The Best Business Advice I’ve Ever Received

 The best business advice I have ever received was game changing for my entire business mindset. It allowed me to grow so much quicker and really get past challenges so much better.

The advice was that ‘everything is your fault’.

I know that doesn't sound like good advice, but let me explain. In business, it’s inevitable that things are going to go wrong, and it's going to feel like it's not your fault at all.

For example, customers complaining about the price of flowers in your shop or giving you the wrong delivery address. It’s going to feel like it’s the customers fault, but these are scenarios which will likely happen again in your business. Now, they become your fault.

The power of taking the blame and taking responsibility for things that go wrong, even if it feels like it’s not even the tiniest bit your fault, means that it is now up to you to make the change to not allow that to happen again.

If you are blaming someone else, you are powerless to change that.

Let’s say you blame the customer who's not valuing flowers, they tell you they want a discount or that they’re not worth that much. If you blame that on them, you are powerless to change that. It's just going to keep happening, day in, day out, with other customers. How are you going to ever stop that from happening if you keep blaming them? If you choose to take responsibility and blame yourself, you can make sure that never happens again. 

The magic of taking the blame is that you can take back the power and now you can make the change. It may feeling annoying and why should you take the blame for it? But, the reason you take the blame is because you don't want it to happen again, and you can now change that from happening again. 

For example, someone walks into your shop and they don't know what flowers cost. You can think “well, that's my fault. I haven't educated them on the price of flowers”. Maybe you need to talk about the cost of flowers on social media, or maybe it needs to be posted on your website. Maybe my shop needs to have pricing more clearly displayed, or you could chat to them and explain to them the process of why flowers cost that much money.

It's monumental when you take on that responsibility because suddenly there's a million things you can do to change that. Someone puts the wrong delivery address in, this doesn't seem like your fault at all. But maybe you could make it easier for them to put the delivery address in so there's no mistakes. Maybe you could ask them to confirm it twice. Maybe you could send a follow up message to confirm the address. The power is that you can ensure it doesn't happen again in the future.

You've taken the blame for it. You've taken responsibility. And now you've changed it, you've moved on up in your business and you're at another level. It's not going to happen anymore. You can move on, you can focus on having happier and more aligned customers or clients. The outcome is better, and you're not wasting your time on these little things that are going wrong anymore.

The power of taking responsibility and taking the blame means that you can solve the problems.