue/complaint is not your fault
• Responding to failure
  • Deal directly with the issue
  • Remember to deal with reputational impacts
  • Don’t offer costly/excessive compensation
• Learning from failure
  • Be open to learning from failure
  • Look for the errors you could have controlled
  • Identify repeated issues or patterns in multiple failures
• Reducing failures in future
  • Apply the lessons you learn
  • Make material changes (e.g. suppliers, processes)
  • Make cultural changes (e.g. workforce retraining)

Implement this business failure checklist and you can reduce your failure rate – and by definition, increase your success rate – while always remembering that some failure is inevitable, and the learning process never ends.

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In this article I’ll take a deep dive into the murky waters of employer-employee friendships, how to support your staff without compromising your objectivity, and ultimately answer the burning question: can your boss be your friend?

For more on this topic, head over to my Diary of an Entrepreneur podcast. I go into detail about some more of the issues surrounding being friends with your boss in Episode 19.

The challenges of being friends with your employees

So, what leads some people to say “never be friends with your boss”? Surely a friendly workplace is a happy and healthy workplace? Well that’s true to an extent, but good internal communications and supportive leadership are not the same thing as friendship, and you should never confuse the two.

Difficulty in maintaining objectivity

Personal relationships do not align well with objective business decisions. From disciplinary procedures, to promotions, to redundancies and more, you need a clear head when choosing who gets what in your organisation. It shouldn’t always be your friends who get the benefits.

Perceptions of favouritism

Leading on from the previous point, things get even more complicated when your employees start to notice favouritism in your decision-making. You’ll lose trust, you may lose discipline among your workforce, and in extreme cases you could find yourself facing formal dispute proceedings.

It’s tough to maintain boundaries

Being friends with your boss blurs the boundaries between superior and subordinate. Some businesses like to operate with a fairly flat hierarchy, but you need to know who’s responsible for what – and who’s accountable for any failures.

Conflicts of interest

Even if you act objectively, your friendships with your employees can create conflicts of interest. For example, in disputes between employees where you would normally be expected to provide leadership and an objective resolution, it’s hard to do that when you’re friends with one employee and not the other.

Personal biases

Who gets that promotion, that juicy commission-making contract or first pick of the new clients? It’s hard to avoid making promises over lunch or in the pub. Try to avoid spending time with individual employees – there are plenty of teambuilding opportunities that don’t put you in an awkward position personally.

Difficulty in giving feedback

Can you be friends with your employees AND tell them when they’re underperforming? Or deny them a pay rise when you know their personal circumstances? Maybe you feel emotionally stable enough to do this, but consider their perspective too: can your boss be your friend if they think you’re bad at your job? It’s a thorny area that’s best avoided.

My thoughts on the phrase “never be friends with your boss”

“Never be friends with your boss” is an adage that many people choose to live by. For us as business leaders, the counterpart would be “never be friends with your employees”. I do think these sentiments are correct, but it’s important not to allow them to be harmful.

In Diary of an Entrepreneur Episode 19 I describe a team get-together with my entire workforce at my content marketing company Stada Media, where I told my employees that I would love to be included in social events and would love to be invited for drinks, but that I would not – and cannot – be their friend.

Growing a business is not a social club; it’s a social contract. My role as business leader is to provide my employees with the tools and the prosperity they need to enjoy their time at work, to gain personal growth and to take home an adequate pay cheque. But I’m also there to make the tough choices, including decisions they will not understand.

That’s the entrepreneur’s burden. You can have a mentor, you can appoint a managing director, but ultimately that responsibility lies with you alone, and you cannot allow friendships with your subordinates to cloud your judgment.

How to find a healthy balance in relationships with your employees

So if being friends with your boss is not appropriate, you might be wondering how you can run a happy, healthy workplace. This is where some managers make big mistakes, going way too far in the other direction. Authority and authoritarianism are not the same thing.

Let’s ask a very slightly different question: can you be friendly with your employees? And here I think, as long as everybody knows where they stand, absolutely yes you can. That’s why I’ve never regretted telling my employees that I will never directly be their friend, but I am here to support them and I do want to be involved.

