There’s no doubt about it: people are rethinking their purpose and embracing the opportunity to do something different by pursuing their dreams and goals like never before. Nearly 4.3 million people quit their jobs in December alone, according to the Labor Department, and this record coincides with a dramatic surge in applications to start new businesses since the pandemic began.
Starting your own business takes a healthy ego, or sense of self-esteem and importance: you have to believe in your own capability. The investors or first customers you attract will be buying as much in your idea as your personality and aptitude. But as you find early successes, it can be easy for a growing sense of confidence to morph into ego and interfere with your ability to learn, spot chances to grow, bring on experts in areas you’re not, and address when you’re wrong—all of which are key for growth. In other words, ego is the enemy of flexibility and flexibility is critical, more than ever right now. Entrepreneurs who succeed are great at doing all these things and have a self-awareness and core confidence that allows them to pivot when necessary.
So the question is, how can you maintain a healthy ego that promotes flexibility?
Strategy 1) Talk to your customers and center them in everything you do.
Your ego can convince you that instinctively know what your customers need, but don’t be fooled. At ZenBusiness, we’re constantly connecting with our customers and adapting our ideas based on their feedback before we build an actual product or service. When we were first starting our company, we even pivoted our foundational offering based on what we were learning from other entrepreneurs. We initially thought our customers would be existing companies and that we’d help them with issues like compliance—but by talking to customers, we learned what entrepreneurs really need is support sorting through the information overload from day one.
One of the best ways to ensure you’re centering your customers is to hire and cultivate a customer success (CS) team that truly cares about helping people and to treat that team as one of the most important functions at your company. We put customers first by elevating CS employees to be front-of-office and problem-solving rock stars who work directly with entrepreneurs. We invest in their ongoing training and have built a culture in which customer service is primary—there are no canned responses for customer interactions and our rallying cry is to “take the stress away.” Our approach has been so effective that we no longer recruit when hiring for our customer success team, we actually have people who approach us.
A customer-centric culture inspires outcomes like a CS employee spending three hours on the phone with a customer helping them out, which is a real thing that happened recently at ZenBusiness. To close the loop, you want to track and read your review ratings and contact customers when they give you a low score because you want to learn how to improve—and if that takes a long time, that’s just part of the process. A culture in which customers are more than boxes to check and CS employees are coming from a genuine place and not working off of tired scripts will ensure that your business is meeting customer expectations. No company—and no leader—can survive without happy customers and one unhappy customer can be your undoing.
Strategy 2) Show employees that you care — and mean it.
Elevating your employees takes a healthy core confidence balanced with an understanding that no one can grow a company on their own. Treating the people you choose to join you on that journey well will inspire them to treat customers well in turn, and take pride in building a brand people trust.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t have high expectations of your employees, just as you have high expectations of yourself—but at the same time, you want to make sure you are giving them a platform where they are comfortable to have an opinion and a voice and to feel a sense of ownership. If you inadvertently create an environment where they’re concerned about being judged because they have an opinion, question, or idea, that will eventually backfire on you.
So, how can you do that? Simply put, be human! When I welcome new employees, I make a point to say, “I always have an opinion and I expect all of you to have an opinion, too.” Everyone comes to the table with a different experience or background and their opinion or idea could make a huge difference in what you’re doing, and you don’t want to miss out on that. And if you do sense that someone is holding back from freely expressing their opinions, ask them why.
Connection is just as important. At ZenBusiness, we use the Donut app to automatically pair people regardless of role and level for one-on-one chats. As a result, once a week I am encouraged to spend 15 minutes with someone I may not regularly speak with at our company and I remind them they can come to me any time. Our CEO Ross does the same thing. Putting yourself out there as a leader communicates that you’re being authentic and that you mean what you say and are receptive to everyone’s opinions and ideas.
Another great way to show you care is by asking for feedback. I ask my team members for feedback on everything—on me, the company, the job—every couple of months in my one-on-one’s with them. Waiting a year is waiting too long. And if there’s anything you need to know or address, it’s better to know it sooner than later. At the same time, rewarding and recognizing people when they least expect it through raises, promotions, praises, and more, is one of my greatest joys as a leader.
Whatever dream you are pursuing, put your ego aside and go forth with the confidence to put your people—your customers and your employees—first and trust that by doing so, you will inspire loyalty and great work that will ultimately come back to you.
WRITTEN BY
Shanaz Hemmati