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If I Had Only Known…

Learning from the best mistake I ever made

If I Had Only Known…

By: Ross Paterson

I wonder if the first chapter in every SMB owner’s book sounds like this:

“I don’t know how we made it through the first two years.”

When I left to get my first small business started, my partner and I took our amazing team administrator, Diana White, out for lunch. After thanking her for her key contributions to all of our wins, I said, “If you ever feel like your time here is done, please call me first.”

Two months later, she called. Oh, sh!#.

We took a big gamble and hired her though we had made little progress on revenue generation. If I had only known what was coming…

Three months after we hired Diana, my partner quit, and he was the only one with any marketing and sales experience. Then in our second year battling for profitable growth, the world economy plunged into a devastating recession. In full transparency, she and I frequently took turns getting paid in 2009. And, for some reason, this gifted administrator stuck with me. (So many stories, so little time)

Bottom line, Diana as a Small Business Xcelerator (SBX) could do all of the accounting and operational work better and faster than me. I had no choice but to stay focused on marketing, selling, and delivery. There was no room for excuses, no temptation to get bogged down finishing stuff in the office, and two families counting on me to figure it out. I had to go do the hard, uncomfortable, and at times overwhelming work of B2B sales.

XM Truth: Nobody creates their next SMB breakthrough by getting the level 10 badge in QuickBooks.

Every start-up business and owner is unique. Tune in next week and we will teach you how to design the perfect Small Business Xcelerator (SBX) role for your business.