4 MISTAKES I MADE AS AN ENTREPRENEUR -
AND WHAT I LEARNED FROM THEM
I founded my design agency in 2010. As is the case in business life, I have also learned a lot over the years as an entrepreneur - mainly from mistakes I made. This is a relentlessly open conversation about my personal experiences and the most important lessons I learned from 12 years of entrepreneurship.
MISTAKE #1:
IT AND DESIGN SEPARATED
My biggest mistake goes back to my early years. At that time, the technical aspect of "web design" was outsourced to external web agencies. That means, the web agency had to implement my designs that I created as the creative director. Unfortunately, this was not going so well. My mistake was believing that IT and design from two different sources would work great. Unfortunately, practice was different.
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MY LEARNING FROM IT:
Offering IT and design from 1 source and moving the entire website creation to 100% internal. We now have such a high quality standard for websites, which was not possible in the past with external web agencies. There really are huge quality differences.
MISTAKE #2:
NO SMART, DIGITAL TOOLS
For a long time I underestimated smart digital tools and automated hardly anything internally. I thought, "I don't need that". We now have some great digital tools in use - for project management, booking appointments, answering leads, submitting offers, invoicing, etc.
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MY LEARNING FROM IT:
Use smart, digital tools wherever possible! The time saving is enormous, we feel a real relief in everyday life. Everything is more pleasant, less stressful and easygoing.
MISTAKE #3:
PERSONALLY TOO AVAILABLE
For many years it was a very big problem that I was personally too available - or that I made myself personally too available (it was my own fault). This robbed valuable time, focus and efficiency - not to mention the health disadvantages.
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MY LEARNING FROM IT:
There is now a team of 7 people behind HCG corporate designs , which mainly relieves me of administrative work. My design agency is always available during normal office hours, there is always someone to talk to. And as Creative Director, I can take care of being creative for the clients even better now.
MISTAKE #4:
DOING EVERYTHING YOURSELF
Until 2020 I always did everything by myself. A 40-hour work week was wonderfully quiet, 60-hour weeks were normal, sometimes 80 hours. I also worked weekends for about a third of the year - for ten years. I was afraid to delegate even a little thing, because my business is my baby and the quality always has to be top-notch - no matter what.
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In 2021 I built up a small team behind me - not only in administration, but also in the production of things that do not require creativity or expertise from me.
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To be more specific - I asked myself: Which tasks take up a lot of my time but don't require any expertise from me? I packed these things into standard processes and looked for reliable people. Now I have a small, well-established team behind me.
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The great thing for our clients: they get the usual high quality at the same price, but in a shorter time.
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MY LEARNING FROM IT:
It definitely pays off to outsource certain things. You save yourself a lot of nerves and, above all, a lot of time. In the time gained, you can take on more customers and earn more money.
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This is also the reason why we introduced the all-round carefree service for our website customers. We take over the website management and our customers save themselves a lot of nerves and even more time. In the time gained, they can then earn more money with their customers.
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In addition, the quality is of course much higher. As a Wix partner with many years of experience , we of course get the best results for our customers, which they would never be able to achieve themselves.