One way to find that balance more easily is to appoint a managing director. I’ve talked about this in the past, and why you should fire yourself as soon as possible. Take yourself out of the hierarchy and have your workforce report to an MD, who can deal with the day-to-day discipline, leaving your door always open to any other concerns.

Final thoughts

The short answer to “can your boss be your friend?” is no. It’s that simple. But you can lead with compassion and communication, and you can still socialise – you don’t have to rule from an ivory tower. It’s all about balance, which is a theme you’ll find again and again throughout my Diary of an Entrepreneur video series.

If you’re still struggling to find that balance, or you’d like to talk more about how to strike the right relationships with your employees – or how to hire an MD to take some of that burden away from you – please get in touch and I’ll be happy to share more of my own experiences with you.

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So what are the challenges of leading a team effectively? And as the head of a business, what are the challenges of managing multiple teams at the same time?

In this article, I take a look at the challenges of management and leadership in business, topics that you’ll also find addressed in detail in Episode 7 of my podcast Diary of an Entrepreneur.

Understanding the impact of being a leader

To appreciate the challenges of being a leader, first you need to understand the impact of being a leader. As I already said, leadership is not just about delegating duties. You are more than just a manager; you are a figurehead for your team to look up to, especially during difficult times.

The challenges of being a team leader are never greater than when times get tough. You need to strike a balance between navigating your team through a crisis, while also making difficult decisions or handing down bad news from the management hierarchy.

Remember, you need to stay calm and confident, without losing your compassion. If you can achieve this, your team will be more stable as a result.

The main challenges of being a leader

With that being said, let’s take a look at some of the main challenges of being a leader:

Staying resilient

Resilience is one of the biggest challenges of management. Over time you will face difficult economic cycles, disputes from employees and contracts that go sour. All of this can be mentally and emotionally challenging, so be prepared.

Building strong relationships

The ability to build effective relationships with people you might not normally socialise with is one of the challenges of being a team leader, but you can’t only work with people you like. You’ll need to be a good leader to all your personnel equally.

Communicating effectively

Good communication is a surprisingly scarce skill, and is one of the biggest challenges of managing multiple teams and communicating clearly to all of them at once. This should come with experience but there are also some communication techniques that can be learned quite quickly.

Maintaining a clear vision

There’s a big difference between focus and tunnel vision. In business, you need to know where you’re going, but also be adaptable if you find you need to take a different route to get there. Clear vision will help you to stay on course either way.

Adapting to change

Flexibility and adaptability are strong skills in general. Change is both challenge and opportunity, and your success in business will depend on your ability to seize the latter while overcoming the former.

Managing conflict

Ask many managers “what are the challenges of leading a team?” and they’ll tell you that avoiding conflict – and managing it when it arises – are two of the biggest. Make sure you have dispute resolution procedures in place and treat everyone fairly.

Delegation

Delegation is another of the challenges of being a team leader, especially if you like to be popular. Nobody wants the difficult tasks, but it’s your job to divide them up and allocate them fairly. Remember, you can be friendly with your subordinates, but you cannot be their friend and also be an effective, unbiased manager.

Making tough decisions

The really tough decisions (e.g. disciplinaries and redundancy) are among the biggest challenges of management, especially at senior level when the decision-making stops with you. However, it’s essential sometimes to make those tough calls, for the health and happiness of your workforce overall – and for the survival of your business.

How to overcome common challenges of leadership

Overcoming the challenges of being a leader isn’t always easy. It takes mental and emotional strength, without losing your compassion and communication skills. I find an open dialogue with my staff and an open-door policy helps them to know that I’m here to help with any issues that arise – it’s better to be aware of them as they happen.

I go into much more detail about the challenges of managing multiple teams and personnel in Diary of an Entrepreneur. After building my content marketing brand Stada Media, I feel like I’ve faced some of the difficulties along the way, and I care strongly about sharing what I have learned with fellow entrepreneurs.

Leadership can be lonely, so build your own support network: a business mentor you can trust, and a managing director who can take some of the heat off of you during day-to-day operations. I hope my podcast can help you too. Remember, you’re not the only one facing the challenges you face; many of them are universal throughout the business world.

Closing thoughts

So, what are the challenges of leading a team effectively? Strong leadership, clear communication, adaptability and compassion are all good starting points. Most of all, listen to the people around you. If an employee has a problem, don’t just dismiss it. If you’re seeing an attitude problem or a drop in productivity, tackle it head-on.

It’s often a case of stopping the rot before it takes hold, in order to avoid a bigger challenge further down the line. It’s your responsibility to do this, so step up to the plate and confront the issues that are holding your team back from their full potential.

For more information about any of the issues I’ve raised here, please feel free to contact me directly. I welcome questions from fellow entrepreneurs and as I said, I believe strongly in sharing my own experiences, to help your journey through starting a business run as smoothly as possible.

The post Leading Through the Storm: Navigating the Challenges of Being a Leader appeared first on Danny Lacey.

I’ve been through this process now and I have first-hand experience of the advantages and risks of starting your own business. I believe firmly in helping others up that same ladder, which is why in this comprehensive guide I’m sharing some of my best tips to start your own small business.

There are lots of very strong advantages of setting up your own business. By the end of this guide, I hope you’ll have a clearer idea of how to set your own business up, as well as some of the potential obstacles to watch out for.

What you should consider before starting your own business

No matter what your business idea may be, starting your own business begins with you as an individual. From your first days as a sole trader, through to managing a growing workforce, it all comes back to you – so make sure you’re as ready as you can be.

My own management style is to operate an open-door policy. I want to know what’s happening within my business, and to do that I rely on strong internal communications. If there’s a problem with a contract, a dispute between employees, or a situation that needs my direct attention, I want to know about it.

I’ll go through some specific tips to start your own small business below, but first and foremost, you need to know that you’re ready. However good your concept might be, the stewardship and leadership has to come from you, especially in the early days.

Things you should know when starting your own business

That being said, let’s look at some of the practicalities of setting up your own business:

You need a profitable business idea

Knowing how to set up your own business is irrelevant without a good (and good means profitable) business idea. With a small number of exceptions, you’re in business to make money, so make sure your idea has the potential to do that.

Don’t skip on conducting market research

One of the big advantages of setting up your own business is the ability to research your target market and maximise the relevance and saleability of your product or service. Don’t skip this step, as it underpins everything from your business plan to your early-years cash flow.

Create a business plan

A comprehensive business plan will set out the expected growth path of your new venture, and should also factor in some of the risks of starting your own business. Be realistic about your prospects, but also outline some higher-growth targets as your ‘shoot for the stars’ option.

Think about how you’re going to finance your business

It goes without saying that finance plays a huge part in how to set your own business up, but remember you need more than just enough cash to get started. Depending on the nature of your work, it may take weeks or even months to get paid in full, and turbulence in the economy can massively impact how quickly – and how much – money comes into your business.

Cash flow proved to be one of the biggest headaches I had to face in my own business venture, when I started the video marketing agency Stada Media. Be prepared to take tough decisions, such as making staff redundant, if it proves necessary to keep your business afloat.

Remember the legal steps

There’s no quick and easy way to learn the legal side of starting a new business, so try to have good advisors around you and don’t rush into legally sensitive situations when they arise, without researching them first. A costly court case or employment tribunal, especially in your first year, could easily put you out of business.

The advantages of setting up your own business

So, what are the more general advantages of setting up your own business? Well, you get to decide what products and services you offer – and you don’t have to offer anything you don’t want to. You can choose when to expand into new areas, when to innovate from the inside out, and when to embrace other people’s ideas from the outside in.

You can choose your business hours, your location, who you deal with and who you employ. While these should be driven by sensible business decisions rather than personal preference, there’s a good amount of overlap between the two, allowing you to run things the way you want to.

Exploring the risks of starting your own business

Risk should always be a major consideration when deciding how to set your own business up. Think about supplier risks, customer credit risks, and physical threats like fire and flood damage.

Again, the exact list will depend on the nature of your business, but take some time to identify the existential threats to your new venture, and take steps to mitigate them via insurance policies and sensible business practices.

