In April it’s my three and a half year anniversary of starting my business.  When I first started my business, and looking back with hindsight, I was overconfident and naive.

“I’m a good financial planner and have some management experience” I thought “surely the skills I’ve learned over the years as a financial planner and manager means that I’ll also be a good business owner”

I was wrong.

I know from the feedback we recieve that many of you reading this will have either started their own business and seen it build and grow over time.  It would be interesting to see if you’ve had similar experiences….

I’ve found that you may be one of the best at what you ‘do’ (be it butcher, baker, candlestick maker or, erm, an occupation not inspired by a nursery rhyme).  But running and building a business requires you to learn an entirely new portfolio of skills required to ensure you succeed.

The good news is that the majority of these lessons can be learnt.

I’ve also found that personally I’ve learned these lessons in a variety of different ways…

Sometimes by making mistakes within your business (which I believe are valuable in their own right as long as you learn lessons from these errors),

Sometimes by learning lessons about what other businesses do right and wrong….

…and other times by reading widely, studying what works and taking action to implement changes within your business.

At times the ‘business ownership’ journey so far has been pretty tough, at other times it has been immensely satisfying and I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that at every stage of businesses evolution I’ve never stopped learning and developing both professionally and personally….I’m sure that process of learning and developing will continue for years to come.

As a business we’ve been lucky enough to have success in a number of areas.  We’ve managed to develop some great relationships with some key business partners, built up a portfolio of fantastic clients we love working with and are incredibly positive about the potential for the future.

Also over the last year we have had both commercial success and have been able to help our potential clients understand more about their money, what we can do to help them and share ideas, knowledge and experiences through this blog.

I’m a firm believer in sharing some of these positive experiences, and in particular why writing a regular blog can potentially benefit your business.  Therefore on the 11th March I’ll be speaking at the ‘I’m an entrepreneur get me out of here’ event in Southend.

If you based in Essex, run or want to run a small business and fancy coming along and hearing me talk about how blogging can benefit your business you can find out more about the event here.  If you’re like me and run a growing business you’re always going to be looking for the next thing which will give you the competitive edge…it’s possible blogging might help…I know it did for us!

Also if you want some more insight into what has worked within our business, what hasn’t and what we’ve learned since launch you can always check out the I’m an entrepreneur book available on amazon here.  The book contains a range of interviews with a range of business owners including Brad Burton (MD of 4networking), Thomas and Penny Power, Daniel Preistly (Key Person of Influence) and me.

But as ever I’m more interested in what you think.  What’s the biggest lesson you learned when starting your business?  What are the key things you’ve learned are important as a business owner?  How do you learn about new skills and new innovations?

I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts….