Biggest Business Lessons Learnt In 2024

it comes to Big Business. I'm coming out with these episodes, but I thought I would mention I'm recording these from home and the quality may not be exactly the same as when I'm in the studio, but hopefully it will do. For today's episode, I am going to be reflecting on some of the biggest business lessons of twenty twenty four, and you know what, sitting down and thinking about this, it's actually so hard for me to pinpoint all of the lessons that I've learned this year, or even the

biggest ones. And the reason for that is business is nothing but lessons. That is like one of the biggest realizations I've had this year. I think it's something that I've always known and I can reflect on every year that I've been in business and go, holy shit, like has this taught me some lessons this year, but I think the overall realization of twenty twenty four is business is just nothing but lessons. That's quite literally what it is.

And I actually saw a TikTok the other day. I'll have to grab my phone and see if I like saved it or liked it, because it was someone and that was saying that business is nothing but a spiritual journey. And I've said this before and I'll say it again, like I'm not a very spiritual person or whatever, but what this person was saying it was so bloody true and it was kind of leaning into this whole theme of you know, business just teaching you lessons, like and

it's almost spiritual in a way. I'm just, oh, here we go. Oh she said, entrepreneurship is spiritual. It's going to sound like pretty bad quality, but let me play you this just so you can listen to it.

you feel when people do not support you? How do you feel when you have to be the only one showing up for yourself? It's a spiritual thing.

to look at yourself. I almost feel like owning a business is just standing in front of a huge mirror and looking straight back at yourself. And it's funny because no one taught me anything in school about owning a business. It might be different in school now, but you know, back when I was young and I would hear, oh, they're a business owner, or even if I thought of the idea of ever owning a business like when I was young, when I was a teenager, like, I didn't

think of it from an emotional or spiritual level. I just thought of it as, yeah, owning a business, going and working and running a business. But I think business is more about you personally and looking at yourself in this massive mirror that is business as it is opposed to like just showing up and working on the business every day, if that makes sense. Like I feel like it's more of a personal emotional journey where you would just learn everything about yourself that you never would have

learned otherwise. And I think another one to add to that is dealing with staff. I've always said that's the hardest part of business, Like, yeah, it's freaking hard in a lot of other ways, like financially building a business, making sure you don't run out of money, marketing yourself, like all these things are really hard, but dealing with people is the hardest part of all for me, And I'm sure a lot of other business owners out there

would agree with me. And I think just dealing with stuff and like their emotions and you know, making sure everyone's happy, and you know, someone's probably most likely always going to be unhappy with something, and just dealing with that, it just makes you like stop and look at yourself. You know, I never really questioned who I was before I started a business. I never questioned how other people may perceive me, Like I think back to before I own fate, and you know, I was working nine to

five and then I did influencing as well. Like during that time, I never like thought, I wonder how other people perceive me, or I wonder how people are reading me, Like sure you have a fear of judgment, but I don't know. Dealing with staff and having people work for your company and working with you, it makes you look back at yourself in a way that you never would And I think those are two massive lessons that have come out of this year is number one that business

is just nothing but lessons. And number two, business is so personal, but not in the way that you would think, and it makes you look at yourself like you never have before. And I don't know if either of those make sense. That's the first two things that just came to my mind as I started recording. I think another one, especially for this year and even for twenty twenty three,

is there's no problem that you can't solve. I think when you're a business owner, it is really easy to get caught up on tiny little things, like you can something tiny could happen, and it might be like a negative thing, right, and you can just get so caught up on this one thing and it spirals in your mind to be something way bigger than it is when

reality it isn't. But another massive lesson for me is there's no problem that you can't solve, and it could even be as easy as solving it with a conversation. I've spoken a lot in my pod about avoiding tough conversations and how important it is to just embrace them and have those tough conversations. I always say saying, and you can take this away with you for the end of the year. I say it all the time. Hard conversations,

easy life, easy conversations, hard life. Hard conversations, easy life, easy conversations, hard life. I think if we tiptoe around and don't want to upset anyone or don't want to confront anyone, which naturally most of us are like that. Like I'm naturally not a person that would go and confront someone, I don't think many of us are. I think there's definitely some people out there who thrive when

it comes to confronting people. And I will say that I'm learning to become that way, like not afraid to confront or have a tough conversation, and I think that comes with practice. But it's really important in business to get comfortable with having uncomfy conversations because if you don't,

you're gonna end up in absolute shit creek. Because something tiny happens in your workplace, you don't address it at all, it then spirals out of control and six months down the track it is a massive problem, you know, But nothing is ever that big of a problem. Sure, massive problems can happen, but I'm talking about like the little things that we get caught up on as business owners.

It could be something like a negative review, Like you could sit on that fucking negative review and let it destroy you, or you can resolve it and move forward. And I think that's just a really important lesson that I've learned is to not dwell on little things because they can absolutely consume you. I feel like even the smaller the things are, the more they can overtake your whole brain. But it's really important to just solve problems.

It may include having tough and awkward conversations. And I speak to my friends in business about this all the time. And people don't want to talk to people because they don't want it to be awkward or you don't want to upset someone. But trust me, it's so important to have uncomfortable and tough conversations. Most of the time you'll probably end up being surprised with how well it went. And maybe if it didn't go well, then you needed

to see that, if you know what I mean. But yeah, that's another big lesson for me in twenty twenty four is just there's no problem that we can't solve, and solving problems gives you confidence like nothing else. The growth that I have experienced throughout this entire year and previous years.

You just can't compare it to anything. And going through tough times and challenges in business and figuring out things, solving problems, resolving conflict, it only builds your confidence, and then I think every problem that comes your way in the future, it almost becomes like smaller like because you build this confidence of no matter what happens, I'm always going to know how to resolve it and move forward kind of thing. And I think that's another thing to

be really open minded about when you're in business. Is just like for me anyway, I don't know about other owners, but I'm very comfortable with the fact that we are always going to be dealing with some sort of problem in the business one end to the other, from retail all the way through the warehouse and everywhere in between. Like somewhere in your company at all times, there's always going to be some sort of issue that you're dealing with.

It would almost be scary if everything was just amazing twenty four to seven, because then I'd be waiting for something really bad to happen. But I think the sooner that we as owners can be comfortable with knowing that we're always going to be putting out little fires. I think the better. I think it's better for your mental health to know that it's okay to be dealing with problems in business and for things to be going wrong and for shit to be hit in the fan every

now and then because it's normal. It's life, and it's part of the journey. And my final lesson that I'm going to share with you today and again I always say this in every single episode, like there's a billion things, there's a billion lessons I could share with you, but I guess this is going to be two together. My last two lessons is Number one, You're never going to be able to make everyone happy, and that's okay. This

could be customers. I feel like I accepted this a really long time ago, but it's something that I'm reminded of daily at Fate. You know, like we get customer complaints. I don't want to say like all the time, and for every you know, five hundred amazing reviews, there'll be that one negative one. But when you're in businesses, especially if you're growing and you're getting more and more customers, you're gonna get people that are not happy with you

for whatever reason. And I've really come to accept the fact that we're never going to be able to make everyone happy, and that's okay, And I think that's something that all business owners need to accept and be okay with. Naturally, we are all people pleasers. We never want to upset anyone. We're not, especially in business. We're not out here intending

to completely upset someone and ruin their day. But you know, if someone's gotten a pair of jeens and they're not the right fit for them, or maybe the buttons accidentally popped off and there was a fault, like, people will go out of their way to tell us that we've absolutely ruined their day or you know, ruined their holiday, and shame on us. And it's really hard when you obviously feel so close to your business because that's your

business and it's your little baby. But it's hard when you get that negative review to not let it get the best of you and to feel like a bit of a failure if you've let someone down. And you know, when we get negative reviews, usually they land in our inbox. You know, I work pretty closely with our customer happiness

team and sometimes I'll bring them to my attention. If someone's being like really horrible and you feel so many emotions when you get those really nasty reviews, And in the past, I definitely would have like held onto that, dwelled on it. I would have thought about it at night. I would have spoken about it with AJ like I would have really gotten in my own head about that negative review. And we always go back to everyone with kindness.

That's just another one like Kielm with kindness. Selena Gomez was so right in that song, and it's the only approach to take is just killing everyone with kindness at all times, even if someone's being so horrible and you want to give them a piece of your mind and be like, well, excuse me, We definitely don't do that at fate. We just kill them with kindness every time. And even if you are killing someone with kindness, they can still come back and be so horrible, Like some

people are just horrible. But it's just important to know that that's normal and you're never in business going to be able to make every single customer happy again. It would be alarming if you did, Like if you just had one hundred percent accuracy across the board, one hundred percent customer satisfaction, because that would just seem like there's something weird going on, right, And same goes beyond your

customers as well. You're never going to be able to make everyone happy in your team, Like I've had so many people come and go over the years. Well not so many, like our employee turnover rate is actually really good, which is a good thing. But you naturally will have people come and go over the years. And I'm sure there's some people out there that have worked for me

that think the most horrible things of me. And I'm okay with that again, because if you sit there and dwell on what a past employee may think of you, or an ex customer that has said I've never shopping with you again, like you've ruined my life, if you sat there and dwelled on that, I don't think that'll do you any favors in any kind of way. And we need to remember that we cannot make everyone happy. We cannot make every staff member one hundred percent happy.

We cannot make every customer one hundred percent happy? Can we try one hundred percent? If someone is unhappy with us, can we try to fix that as well? Absolutely? Can we try to offer as many solutions as possible. Absolutely, if a customer is unhappy about something, can we try and fix that for them? Yes. If a staff member is unhappy about something, can we try and fix that

for them. Yes. You can do all the things right and that's what's important, but at the end of the day, some people still may not be happy, and it's important to remember that that in itself is okay, and that you're not a bad person or your business isn't shit if people are unhappy with you, because that is quite literally just life. People are never going to be one hundred percent happy, and that is completely okay. And those

are my lessons of twenty twenty four. And like I always say, there's a billion things that I've learned this year and business is nothing but lessons. I truly feel like that is what business is. In a nutshell, it's just doing things, doing them wrong, learning lessons and moving forward and learning better for next time. I quite literally think business is just one massive lesson in itself, and you're never going to stop learning. And I truly think

that that's the beautiful thing about business. You know, there's no perfect way of doing everything, there's no handbook that will tell you exactly how to handle every single thing in business in every single scenario. You honestly just try your best, and you might make mistakes along the way. I do, we all do, and you learn the lesson for next time, and you learn so many lessons about yourself along the way as well. So yeah, this has

been a bit of a reflection episode, hasn't it. But anyway, I'll see you in my next episode.