Tips on starting your own business

We’re close to knowing how to set up your own business – the final step is to prepare for any growing pains in your first years of trading.

Surround yourself with a supportive network

A good accountant, reliable business lawyer and a trusted mentor are all essential components in your support network. Don’t be afraid to include friends and family too. Business is business, but you’re still a human being, and sometimes the support you need is emotional.

Develop a strong online presence

Whether you trade online or not, it’s a simple fact that having an online presence will help you to find customers and build a stronger brand. Small business websites are not expensive. Publish new content regularly to build your search presence and consider social media to support your growth – brand marketing videos on TikTok and YouTube can reach massive audiences overnight.

Networking is key

Speak to like-minded entrepreneurs in your geographic area or within your chosen industry. Reach out on social media or search for ‘business breakfasts’ in your town or city. There are good people out there (like me!) who are keen to share their experiences with those who are still up and coming.

Build a strong team

Grow your workforce as you need to. There’s a constant balance to strike between having capacity available to you, without employing more people than you need. Develop strong recruitment processes and you’ll be able to add to your human capital when required.

Manage your time effectively

Time management should never be overlooked. There’s only one of you, so spend your time where you are needed. When your business is off the ground, consider employing a managing director who can deal with the day-to-day running, freeing you up to focus on building the next stage in your business strategy.

My biggest takeaways from starting a business

As a business owner you’ll experience the full range of emotions, and some you never knew existed. I talk about this in more detail in Diary of an Entrepreneur Episode 13. There are stresses and strains and mental health challenges, which you need to balance against events in your personal life too.

However, the advantages of setting up your own business – the ability to steer your own path and focus on what’s truly rewarding to you – far outweigh the risks and burdens, in my opinion. Work on that support network, find your mentor and grow your team, and you’ll have good people around you when those more difficult times come along.

Final thoughts

For me, starting your own business is something everyone should try IF you have a viable idea that you can build into a fully fledged business plan. It’s not for everyone and you should go into it with your eyes wide open, fully aware that yes, there are certain risks of starting your own business.

But risk can be opportunity too, and I hope with my tips to start your own small business, you can embark on this journey with more confidence, and with a better idea of what to expect. If you’d like to learn more, please watch my Diary of an Entrepreneur series on YouTube, or contact me directly and I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.

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Knowing how to train your team is an important leadership skill, and it’s one you will improve at over time. In this guide, I’ll look at some of the core elements of good team training, along with some challenges of effective team management training.

I explore these themes in more detail in my podcast Diary of an Entrepreneur. In particular, I would recommend Season 4 Episode 6 as a good answer to the burning question: “How do you coach your team?”

Why is team training so important?

Team leader training helps to keep staff motivated and working in the same direction. One-on-one coaching is your opportunity to help individuals tackle any problem areas, while team training sessions can bring everyone up to speed together.

Here are some key benefits of coaching your team:

Increased productivity

Team training can be a motivating factor, helping employees to know that they are performing well and functioning correctly in their role, and maximising productivity as a result.

Improved communication

Good team leader training sets a standard of effective communication and starts an open dialogue, which can help personnel to work with each other and to raise any concerns or suggestions.

Employee satisfaction

Team management training (when it’s done well) has a trickle-down effect, helping employees to feel more valued and raising satisfaction levels on an ongoing basis.

How to know your team’s training needs

Now we know the benefits, how do you coach your team to unlock those advantages? A good place to start is to identify the areas in which your team actually needs training. It’s not just about knowing how to train your team, but about targeting that training for maximum impact.

Be open to collaboration and ideas from your team. In some cases, they may directly ask for training in a particular area. This is a gimme, so make sure you arrange a training session at the first opportunity, and get them up to speed. You can also hold more general progress updates with individuals and look for any common areas where they are lagging or having doubts.

The challenges of coaching your team

With some of the benefits in mind, how do you coach your team without coming up against any barriers?

Time constraints

Making time for team training can be difficult, but it’s essential in the long run. Try to appreciate that the increase in productivity after effective team leader training will more than make up for the time you invest in the training itself.

Resistance to change

You may find that when coaching your team, not everybody is receptive to the new processes and suggestions you put in place. Regular coaching helps to combat this: if new ideas are a common feature of the workplace, they will be accepted more readily.

