17 Months In Business, Here Are My 17 Learnings

Written by Owner, Troy Makous, originally posted on LinkedIn. 

My experience as the owner of Mathnasium of Pike Creek has been a wild ride, to say the least. Now that we are closing in on a year and half officially in business, I have been reflecting on some of my findings and figured they were worth sharing with others. Whether you are an entrepreneur, aspire to own your own business, or simply want a fresh perspective, here are 17 things that I have learned, in no particular order:

1. Businesses are not built like a building. They are grown like a plant. You water them, provide sunlight, handle threats like pests and rot, and hope they will eventually bear fruit. They might. They might not. They will do what they do. Do the work but otherwise just sit back and watch it grow. You can’t force it.
2. “Your business is your baby” simply isn’t true, at least not for me. I do not love my business like it is a person. I care about it, I care about the people who depend on it, and I care that it thrives financially, but it isn’t a person. I consider this mindset much healthier/less delusional.
3. The person least ready for your absence is you. You have to fight the demons and let it go. I forced myself to take a two day trip 5 months in. I was petrified. The business was fine. I forced myself to take a week long trip to Mexico 8 months in. I was petrified. The business was fine. I forced myself to take a 17 day trip to Europe 13 months in. I was petrified. The business crushed it while I was gone, and I barely worked at all.
4. The most important thing you can do is hire well, train better, and leave your employees alone. The old adage, “if you want it done well you need to do it yourself” is what someone says when they don't hire the right people, don't enable them, or don't trust them.
5. Choosing to leave the corporate world to open a business is certainly a financial risk, but it is more of a risk in status. Human nature is heavily based on status; just look at how people portray themselves on LinkedIn or how people care about where you are from or where you went to school. We are psychologically wired to be attracted to status. To leave a good corporate role is to leave behind status and rebuild it, and that is sometimes harder than leaving behind guaranteed money. With that said, financial risk never really goes away. The more you can accept the idea that you might lose everything—instead of hiding from that possibility—the more peace you will find.
6. There is no pride in grinding yourself to a pulp. So much of the ethos of entrepreneurship praises hustle and working hard constantly. It is pretty pathetic. I dance salsa and bachata 2-3 times a week, go on trail runs, tend my vegetable garden, spend time with loved ones, and read memoirs and fantasy books. When times are good in business, that’s what I want to do and when times get tough in business, that's what I need to do.
7. B2C is very different from B2B. I used to sell SaaS to enterprises. I now sell confidence and math proficiency to parents. B2B is largely about financial value and navigating corporate politics. B2C is much more about trust and social proof. I can’t say one is more difficult than the other but I have found the contrast quite humbling. 
8. If you are a parent, I beg you: do not take your child’s grades at face value. Only 2 in 5 fourth graders are proficient or better in math in the USA. Only 1 in 5 twelfth graders are proficient or better. I have repeatedly had second and third year engineering students—and in a few cases math majors—from top-rated universities not just fail but bomb our employment test, which covers 4th through 9th grade math. I regularly meet middle schoolers who have A’s at good schools, but don’t know what 9 minus 7 is. I regularly meet high schoolers who are so behind in math that we don’t even focus on school math but purely on their ability to function in society. As an educator, here is a hard truth: you should assume your child is not learning math in school until thoroughly proven otherwise.
9. Lead generation is the bottleneck in almost all businesses. Every owner I talk to experiences it. Decades-old businesses in specific industries might struggle with different bottlenecks, but from everything I see firsthand and through my entrepreneurial network, getting leads is the Achilles heel. 
10. An outcome does not determine the value of a decision. I have made terrible decisions that have led to good outcomes and good decisions that have led to bad outcomes. There are a million inputs that cause an output and only a small fraction of those inputs are in your control. What is beautiful about this realization is that once you accept your lack of control, you can envision your own decision-making as an attempt to improve your likelihood of success, instead of being the end all be all. This lightens the burden of decision-making significantly, making the criticism that comes with shortcomings diminish. It also makes it relatively easy to have a growth mindset for yourself and your team. Side note: this rule applies to the most successful business people in the world…just because Mark Cuban (for example) built what he built doesn’t mean he wasn’t flying blind the whole time.
11. Myth: “A business owner has hundreds of bosses: their customers." I hear this saying among entrepreneurs pretty often. If your customers are dictating how you should work, that is a failure in your ability to clearly attract the kind of customer you want. It is also likely a failure in your boundaries. Likewise, bad customers need to be corrected, and if that doesn’t work…invited to discontinue their use of your services.
12. Expectations are a key to happiness. I expected my business to explode when we opened. It didn’t. I was upset about it. I would look at the books at the end of each month and mourn the loss of the growth I had expected, questioning everything. Somewhere in the first year, I realized that we were growing slowly and steadily, the customers were thrilled, the team was crushing it, and I was stepping back. All of this is pretty awesome. I adjusted my expectations and all the sudden I was celebrating the progress instead of lamenting what it could have been.
13. Due diligence is important and yet...completely misdirected. If you think—like I did—that excessive due diligence is the foretelling of what is to come, expect to be disappointed—like I was—when you find out that the tangible and abstract realities of owning a business are actually not what you expected at all. 
14. Get a business-life coach that you trust and respect both personally and professionally. I did and it is one of the best decisions I ever made. I think this applies to anyone, not just entrepreneurs. I say "business-life coach" because it is crucial that you don't separate your business from your life. There is only one you and—unless you are Adam Scott in Severance—it is best to accept it as is. 
15. If you ever feel upset with your employees, walk to the bathroom, close the door, close your eyes, take a breath, and look in the mirror. The worst case scenario is that you hired wrong, and as someone who has had to part ways with more than one employee while you could still smell the new construction, this is sometimes the case. But usually, it is not. Usually, it is a challenge in training, in expectations, in a blind spot of your own. A leader is responsible for the team and serves them, not only because they take care of the customer but because they put their trust in you when they joined the team. You owe it to them to appreciate that trust every single day. A leader jumps through hoops to take care of the people. If you resent your team or see them as a tool to serve your interests, what exactly are you leading?
16. Friction is there; schedule time to address it. Every month, I sit down separately with the two managers of Mathnasium, my second and third in command. Every conversation is primarily geared toward them telling me what I can do better to make their lives easier. “How’s it going?” is followed by, “What can I do to make your life easier?” is followed by, “What frustrates you about the job? What frustrates you about working with me?” I then listen. I never defend. I always solve it then and there or make a plan to solve it ASAP. These conversations also include constructive feedback from me to them, when appropriate, but that is secondary. As someone who thinks performance reviews are a humiliating practice for everyone involved, I truly hope more companies consider that the success of the team is only as good as the relationships of the people within it. To have a good relationship, friction must be addressed, not buried. 
17. Seeing a customer succeed is rewarding beyond belief. When a parent says, “You changed my child's life. She used to be afraid of things but now she believes in herself and that is because of what you guys did for her," I have to choke back a tear. When a different parent says, "My husband and I grew up in tough homes and it used to break our hearts to have to fight with our son every night about math homework. You made that go away and now we can have the relationship we want to have with him again,” I am at a loss for words. And when a fifth-grader comes charging through the front door to tell me they calculated the tip at the restaurant for the first time, beaming from ear to ear, I just chuckle at the simple reminder that we are making a difference.