Love your business, love being in business

What are the most important lessons that entrepreneurs have learnt in business? We asked that very same question to a variety of business owners that are part of the BNI Royal Spa.

BNI Royal Spa is a successful networking group of local businesses who are fully committed to growing their businesses and the businesses of their fellow members. (www.bni-royalspa.co.uk) One of the great advantages of belonging to the BNI Royal Spa is being able to share in the wealth of experience within the group.

When we asked some of its members “What’s the most important lesson you’ve learnt in business?” we had a variety of responses.   We’d like to share those with you.

Ruth’s business is achieve more health and fitness, a personal training business based in Tunbridge Wells.  (www.achievemore.me.uk) She’s coming to the end of her first year in business and has already learnt several lessons along the way.   She tells us about one of them here.

“When I set up my business I was also making a total career change.  At the time I made the decision to go ahead I was with a large corporate organisation in London, working regular hours and earning and regular income.   I spent a lot of time carefully considering the risks of becoming self-employed, but had also weighed them up against the benefits that had made me consider this in the first place..

I wanted to run a personal training business because health and fitness is such as big part of my life.  I knew I’d be working in an industry that I genuinely cared about, and I felt that the job satisfaction would be high as I would be able to have a direct impact on people’s quality of life.

All this turned out to be true, but what I hadn’t considered was just how much time I would need to dedicate to running the business, as opposed to working directly with clients.  As well as completing my personal training qualifications I had to quickly learn about marketing, book keeping, sales, social media, networking and much more.  It was frightening how much I had to learn, and still have to learn!

I think I have been fortunate as I have discovered that I enjoy running the business as much as I love working one-on-one with my clients.  I’m just as happy sitting at my desk working on a business plan as I am exercising with a client.

When I meet people who are considering starting their own business I always talk to them about this.  On reflection, loving the product or service you sell may not be enough.  You need to have as much enthusiasm for developing your business or it will become a chore.”

Advertisement