Individual differences

Knowing how to train your team as a whole also relies on recognising that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here. Some people will need more of an individual touch, so make time for one-on-one coaching and leave nobody behind.

Imposter syndrome

Don’t fall prey to imposter syndrome in team management training. You’ve earned your place and you’re the perfect person to coach your personnel. By staying open to ideas from all levels, you can help to prevent imposter syndrome in your subordinates too, by showing that their suggestions are valid and, at least sometimes, acting on them.

Tips for team training that can help your business thrive

Taking all of the above into account, let’s look at a structured approach to coaching your team:

Set clear goals and objectives

Don’t train people for the sake of it. Make sure each training session has an outcome in mind (often improving a specific skill or preventing a pre-existing problem from happening again). Make sure your staff know the reasons behind each training session, so they can also see the benefits.

Choose the right training methods

Try to choose appropriate training methods for each session. Group coaching is probably not appropriate if there’s an issue with one person – you’ll just embarrass them. Practical coaching may be best delivered at the desk, rather than in an isolated meeting room.

Provide hands-on experience

Share your personal experience with your employees. Many of them will look to you as their leader to do this anyway – in general, people want to develop their skills and further their career. It’s also a great way to overcome the imposter syndrome mentioned earlier.

Encourage participation

Welcome ideas and suggestions, and always give constructive answers to questions. Don’t force people to participate – this isn’t primary school – but ensure that the atmosphere is welcoming and don’t necessarily treat people speaking as ‘interruption’. It’s all good learning potential.

Provide ongoing support

Make sure your door is open between training sessions, so people can come to you anytime they want some coaching. This will build stronger relationships and resolve issues faster, to avoid any drops in productivity and motivation.

Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of training

Ask your team what they thought of the training session, what worked and what didn’t. Anonymous feedback forms are a good option for this, but make sure there’s room to write a genuine, considered response, and not just a tick-box chart.

Closing thoughts

Team training goes to the core of upskilling your employees, and it’s much cheaper than recruiting more skilled candidates externally. You’ll find team coaching is a continuing theme in Diary of an Entrepreneur, because it’s so important to building your business over time.

If you have any questions about any of this, or you’d like to talk to me about any other aspect of my journey as an entrepreneur, please feel free to get in touch.

The post The Importance of Team Training and How to Make It Effective appeared first on Danny Lacey.

In this guide I’ll try to answer the question “what does procrastinate mean?” and look at how to avoid procrastination at work, to help make sure that the time you spend in the workplace translates into productivity, and isn’t just wasted.

You can learn more about these issues in my Diary of an Entrepreneur podcast, where I share my own experiences in building my content marketing business Stada Media. Episode 5 in particular looks at productivity and how to maintain momentum, which I’ll address later in this article.

What does procrastinate mean?

Before we look at how to stop procrastination, let’s make sure we understand what it is. It’s not a complicated definition – procrastination is “the act of delaying or postponing something”.

The word comes from the Latin “crastinus”, meaning “of tomorrow”. If you’re trying to learn how to avoid being a procrastinator, there’s a lesser known Latin phrase you might like to keep in mind: “pro hodie” means “for today”, although “carpe diem” (“seize the day”) is more commonly used.

Why do we procrastinate?

There are many reasons why we procrastinate. Sometimes a challenge appears insurmountable, and it feels safer not to get started. Sometimes an urgent issue pushes other items down the agenda. Sometimes it’s a matter of poor physical or mental health preventing you from making a start, and sometimes it’s poor self-discipline.

Whatever the cause, learning how to avoid procrastination at work can give you a powerful tool set to recognise and overcome this inertia before it robs you of your hard-earned momentum. Even with a few small techniques, knowing how to stop procrastinating can help you make incremental gains to restore your business productivity.

The negative impacts of procrastination

What does ‘procrastinate’ mean in terms of your business? Essentially, it’s any time when you could be productive, but are not. Avoidable lateness and absences, coming back late from lunch, making endless cups of tea or coffee, and getting distracted by social media are all examples of procrastination.

