W01 Reflection: Entrepreneurial Blog

I’ve owned my own business for 7 years now and there are many things that I’ve learned along the way. I didn’t go to school for business, so the majority of lessons learned have been self-taught, or worse, self-inflicted. I’m excited to be able to look at being an entrepreneur from a fresh foundation. I’m sure that there have been many steps that I have skipped over the years that maybe weren’t 100% necessary to running a company, but may have greatly contributed toward achieving success sooner. It all starts with the fundamentals.


Lessons Learned:

A friend who started her online business this year asked me what software(s) I would recommend to help grow her newly formed business. I told her that an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution is the way to go. ERP is first and foremost an accounting tool, which every business needs. The best way to describe an ERP is an all-in-one company database that links every component of the business together, including: accounting, sales, customer service, product information, and warehouse/inventory management. This week, I’ve been having phone meetings and Zoom conferences with NetSuite, which according to my research is the highest rated ERP solution on the market. 6 months ago, I started exploring the idea of establishing an ERP solution at my company. I found out this week that based on the size of my company and number of users required, it comes with a hefty initial price tag of $90,000 for the first year, and around $46,000 per year after that. It’s totally worth it for what it does and the efficiency that it provides, by having all company information under one roof. It would eliminate the need to bounce around from app to app, like we are currently doing. My favorite function of an ERP, and the whole reason why I looked into one in the first place, is being able to know profitability down to the per-order level, since it takes the cost of goods and shipping fees into consideration. You can even run reports and know exactly what your margins are on a customer-specific basis. It’s incredible. I’m going to be signing up for this solution in the very near future and, as I told my friend, I wish I had started my business from the beginning with an ERP.

The reason why it’s so important to start with an ERP from the beginning is to allow it to grow with you. The onboarding process itself, including transferring information over, re-learning software, etc, can be very time consuming and costly, especially for an established company. As you scale, the ERP can be customized by adding modules based on business needs.


Lessons Not Yet Learned:

In reading “Your Entrepreneurs Journal” by Jeff Sandefer, I realized a concept that I am already familiar with and how it can be applied in a different way. I’m talking specifically about journaling. Over the years, I’ve learned that I have to write things down in order to remember them. This has been especially helpful on to-do list items. As soon as a task is either given to me by someone else or to myself, I immediately write it down. If I fail to note it, it most likely won’t get done. I believe that this concept can be applied to journaling as well. If I have thoughts or ideas that may not require action right now, but perhaps can be useful at a later time, I should utilize a journal so that it can easily be recalled. I can’t remember everything, but I can write anything.

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