The first stages of building a business are all about planning and execution. As the process becomes more and more detailed, it becomes more and more exhausting, and the longer you can endure the exhaustion, the bigger the rewards are – not just financially, but mentally and spiritually as well.

Entrepreneurship isn’t the path for everyone, some people are content working for a company, doing what they love and may be taking fewer risks. However, some wish to walk their own path and build from scratch. They use their experience and knowledge in working for a company and implement what they have learned into their venture, adding their own touch of flair. 

It’s been a little over a year since The Product Club was formed. After almost a decade in the recruitment industry, it was time for me to use all that I have learned to build what I had always been aiming for – my own recruitment company. 

To be completely honest with you, I always knew I would be walking the path I am today. I always saw myself as a leader, and I wanted to use my leadership skills to help people. In fact, I was laughed out of the room in my first recruitment interview for giving “helping people” as an answer to why I wanted the role. Even as a kid, I wasn’t so much a rule breaker or the devil in the classroom, but I would always take every bit of information the teacher would give us, research it, and counter with my own opinions and facts to maybe give the other children another path of thought… you can imagine how well that went.

A hunger for knowledge has always been within me – but it can backfire if you don’t pace yourself. I wanted to know about everything and anything, not just one industry… EVERYTHING.

That’s when I realized my priority should be attaining my set goals, and I should use the knowledge and all that I have experienced to move forward. Repurpose my knowledge, pivot and grow. 

The following steps needed to be taken. I knew they were of paramount importance, but also that the most difficult times were ahead of me.

I had to move to a smaller place, sacrificing my time with family. Friends became a once-a-month phone call. My relationship broke down. Mental health was deteriorating. And I was living in constant angst and fear, wondering why on earth have I set myself up on this path when I could have just been making my £80k a year at my previous company, nice and secure.

Well, this question comes to my mind still as I grow further into my journey.

“Why on earth have I set myself up on this path when I could have just been making my £80k a year, nice and secure?”

Here’s what I learned so far:

Time really is the most valuable asset

The amount of time I need to meet deadlines, targets and fulfil my duties for the day, would not be available to me had I not decided to build my own business. This journey so far has taught me that working for someone else is a cycle you can get trapped in, unable to break free and pursue your chosen path because of limited “free” time and inability to pivot. 

There’s only so much you would be able to do for ‘you’ after getting home and having to go to the gym, shower, eat, and so forth. How do you manage your time to be able to build what you want with your life? 

Nothing is more important than the time you have for yourself, and with the hustle culture possessing most of our brains, we are pressured to spend every second free to build, build, build for success. 

But you have to understand the success you want to build, it shouldn’t be just for financial gain. Yes, that holds importance, but your most prized possession in building wealth should be the time you have freed for yourself to spend with loved ones and most importantly for you. As Epictetus said, “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants”.

You can lose yourself in the process of building a business, you forget about who you are because you’re so focused on an end goal, and yet life is just flying by. 

Now that I am in control of my day-to-day, after months of unconsciously replicating the rat race I was in, I have managed to schedule time for me and the ones I wish to spend time with every day. I’m working endlessly at my craft, but I will not forget about life.

Cliché, but rejections and failures are actually lessons

How many times have you had to brush off your rejected attempt at pitching a client; 

“Sure, not to worry, it was nice speaking with you, and err hope to hear from you soon and get things moving forward, take care, alright, bye.”

At first, these phone calls were demoralising. But with each rejection, I learnt a lesson. I would use my newfound time to reflect upon each conversation and compare the phone calls that were productive, and those that weren’t. I had a lot of experience pitching established businesses. This was a new venture. Why would anyone want to work with me? That’s what I needed to get across.

You have to understand that for as long as you’re willing to keep going, failure is non-existent, it’s just lesson after lesson after lesson. Once you have gained the knowledge from these lessons, you have built enough mental resilience to go at anything you desire with confidence and determination, accepting that “Maybe I won’t get it this time, but I will look back and see if I can do anything different to maybe have a different outcome the next opportunity”. And crucially, when I found a client with some kind of need, I would talk them through my journey and slowly… my resilience became theirs. And before I knew it, we were on this journey together. 

If you have no emotional intelligence, you better start learning

We’re all consumers, whether we like it or not. As Tyler Durden says “We’re consumers, we are by-products of a lifestyle obsession.” And in being consumers, we are the most fundamental element to a successfully running business, especially in recruitment. 

If you have clients coming back and recommending others your way, welcome to the Forbes list, if you have clients running away and recommending others to run as far and fast as they can, welcome to bankruptcy. 

The four basic components of emotional intelligence:

Self-awareness

The foundation of all other components. Self-awareness is self-explanatory. You are aware of all your emotions, therefore, understanding the emotions and behaviors in others. 

You understand your instinct well enough to make decisions that may not be clear enough to decide on with just thought and words alone. 

If you are in touch with your emotions and aware of your triggers, bad habits, strengths, and weaknesses, you are better able to guide your life. When you are in tune with yourself you are in tune with the world around you, understanding the effects of human behaviors and how to use them to your benefit.

Self-management

Once you are aware of all your emotions, the next step is to manage them. If you know when your negative emotions become triggered; when your bad habits automatically play; and when your sense of control has lost all logical reasoning, you are in a better position to train your subconscious to build new habits, routines, and small acts in your day-to-day that improve the quality of your life and character.

Being in control of yourself in general means you are better able to handle difficult situations with others around you, taking the lead, and being able to remove wild thoughts from logic and empathy.

Social awareness

Social awareness revolves around the external world. Knowing how different environments can influence people; understanding how to handle different social situations, and implementing your knowledge to fit with the right environment, benefiting your social interactions in these different environments.

“A well informed public opinion is essential to the growth of political and social awareness. Only he who is informed can comment intelligently on his nation’s development and only by such comments can errors be corrected and progress stimulated” ~ Haile Selassie.

Relationship management

Once your self-management is mastered, it’s time to master the relationship you have with the world around you. Your influence on other people is measured by how well you understand their circumstances and how much value you can offer in understanding their situation.

Relationship management is vital to negotiations, closing deals, and resolving the conflicts of two disparate parties. Focus on maintaining good relationships with those who say no, just as much as those who say yes.

I’m still in the infancy of this journey, and my motivation is already moving from getting sales to just enjoying and embracing the journey. This is just the beginning.