Like love, the course of running a successful business never did run smoothly.

Chalk it up to the sheer number of variables – on both a macro and a micro level – that a business has to deal with. Regardless of how much time and effort you pour into planning things out, success is never going to be linear. Instead, it’s dotted with peaks and troughs, twists and turns. And those peaks and troughs can seem magnified unless your business is agile and flexible enough to handle change with aplomb.

That flexibility and agility is rarely a happy accident, but rather the result of a concerted effort to build a foundation that is able to adapt as circumstances change and your business grows.

Here are three essential skills you’ll need to ensure your foundation is one that can grow as your business does.

Learn how to build the right team

We all know that finding the right talent is a crucial aspect of building a successful business. However, when you’re starting out and don’t have the resources and skills of an immense HR department at your disposal, it can be difficult to know how to find – and retain – the best of the best.

One thing that tends to trip up small or new businesses is the belief that the only way to attract top talent is with top dollars – something that your business just might not have yet. However, a survey by Flexjobs found that, of the 1500 people surveyed, 20% of those would be willing to take a 10% pay cut in favor of flexibility in working conditions, and 22% would be willing to forego health benefits.

Ultimately, building a great team doesn’t mean hiring those with the most prestigious qualifications, or spending big on salaries. Instead, place your energies into two areas: building flexibility into the roles you create so you can be sure to attract great talent, and hiring staff who are a good personality and culture fit. Adopt a virtual phone system to keep your team always connected, even if they are on the move. Use collaboration platforms to foster knowledge exchange.

Learn to compartmentalize

In the early days of your business, you’re probably going to be wearing a lot of hats. Depending on the nature and scope of your business, you may be salesperson, bookkeeper, marketing manager, customer service rep and director, all at once. And when you’re performing multiple roles at once, it can be hard to separate them out once the time comes to hire help.

What you need to do is compartmentalize. For each role you’re performing, determine the core activities and tasks that define that role. As your business grows, you’ll add more and more tasks to that list, which will make writing position descriptions when you’re ready to hire staff infinitely easier.

This advice also comes in handy when you, inevitably, need to work on separating your work and your personal life. If you’re juggling, say, being a parent and running your own business, you may want to take the time to write out the tasks you perform as a parent, and those you perform as a business owner. That way, you can assess whether you’re focusing on the right things at the right time.

Learn to document your processes

In almost all fledgling businesses, there’s a great deal of tacit knowledge – that is, information, processes or procedures that are undocumented. For example, you may know how to update your website, or change the outgoing voicemail message, or which suppliers can deliver at short notice.

Relying on tacit knowledge, however, leaves your business vulnerable. The director of a company I used to work for was inordinately fond of asking his employees, ‘What if you get hit by a bus tomorrow? Will anyone know how to do your job?’

It’s a valid – if morbid – point

Documenting processes, while time-consuming and frankly a little dull, is crucial to the success of your business. Keeping in-depth, up-to-date documentation on processes and procedures (you can find an easy 10-step method for documentation here) makes coping with change and growth a far less stressful experience.

It also means that, when things go wrong, you can easily backtrack and ascertain where things went wrong.

Image: Pixabay

Whether we like it or not, the U.S. Government is hell bent to protect us from the bogeyman. From head to toe, food, drink and other enjoyable vice is under incessant attack from foundations and organizations to keep us safe. Smoking (and you thought it was sex?) is the most prevalent evil of all times, vilified for the last 40 years, and the sustained epitome of warning labels.

Warning labels are thought to be effective, maybe most effective in stopping a perceived well-being transgression, safety hazard or health risk. No matter if this is true or not, labels continue to be the trusted means of halting sin. With this in mind, I find it outrageous that computers and computer related products do not have warning labels.

Consider people who use computers, from the seasoned IT professional to the proverbial one-foot-on-a-banana-peel and the other in the grave, and the range of security knowledge about computers and the Internet. The only people who understand the importance of Internet security and identity theft protection are those who work in the field of Internet security.

If you think your child understands security by virtue of “all kids are de facto techno geniuses”, why do parental controls exist? Kids are less safe on the Internet than many adults. Adults are not safe because, in the words of Ron White, “you can’t fix stupid.”

Internet risks include identity theft, job loss, total loss of privacy, scamming, theft of personal documents and acne on the low end. For the absolute tech-challenged ham-handed dweeb, risks could be stalking, murder, rape, suicide and addiction. There is hardly anything in the real world that cannot be duplicated in the virtual world, in fact exacerbated online.

If this household item was a lawnmower it would be illegal. If it was thought to drive up the cost of your insurance, there would be outrage, and demand for government intervention. Yet priorities are set with little thought to the most dangerous appliance in the home.

Questions:

Like CNN, FOX and The Comedy Channel we want to know what you think. And like them, no particular reason, we just like comments.

1. Should computers have warning labels?
2. Should a license be required to operate a computer?
3. Should a safety class be mandatory before buying a computer?
4. Should safty glasses and hearing protection be required to operate a computer?

Please, practice safe computing. Tweet this, DIGG it, Facebook it, email it to everyone you know. Stop the carnage. Stop ruining my computer experience and costing me money. Call the president of the U.S. The number is 202-456-1414 This is a real phone number for the White House. They will listen to what you have to say. Keep this in mind before you call.

Image source

Things have been serious lately.

But my spidey senses are telling me that there’s a lot of pent up desire for fun, flamboyance, and originality.

If you’re having fun, you attract other people who also want to have fun.

What does this have to do with entrepreneurship, or building a business?

If you’re struggling with getting attention or traction in your business, try injecting some chaos, some fun, some of your own unique personality or life experience into it.

This is one reason TikTok is exploding; it’s a never-ending stream of raw personality. Most TikTok creators don’t do a lot of polishing, in fact, the more raw and real, the better. It’s common to find a business expert doling out tips while putting on their face of makeup.

The new world of marketing and business-building offers a Golden Corral sized buffet of tools and venues to express your mission and brand. Don’t be afraid to experiment with some of them. 

Life is not a dress rehearsal. You should be playing full-out, without worrying about the judgment of others.

Follow the Fun, the Money will Chase You

For example, there’s a friend-group of women who jumped into the wilderness of Clubhouse (the audio-only app) and decided to create a dating-game style “show” on the platform just for kicks. 

When most of the conversations on Clubhouse were boring, “How to Get Rich Today” style, these women started “NYU Girls Roasting Tech Guys.” They’re now contemplating brand deals and sponsorships for a business that invented itself because they were having fun.

If you’re struggling against the voice inside your head that doesn’t want you to have fun because it might be embarrassing, watch this video.

Homework

In the name of realness, I’ll tell you that one reason you haven’t been hearing from me on this blog for a while is that losing Liz Strauss (our fearless founder) really socked me. I needed time to process, time to re-read her book, time to figure out the path forward with my own writing. And I can feel her not-so-gentle nudge to “just do it.”

Thank you for reading, and for being part of this community.

I hope to get back to a regular weekly posting schedule here, so feel free to comment with your questions and thoughts.  And ideas for having fun while making a living.

Photo by Josiah Gardner on Unsplash