Any business only has a limited amount of time in which to make money – that’s why we go to work, ultimately. Procrastination eats into that time like rust into metal, and in severe cases your business can completely seize up as chronic procrastination leaves you unable to deliver on your goals and on your commitments to your customers.

How to stop procrastination

Knowing how to avoid being a procrastinator can help anyone tackle this blight. This isn’t just something you should focus on as an entrepreneur, it’s also something worth discussing with your employees, and helping them to understand that procrastination will not reduce their workload, but will actually increase the pressure later.

Set specific goals and deadlines

Setting goals, milestones and deadlines is a powerful tool in how to stop procrastination. A schedule will help you to maintain momentum in business and prevent workloads from getting out of control as final deadlines approach.

Break tasks into smaller steps

Break large tasks down into smaller steps. Most work can be sliced into more manageable chunks in this way. If you don’t feel this is possible, try to track your progress towards completing the single overall task – watching the percentage creep from 0% to 50% and beyond can be surprisingly motivating.

Minimise distractions

Shutting out distractions is another essential ability in how to stop procrastination. Applications like Microsoft Word now have ‘Focus Mode’ which will reduce screen clutter to help you concentrate. You may also want to silence phone and email notifications using build-in ‘Do Not Disturb’ options, then handle all your correspondence at one designated time.

Reward yourself

Plan rewards for yourself and your workforce. The “work hard, play hard” mentality isn’t always healthy, but in some cases it’s a good way to ensure that your employees feel their achievements. Knowing that your work matters can be hugely motivating, and can help you to resist procrastinating the next time the inclination hits you.

Don’t overdo it

Finally, one major way to avoid procrastination at work is simply to keep things under control. Don’t take on too much or you WILL burn out eventually. Grow your workforce as required with talented individuals (who may be much more productive than you in their role!).

As your business expands, think about hiring a managing director. This can help to share your leadership burden massively, and reduce those distractions that have been preventing you from being as productive as you would like.

My personal experience with procrastination in business

I’m not immune to procrastination, and in my Diary of an Entrepreneur YouTube series I often talk about the things I do to keep Stada Media moving forwards. I try to never have a day where I don’t build forward momentum in some way. As I said earlier, those incremental gains really build up over time and can make all the difference to your revenues by the end of each financial year.

I’m a big believer in personal progress – my business depends on my skills as an entrepreneur, so I’m always trying to be better. That includes learning how to avoid procrastinating, along with many other areas of business and self-discipline.

For some recommended reading to help you build your business better, read my list of 50 books to transform your business strategy.

The benefits of overcoming procrastination

The benefits of overcoming procrastination can be both immediate and incremental, and should be seen in your business’s bottom line over time. But there are personal benefits too, and the knowledge that you are building momentum every day is hugely empowering.

In the time-critical world of business, don’t waste valuable minutes. Yes take breaks, yes eat lunch, yes stay hydrated, but make sure those things are all helping you to deliver your objectives, and not distracting you from them.

Final thoughts

Nobody’s perfect, and you might find that avoiding procrastination is a continual battle, but with some of the coping mechanisms I’ve outlined here, I hope you’ll be able to get more done. Carpe diem, for an easier tomorrow!

To discuss anything I’ve mentioned in this article, or if you’d like to ask me anything else about my experiences in business, please get in touch.

The post How To Avoid Procrastination and Boost Your Productivity appeared first on Danny Lacey.

Personally I’m now well on the way along my own journey of entrepreneurship and I’m ready to share some of my own entrepreneurship tips with others just embarking on their business adventure. That’s why I started my YouTube channel and personal business blog.

With that in mind, it’s about time I talked about what I really mean by ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ – so strap in and let’s take a deep dive…

What is an entrepreneur?

Investopedia offers a great definition of entrepreneur:

“An individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards.”

This could be extended: some entrepreneurs buy startups, rather than creating them, and then put in the time, effort and expertise to grow them. But it’s a really great, simple starting point to understand the role of an entrepreneur.

Understanding how entrepreneurship works

Entrepreneurship is a lonely journey at times, but knowing your place in comparison to your overall organisation can help to keep things in perspective, whether you’re a sole trader or you employ 100+ staff.

