3 Business Lessons Learned From 'Craving Success'

Melody Biringer, entrepreneur and author, has a great deal to offer in terms of entrepreneurial wisdom.  Over the last 30 years, she’s started over 20 businesses and she’s captured many of the lessons she learned in her new book, Craving Success.

I had the pleasure of listening to Melody speak recently and I just finished reading her book…so I thought I’d pass along a few of my favorite insights from her talk (and her book) that are very relevant to small creative business owners such as ourselves!

1. Keep It Small and Keep it All

Have you ever heard the expression, “You don’t have to boil the ocean?”…well, it’s true!  Beware of getting in over your head taking on the world before you’re fully prepared!  Before taking giant leaps -- whether directionally, financially, or otherwise -- make sure you’ve done proper due diligence and really decided whether big steps and big commitments are going to be best for you and your business or if keeping your business small and doing what you do WELL is the right choice for you.

2. Relationships Matter

Putting energy into developing and nurturing relationships with your customers, suppliers, and fellow business owners pays off!  In her book, Melody touches on the subject of loyalty, mentioning that creating personal relationships and providing great products and friendly service on a repeated basis will create huge loyalty.  Reading that excerpt really struck home for me…as it’s the same reason why I always buy my fruits and veggies from the same stall at the Pike Place Market, why I’m forever faithful to my nail salon, and why I will stand in line to check out with a particular checker at Costco even if another line has no people in it!  When I slow down and think about it, the reason why I’m so loyal to those businesses and individuals is because they’ve built a relationship with me, over time, and those relationships matter!  Great relationships can take your business to places you never knew it could go!

3. The Flip It Concept

With Melody’s "Flip It" concept, the idea is to do the exact opposite of what you’re doing now, to “Flip your model upside down, inside out, or sideways…” so you can gain a new perspective about your business.  Through this exercise you may become aware of ways to tweak your business (whether big or small) that will drive game changing results!

So, I’ve barely scratched the surface of Melody’s entrepreneurial advice and knowledge with the 3 lessons I’ve passed along above -- there is so much to learn in her book through the business lessons she’s mastered over the years! 

Now I’m curious to find out what lessons you’ve learned from running your own business?  Are there any lessons I talked about today that particularly resonate with you?

Main image courtesy of Brooks Elliott