It seems to be that whenever I'm asked to be part of some business event where there's a panel of "successful entrepreneurs", questions from the audience tend to dry up very quickly and usually relate to either very specific/technical questions that are of limited interest to most people there, or are so general that most people would struggle to be able to relate to them...
However, as some readers of my blog may recall from previous posts, I've various 'standby' prompts for most instances, and in this one, its a question that entrepreneurs on any assembled panel seem to enjoy: "what one thing, with hindsight, would you want to impress upon your younger self when you were launching your enterprise?"
My most recent opportunity to wheel it out came as part of a startup bootcamp for students at the Univesity of Salford that I was supporting the delivery of. And the 'life lessons' that the panel of entrepreneurs had to share with these bright young startups of tommorow were:
- get better at managing time - things usually take longer than you think they will, and remember that you'll need to sleep at some point...
- spend more time at the start of a job agreeing the scope of work - it'll help with managing client relationships later...
- lock the door more (!) - working from home can be fraught with lots of distractions...
- breathe - don't forget to take time out to enjoy yourself (and watch netflix...)
