Everyone wants to be a leader, until you are and then you most definitely don’t. There are a lot of misconceptions on leadership, like you will have minions to do everything for you. Listen, this isn’t the Devil Wears Prada and employees sure as hell won’t stick around if you treat them that way. They are not there to get you coffee, hang your coat, drop off dry cleaning or pick up your lunch.

Promotions are great and all, but do you really know what you are in for? Management will not make your life easier, in fact it will make your life much, much harder. You won’t only be responsible for your own work, but now you have people that report to you that need your direction. Everything that comes out of your department/division is your responsibility. The buck stops with you. Mistakes – your fault

A colleague gave me this analogy – being a leader is climbing up the ladder of responsibility and pulling up those that report to you. Your work load just doubled. It is not easy and it is a constant learning curve.

Failure is part of leadership, along with hard work. You have to give your employees the tools to succeed and empower them to make decisions and mistakes. How will they learn if you are always doing for them?

What do you think?

It will be 10 years for 834 Design & Marketing this fall. Some of those years I would like to forget, there was a lot of failure, frustration and drinking 🥃. People keep telling me that 10 years is a milestone, quite honestly…I’m just happy I managed to retain most of my sanity.

I was just asked the other day what it takes to be a business owner. Besides being slightly off your rocker, I came up with the below.

1. Self-awareness. Know your strengths and weaknesses and don’t be afraid to admit them. Every single employee at 834, has strengths or abilities I don’t possess. I hired them because they are smart, capable and driven. If you feel threatened by that, then you shouldn’t be leading or running a business.
2. Willingness. You will do whatever needs to be done. That means, every employee you hire or plan to hire is doing a job you have done at some point. This also applies to interns. If you ask them to take out garbage or run a vacuum, then you sure as hell better be willing to do it yourself. It is a team effort and if you position yourself on a throne, no one will respect you and they sure as hell won’t work hard for you.
3. Toughness. You are going to get the shit kicked out of you throughout your business journey. I threw in the towel at one point and went to work for a client, it lasted 9 months. It was also the best thing that I could ever have done, because I realized I am not cut out for the corporate world or working for someone else. See #1, self-awareness.
4. Embrace humility. I am self-deprecating to a fault. I do it because it seems to set people at ease and I don’t want anyone to ever think that I walk around like an egotistical asshole. In fact, just in the last few years, I finally allowed myself to admit that I am good at my job and that 834 is a great company. My point is, never think you are better than anyone else, not your competitors, not your employees, not your waiter…no one.
5. Seek out crazy. Find other business owners, because no one else will understand what you are going through. Not your spouse, friends or family. This is a lonely, scary, exhilarating journey and you will need support.
6. Trust your gut. The times I have ignored my gut, I have made some really stupid calls. If you really listen to your instincts, you will be better off.

Never stop dreaming and never give up. Perseverance and just being damn stubborn has carried me through when times were hardest. If you fail, try again. Business owners aren’t afraid of failure, they embrace it and learn from it.

Salma Hayek knows what she is talking about.

This past weekend I got up in front of an auditorium of people and talked about failure. I talked about a time in my life when I thought everything was perfect and everything was falling into place.

Then everything came crashing down – it was a shit show. I was in a really bad place and it honestly felt like life as I knew it was over.

That is the funny thing about failure, at the time you can’t see beyond it but once you are past it you can see the valuable lessons it taught you.

1. You are so much stronger than you think you are. Allow yourself the time to feel like shit, but just remember you will always come out on the other side of it.
2. It really does happen for a reason. I don’t mean in the cliche sense, but in the ‘you will be such a badass’ when it is behind you. The growth you will experience and the confidence you will gain will prove to be invaluable in future shitty situations.
3. You are not alone. Look around. Every single person you see has failed. Failure is not reserved for just you, all of us go through it.
4. Talk about it. This was not an easy one for me. Failure is embarrassing and emotional and just icky. But…others can learn from your failure.

I still look back at that time in my life and I still can’t believe where I am today in comparison. I never thought I would survive it.

Sometimes the worst brings out the best.

There is a lot in the works at 834 right now, it is exciting, thrilling, unknown and scary. But so what. Everything in life is terrifying if you think about it long enough. You can literally talk yourself out of anything. Stop it.

What is life without risk? If we quit exploring new tools, strategies and business ideas then 834 will no longer be the brand I created 10 years ago – a brand that is about pushing the envelope, finding new and better ways of doing things and then implementing the shit out of it.

Some of the most successful individuals failed before they ever ‘made it’. Great shit comes out of failure:

1. Failure is important. As long as you are learning from mistakes, you are continually growing your knowledge and experience. Don’t wonder ‘what if?’
2. It gets easier. Eventually failure will get easier. Once you have done it 15 to 20 times, you know how to get up and move on.
3. Success is born from failure. Failures help us define what success looks like, which is something you will constantly be moving towards.

You are not alone. Take Thomas Edison for example, his first thousand or more attempts at getting the light bulb to work were failures. In spite of all of his failures, Edison was a prolific inventor who had amassed several patents by the time he died, including the light bulb and the movie projector.

If you don’t fail, you’re not trying and if you’re not trying then you’re not really living, are you?

Source: Business.com, Entrepreneur.com