I’ve talked in The Diary of an Entrepreneur S3 E18 about the importance of knowing what type of entrepreneur you are. If you haven’t watched the episode, I’d recommend spending a few minutes on the ‘Danny’s Business Thoughts’ segment, which covers setting out your stall as an entrepreneur in your own right.

For me, entrepreneurship is about growth. You need to be the kind of business-minded person who can take an organisation from infancy to stability, and on to infinity. If you keep targeting sustainable growth, the sky’s the limit.

Well-known examples of entrepreneurship

Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson received his knighthood for services to entrepreneurship and his Virgin brand has become a household name across a variety of businesses including music, television, mobile phones and internet, as well as weddings, rail travel and even commercial space flight.

Lord Alan Sugar

Knighted in 2000 for services to home computing and electronics, Sir Alan became Lord Sugar in 2009 when he was made Baron of Clapton. Ranked among the UK’s most influential entrepreneurs, he’s best known to many people for his The Apprentice catchphrase: “You’re fired.”

Elon Musk

Probably the most famous entrepreneur on the planet right now, Elon Musk pioneered the mass-market electric car industry, perfected reusable rocket boosters and is working towards sending humans to start a colony on Mars – not bad for one person. He’s a controversial figure, especially since taking ownership of Twitter, but he’s the living embodiment of “to infinity and beyond” in entrepreneurship.

What does the role of an entrepreneur involve?

An entrepreneur is, essentially, a business leader. But there’s more to it than just good management. You are the linchpin that keeps the wheels of your organisation spinning in the right direction – and stops them from falling off.

You’ll probably have been self-employed in the past, and you’ll need all the skills you’ve learned to promote yourself, manage your time, manage your finances and so on. But as an entrepreneur with personnel working for you, you’ll also encounter new challenges when it comes to managing your workforce.

The challenges of entrepreneurship

The biggest challenge of entrepreneurship is the responsibility. You’ve probably put your life savings into your business, or taken on debt to cover your startup costs. You’re fighting hard for brand awareness, positive press and market share, all while trying to hire the right people to work for you.

Over time the challenges change. Your organisation becomes more mature, and many departments may become capable of operating with little to no intervention, just a broad guiding touch here and there. Your managers share your burden, so that you don’t have to worry about the more mundane tasks.

But you will always be the figurehead of your enterprise – and for some people, that means someone to blame. That’s why entrepreneurship is a lonely road, and why it’s not for everyone, even if you have the technical skills to get a new business up and running.

My journey of entrepreneurship

My own journey of entrepreneurship is an open book. I decided early in my career that I wanted to share my experience as it happens, not in some memoir 30 years later. The Diary of an Entrepreneur gives you access to my entrepreneurship journey in real-time, victories and challenges alike.

Entrepreneur tips that have helped me progress

So, what are some of my top entrepreneurship tips? Here are a few I’ve picked up along the way…

Know yourself

I’ve already mentioned it above, but make sure you know what type of entrepreneur you are. This is so important as you start to set out your long-term goals and ambitions. I decided early on that I was going all-in, which is why I continue to set ambitious goals for growth and revenue – I want my business to go as far as possible.

Find a mentor

Although entrepreneurship is a lonely journey, a mentor can help you to feel a sense of companionship and understanding along that road. Find someone you trust, who has been an entrepreneur too, and who is willing to listen to your concerns and act as a sounding board for your biggest business decisions.

Overcome your weaknesses

Everybody has weaknesses. I have weaknesses, but my journey of entrepreneurship has helped me to identify those and work on overcoming them. Ultimately you’ll find that your own journey in business helps you to become a more fully rounded person in life – and that’s something you can take with you whether your business succeeds or fails.

How to start your journey of entrepreneurship

I hope in this article that I’ve been able to touch on some of the things to keep in mind when going into business as an entrepreneur, and why it’s crucial to keep your eyes open to the risks you’re taking, especially if you don’t yet know what type of entrepreneur you are.

If you’d like to talk about anything I’ve mentioned above, please get in touch and I’ll be happy to go into more detail.

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