10 Learnings from 10 Business Owners

I started my podcast, From Little Things, in December 2023 to share the stories and learnings of people who have been on the entrepreneurial journey so that we can help others on theirs.

I ask my guests at the end of each podcast for 3 personal learnings they can share to help others on their business journey.

Here’s a list of 10 inspiring and actionable learnings to help you on your journey based on my favourite learnings from each podcast guest💡

TLDR;

1. Find your niche customer segment and focus on it.

2. Everything’s an experiment. Everything is undoable. And have fun.

3. Trust your gut more.

4. Focus on where you can have the most impact.

5. Look after yourself and manage your energy levels.

6. Be worldly.

7. Take responsibility for everything.

8. Speedy customer service is a competitive weapon.

9. Don’t overthink it. Just get started.

10. You get what you tolerate.

1. Find your niche customer segment and focus on it.

Niche down. In marketing, it’s hard to speak to everyone at the same time, the same language. It’s hard to build network effects and things of that sort.

So niche down as much as you can in an area that you connect with in an area that you think is compelling enough to go after as a business.

Sometimes, it pays to be uncomfortable in the short term. If you can last a few months to just build that traction in one niche, focus area, and then it will get easier with time.

— Steve Glaveski, Serial Entrepreneur; 🎧From Zero to a Million in 15 Months with Steve Glaveski

2. Everything’s an experiment. Everything is undoable. And have fun.

Everything’s an experiment. Everything is undoable. And have fun.

It’s very easy to take a lot of this quite seriously.

And I think there’s a lot of really great people who don’t and still do really great work and connect with people and have great relationships and all the rest.

But yeah, just hold it lightly, because life is short, but careers are long.

And I think there’s so much more we can play with and be open to when we remember that there’s a lot of playtime to be had.

— Steph Clarke, Futurist; 🎧From Today to Tomorrow with Steph Clarke

3. Trust your gut more.

Trust your gut more.

I think early days, especially in this environment, especially learning through this, I deferred more than I should have.

Because I didn’t think I knew what I needed to know. And then at the end, I should’ve trust my gut because that’s always served me the best.

So now I trust my gut more.

— Ash Brown, Founder; 🎧From Corporate to Creator with Ash Brown

4. Focus on where you can have the most impact.

I definitely like do the things that I think have the most impact.

You know, you’ve got to set your own course. At the end of the day, the startup business is driven by the founder or the CEO.

And everybody else in that company is supporting that management structure.

The shareholders are contributing capital, the staff members are contributing their time, your customers are contributing their capital as well and a consuming a service.

But fundamentally, that management team or that CEO or executive team are the driving force behind the business.

And they need to make the decisions to build the business in a way that succeeds.

So kind of keeping a focus on your critical role in designing and driving the success of your business.

You’re the one that’s taking the cost of it and the responsibility for it. You also have to take the initiative to make those calls.

— Caleb Gibbins, Founder & CEO; 🎧Democratising Investment Products with Caleb Gibbins

5. Look after yourself and manage your energy levels.

The biggest bit of advice is looking after and managing your own energy levels.

That means that you’re doing the right things to maximise your energy, such as… getting good sleep, dialing in nutrition, optimising your supplement protocol, managing your stress.

Ultimately, there is no possible way that I could have built my business if I didn’t have that extra two to three hours of work energy in me when I was staying back after university.

That ultimately came down to energy. If you don’t have the energy, then you can’t succeed and be productive.

— Lucas Aoun, Biohacker & Entrepreneur; 🎧Building a Wellness Empire on YouTube with Lucas Aoun

6. Be worldly.

Just be worldly. I think there’s such an opportunity these days to either work globally, travel, all of that.

But just Australia is an awesome place. Every time I come back I realise how good it is.

But also you can tap into the world through media and other things now to make sure you’re you’re finding out what’s happening around the world rather than just being a good Australian citizen.

— Paul Higgins, Consultant & Mentor; 🎧Helping Consultants Scale with Paul Higgins

7. Take responsibility for everything.

Taking responsibility for everything. So I think as a leader, everyone says you’re responsible for everything and that’s great.

As a young leader, you say you are until it goes wrong and then it’s someone else’s fault.

The sooner you can stop doing that, the better you’ll become in the model there and I think the more accountable you are, the better a founder you’ll become.

That’s the number one thing I’ve learned.

— Steve Grace, Serial Entrepreneur; 🎧Balance the Grind with Steve Grace

8. Speedy customer service is a competitive weapon.

Speed, but not for decision making for customer service.

Now, I believe it’s one of the biggest competitive weapons in business, if you can provide speedy service to customers.

Because so many companies have a policy, we will get back to you within 24 hours, we’ll get back to you in 48 hours, we’ll get back to you in one week.

You’ve struck that many times, I’m sure. So when matchbook gets back to customers within minutes, or an hour, something like that, people are just blown away. They have not experienced this before.

They’re delighted and I’ve got a policy where if you’ve got a sales inquiry, if you can, drop what you’re doing, and instantly hop on it and so few people have that approach.

But it makes such an incredible first impression when you do react quickly to inquiries.

— Sharon Melamed, Founder; 🎧Building Online Marketplaces with Matchboard’s Sharon Melamed

9. Don’t overthink it, just get started.

You’re over thinking. You know what you need to do, just start.

That goes across for the board, for everyone at whatever state that you’re in.

You know what you need to do. I’m not going to tell you something that’s mean metaphysically going change your life forever.

You know what you need to do. Go and start it.

— Daniel Monge, Founder; 🎧Supercharge your business with AI automations and Daniel Monge

10. You get what you tolerate.

You’ll get the minimum you will tolerate and you get what you tolerate.

And so what I’m always doing is wanting to raise the standards of what I’ll tolerate on anything in life in my accommodation.

Like what I live in, who I, who I’m around, how I spend my time, the kind of food I eat like anything.

I just want to be constantly raising that bar of what I will tolerate.

— Alisha Colin-Hurd, ‘Freedom Entrepreneur’; 🎧7 Figures in 2 Years While Travelling the Globe

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