Tips for entrepreneurs to stay connected

By Andrea Hill

My daughter has three children. Two of them are very active little boys still in diapers. She has taken a break from her nursing career to be home for now, and she’s loving every minute. Except when she isn’t. Being at home with small children is exhausting, and it’s also isolating. One thing she noticed early on is that when you’re the only adult around for 90 percent of your waking hours, you can start doubting yourself or get in a rut. 

Being an entrepreneur is a lot like being home alone with non-verbal whirligigs in diapers.

You work crazy hours, get very little sleep, experience plenty of rewarding moments immediately followed by crippling self-doubt, and make mistakes that you’re pretty sure no other person has ever made before.

There’s no magic formula for avoiding the isolation and insecurity of entrepreneurship, but here are a few things I recommend small business owners do to make their paths smoother and their views a bit clearer.

Regularly Communicate with Other Entrepreneurs

Join an online community, get a group together for a monthly dinner, chat on Facebook, or just pick up the phone. Whatever you do, maintain a connection with other people who have an experience similar to yours. Each entrepreneur solves problems differently and solves different problems than the next. By building your network you tap into a source of shared knowledge, and you also benefit from the reassurance that other people experience similar concerns and fears and are still doing all right.

Make Time for Learning

When you take a job as a designer, a bench jeweler, a casting manager, or a production supervisor in a large company, your responsibility is limited to the job for which you were hired. Someone else is responsible for accounting, billing, marketing, customer service, sales, and shipping. When you own a jewelry business, that’s all on you. Even if you are at the point where you can afford to hire people to fill specialized roles, you still must understand each role well enough to hire the right people and know whether or not those people are doing a good job. 

The truth is that all of us—whether we are customer service representatives or CEOs of major corporations—must continue learning new things every day of our careers. But the stakes for an entrepreneur are much higher. You need to learn more things, and learn them faster, than any other business person. The only way to ensure this happens is by making time for learning every day. And don’t be afraid to mix it up. Right now you’re clearly reading a trade journal. Good job! Tomorrow it may be a webinar or a business video—just make sure it’s something. Some of the things you need to learn can be done in one sitting; others may take you 30 minutes a day for two weeks. Once you get in the habit of adding new business knowledge each day, you’ll never stop, and you’ll be a more successful entrepreneur for it. 

Embrace Incremental Change

The marketplace is constantly changing, and so must you. Accept that being an entrepreneur means constantly looking for incremental improvements, and that by implementing those improvements over time, you will be changing your business. And remember: Those improvements should be made according to the customer perspective. By approaching continuous improvement from the customer perspective, you’ll see early trends and changes in consumer expectations and behavior. Designers who recognized seven years ago how important social media would be to their customers invested in learning the platform (which is different than simply posting, by the way) and using social media to build brand awareness. Today those designers have deep competence in an area of business that other designers are only beginning to learn about now.

Something new is emerging now. Most likely many somethings. Embrace change and use your customer perspective to help you see which continuous improvements you can make. This type of incremental change is the most powerful way to transform your business—and remain relevant—over time.

Know Your Resources

One of your most valuable resources is someone who knows more about what you’re doing than you do. Find that person (or persons). This may be one of your teachers, or it may be someone you can ask for occasional advice when you’re feeling insecure, stuck, or find yourself unable to solve a problem. 

Learn to pay attention to the holes you’re digging. If you’re digging for buried treasure, you probably wouldn’t have to dig much deeper than a regular person could dig, right? So once you’ve dug down six or seven feet, if you haven’t hit treasure, you’re probably digging in the wrong place. I regularly encounter business owners who are in a 30-foot hole, and still digging. 

Your business is full of potential holes. You’ll be able to deal with many problems—even problems you haven’t encountered before—without assistance. But know when you’ve been digging for longer than you should have to, and make the call for help immediately.

Stay connected—to your peers, your teachers, your customers, and your knowledgeable resources. Become a better entrepreneur while avoiding the emotional and information isolation that so often comes with it.