Business is hard?
It’s a gruesome battle. From age 15, I didn’t have time for college. Because I had already started my first business when I was 17, I was trying to figure out how to make it. Some told me I should have ‘naïve’ tattooed in block letters on my forehead. I heard the words “ridiculous” and “ludicrous;” Ignorant was another descriptor of my decision. They said it’s never going to happen. That was thirty-plus years ago. It was hard for me; it will be for you. Yes, business is complicated.
From there to here
However, look at where we are today. An enterprise solution has been built, launched product one, and then launched product two. We’re selling in states all across the US. And we’ve signed deals to expand. Thousands of customers are paying us every month.
Subsequently, we created the virtual caregiver, Addison. Addison Care began on a napkin on my dining room table. She’s the virtual caregiver that patients and the healthcare system have needed for so long. Very soon; this product will be ubiquitous as Andrea Potter, R&D Senior Scientist at Proctor & Gamble, thinks it should be! The impossible product has become a reality.
Business is complex, but you should keep moving!
Intentionally, you’ve got to decide that you want to go after something. Have you already launched? Now’s the time to figure out how to take it to the next level. There is always the next level in today’s evolving technological world. Innovation equates to more and more opportunities, and opportunity keeps us moving.
So, we should never be stagnant. Be constantly growing and watching if there’s another place to take your business. At the end of the day, the one thing that carried us the furthest was our relationships. It’s all about personal relationships. I found a great mentor, a great mentor who said I’d have to focus on my headspace first. Do you have a truth-telling encouraging, yet challenging mentor?
Mentorship in business
Recently, SmallBizClub shared the importance of having a business mentor. “Having a business mentor means you can learn from their past mistakes. You can avoid common entrepreneurial pitfalls. Better yet, they can help you get in the networking game.”
To succeed and overcome business difficulties, we must overcome all our insecurities. And believe me, we all have them. What’s remarkable is that we can completely reinvent ourselves. We can reinvent our reputation and reinvent our character. Shifting and becoming flexible is crucial. If we don’t, the hardness of business steals our dreams, and we will ultimately walk away. It’s hard. I don’t think it’s not. Find a mentor that believes in you and your dream.
Do you practice?
On the other hand, there are people out there pitching for capital with no practice. Some people are out there trying to sign new businesses without rehearsal. They’ve never sat down, listened to their own presentation, or conducted a self-audit.
More often than not, we never record ourselves and listen to our ask and play it back. Why? If we don’t like what we hear, will others like what they hear when we speak? You can listen to more about this practice on my podcast, and I’ve discussed it in-depth in some of my other blogs.
Studying what’s hard in business
It’s like the old stuff that Napoleon Hill wrote about in 1937. Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich reflects on successful business people of his time, including Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie. He identified common characteristics from their successes. And from that produced the “Law of Success” philosophy for which he became famous.
Not to mention that in his book, Napoleon had much to say about fear. The book is an excellent read of the foundations you can build to get going in a solid direction in your sales career. Additionally, Napoleon Hill was also about laughter, as he eloquently wrote in his quick essay ‘About Life”. Essay On Life | Napoleon Hill Foundation (naphill.org)
Surround yourself with winners
For these reasons, I created a community while developing my current business. This community is full of eager professionals looking for an opportunity to learn and win. We also collaborated with New Mexico State University on our projects and still do today.
Our partners Amazon and Intel have consistently supported in helping train our young workers in technology. Subsequently, year after year, we have added jobs to enhance our customer-first goals and to manage growth for success.
Meet the challenge head-on when the business gets harder
Instinctively, we learned to pivot when doing business became harder during COVID-19 in 2020. There would have to be a drastic pivot to survive. State, city, county, and hospital health officials in New Mexico contacted us. ICUs and beds were overflowing with COVID patients. In other words, they needed a seamless, immediate way to monitor and continuously triage patients remotely. Teams and technologies needed to be coordinated. And patients needed to be prioritized in and out of the medical facilities. This would help open capacity.
That being the case, ECG onboarded communities in New Mexico within two weeks. Through our pivot, we saved the health system millions of dollars. As a result, the monitoring opened up nearly 50% of available beds. This helped save lives, and we even received an intel grant to support the program.
Understanding from the start that business is hard
Finally, understand that business is challenging but not impossible from day one. Grasp the hope there are answers to your challenges. Identify those around you who have gone ahead of you and include their mentorship in your journey. Know that you don’t know until you know.
And always, always, always put people first, whether your staff, your co-workers, or your customers, and you will do well. You will do well even when it seems business is too hard, but then the next day, new opportunities appear on your horizon.
Simple advice summary
In closing, some straightforward, simple, evergreen advice in the business would be:
- Do more than you’re paid for
- Show your intention
- Rise up inside of yourself, and then that business
- Remember, we’re not entitled to anything. (And I mean nothing.)
- Find a mentor
- Treat people well
- Don’t quit
There is information about Electronic Caregiver Inc. and Addison Care on our website at electroniccaregiver.com. If you’d like to talk to one of our incredible staff in person, please call us at 833-324-5433.
Are you looking for ways to optimize your patients’ care with remote patient monitoring? We’ve got you too! 1-833-324-5433 extension 5.