 So what's in common with a small child learning how to walk and an entrepreneur? Probably most of what they do Keep they both keep failing both keep falling down getting back up again falling down getting back up again Falling down etc The biggest difference I think is the small child will eventually learn how to walk The end entrepreneur on the other hand Well, we'll keep failing and that's my topic for today. I'm gonna be talking about my Five favorite mistakes. I've made as an entrepreneur You can hopefully learn from and that I personally have hopefully learned from My name is Julius Haukasal. I come from evermade a digital agency based here in Helsinki. I'm one of the co-founders I have a design background, but I've basically done everything you can in a digital age We basically started the company straight out of school in 2011 and I know what you're all thinking right now. No, that haircut is not my first mistake It is it. I'm not proud of that, but I have made a lot of worse mistakes in my life But basically I've done everything you can in a company from Layout design to concept design to server design even frontend. I've coded I think one WordPress site from start to finish I've done sales. I've been the CEO for a couple of years and That's where lies my first issue my first mistake and because I'm sort of a master of none or a Check of all trades. I kind of know a little bit about everything which leads to a situation where I Try to do everything by myself and a couple of years ago when I was still the CEO I was basically handling most of our sales probably 80% of our sales while at the same time Trying to do some icon design for a site. I was doing some layout design. I was running from meeting to meeting. I was handling all the finances scrubbing the toilets as As all CEOs do so I felt like I was sort of squirrel trying to get to every single spot And that was quite difficult and I was fairly close to burnout at some point And I realized that I do really need to learn how to delegate and the thing with delegation delegating is It's super easy to delegate things. You don't like or not care about But when you're an entrepreneur You kind of do care about everything. So it is difficult to delegate anything in the company And I've tried to learn from that and I've managed to find people to do what I've used to do before And I try to give as much to others as as possible There's a quote by a person somebody told me once that 80% if there's someone who can do 80% of what you do Just delegate I'm a bit of a perfectionistic person myself. So I kind of struggle with the 80% idea But I think that makes sense But if you do delegate and when you do delegate You have to take the good and the bad that comes with it and here we get to my next mistake Not allowing others to fail and this is a very very important one and one that I struggle every single day today I've personally learned from my mistakes more than I have from anything else I think school was good But being an entrepreneur just a year or two probably taught me a lot more than five years in in a university And If I don't allow others to fail then how are they supposed to learn if I try to help them it comes from a good place I want to make sure that everything is running smoothly and and and everybody knows what they're supposed to do and so on But if I go and intervene and try to help people they start to think that they are not good enough Or they won't I think that they won't be able to come up with the solution themselves And where I learned this from was I'm a lucky father of two girls and When they learn to how to walk and they learn how to eat and they learn how to put their clothes on I realized that at daycare or with my wife They always did it really well, but with me they would say no dad. I can't do it. I'm not good You know, I don't know how to put my clothes on. I don't know how to walk I don't know how to do this and I realized that is Because I'm trying to help them all the time it comes from a place of love But I'm sort of trying too much to help them So you sort of have to you know, look the other way when they're about to hit a rock or you or they're about to like Collapse on the floor and you just need to let them go But then on the other hand you also need to know when to intervene When to you know, when they're close to the cliff edge, maybe you sort of sort of have to take something Do something intervene there. They're about to fall down a set of stairs. You need to take action and here we get to my third failure, which is probably one of the worst ones and That is chickening out and avoiding and delaying conflict or negative issues and this is a difficult one as well So you're trying to allow others to fail and do their own thing But then again, you need to make sure that that project is on time You need to make sure that the client is happy you need to make sure that if there's Feedback that needs to be given or critiques of someone you need to Take it and go for it without delays and and and and so on and the difficult part is to know and understand and look into yourself and see when I'm when am I trying to let these people do their own thing and When I'm just cowarding and avoiding and delaying the inevitable Conflict and there's a good few mistakes that I've made in this sort of theme the most difficult thing an entrepreneur or a manager can do is let someone go and It is never an easy decision but when it comes to avoiding a Difficult situation letting someone go is as difficult as it gets And personally sometimes I've let people stay at the company for a year too long and at that point There's been things happening with clients who's been hard by that Other employees team members aren't by that having to cover up or or so on and This is definitely one of the things that I've tried to learn is to not avoid not delay and act when it's necessary I don't want to be Donald Trump or anything, but sometimes you need to cut your losses But delaying and avoiding conflict is also something that has led to my fourth mistake Which is a pretty favorite of mine And that's something that probably anybody with a corporate business card can relate to and that has to do with The annoying paperwork and not doing my paperwork on time So this dates back a few years Back when I would just start it out as the CEO of the company Back then we didn't have these nice apps that you can just take a picture of the receipt Then everything is going fine and that goes to the accountant. We actually had to Send like paper receipts every single month to the accountant And I mean there's always stuff to do so clients that you need to work with and so on and you might sometimes try to push that back and I started out as the CEO and everything was running fine. We had money in the bank not that we would swim in it But we had a good like three-month buffer as as you'd hope And a couple of weeks later I get a mail a letter in the mail from the tax office my favorite people and That little letter says hey Julius You're not gonna be able to invoice anybody it again because you're owing us some VATs Okay, let's handle the receipts and stuff and we'll be fine from the past six months and the nice bank-agount balance sort of went from That to a situation where we started to think about if we need to do some sort of other type of paperwork soon and That took a ton out of myself and my my own well-being But I struggled through that with my with the help of my partners and and my colleagues We managed to save the situation everything went fine Nobody, you know was harmed by that No paychecks were late and we we sort of survived that and a few years later We're all well off now. We have all these nice apps that we can scan the receipts right away and not Get to the situation but delaying the inevitable is something that you have to learn not to do and From this situation where we had to struggle with the receipts and had to struggle with this issue situation and issue That's where sort of the whole issue with being an entrepreneur arises from is is Whatever happens whether it's you whether it's clients whether it's projects whether it's team members It's all on you at the end of the day It's you having the sleepest sleepless nights wondering what you could do and what have you done wrong and that can take a lot of Sort of energy out of you it can take its toll and I think many who have been entrepreneurs or are entrepreneurs can relate to this sort of constant Anxiety of the future and And that's where we get to my my last fail and definitely my Biggest one and that is not prioritizing my family or my personal well-being Over everything else because at the end of the day This is the most important thing that you can do if you're not well The company will probably not be well The clients will probably not be well your family your loved ones probably won't be well So you need to focus your own personal well-being above every single other thing As I said, I have two daughters now and and and I think nobody in their deathbed ever said You know if only I had fixed that bug or if only I had figured out the issue with that cash and This is something that we should all Understand and think about is how much effort do we really want to put into this at the end of the day? what's important to you and And We need to also understand that failure is fine. It's okay to make these mistakes It's okay if as long as we learn and as long as we sort of Figure out how to do better But we as adults are sometimes not that good at that We're afraid of failure and we're afraid of making those mistakes And I think we should all take a little take a bit of a page out of the book of these Toddlers and these babies and these little kids learning to take their first steps and to eat their own food and just Try new things and and be open to failure Because if you know, we often put ourselves in these boxes where I can't do this or I'm not good enough for or I'm just Not that type of a person But have you ever seen a child that sort of goes? You know, I think I'm just not the walking type All of us walk here. So I think nobody will crawl on the floor So let's be more like little babies less like boring adults afraid of failure and That's my talk for today. Thank you everyone