8 Things I learnt when we started our own business.

Ok. I’m not a guru, and don’t claim to be one. But I started a business 10 years ago with my wife (boss) which is still surviving. During these 10 years I've seen companies behaving badly and companies behaving well.

We know to whom we regularly give business. And from whom we receive regular business.

(and to whom we never give business)

These are my lessons (but really observations).

A lot of these lessons come from the Coca-Cola idea of always being in arms reach of a customer (trust me on this, when I was working as an anthropologist I walked for two hours in the blazing African sun just because I knew that there was a small shop with a chiller that served cold Coke. It was the best bottle of Coke I’ve ever drunk!).

In no particular order, here are the 8 things you can easily get right in order to build a better business.

1. Make it easy for people to call you.
2. Don’t fucking start a telesales call with: “hello? [pause] how are you?”.
3. Have a decent website.
4. Make it easy for people to buy from you.
5. Make it it easy for people to pay you.
6. Make your solution ubiquitous by making it easy to use.
7. Look after the little guy.
8. Don't let the accountants run your business.

I'll go into more detail in separate blogs on each one.