As a successful entrepreneur, Naomi was there to share her wisdom and tell the room of enthusiastic startups and keen business people all the secrets to her success. From a speech that was entertaining but light in nature, i think it gave us an insight in to her own experiences and hardships, while trying to run a business and continue to be a mother and wife to her family. As it turns out, she wanted to join the bandwagon of the dotcom boom (back when it happened) and try to make some money out of it while still being able to be at home with the kids. "How is that working out for me?" she asked the audience and then answered the question herself simply laughing and saying "not well". It made her busier than ever actually but that is a decision that seems to have been worth the effort.
She also mentioned that her background belonged as part of a select few women who had joined the IT industry back then and she still makes up the minority in terms of the gender gap in that particular industry today. To all the females in the room she made her message clear; women should not be afraid of technology and now more than ever they need to be entering this field and taking advantage of its popularity and saturation in the market.
Other lessons she presented (at least ones that stood out to me) were the following:
1) It's hard to start a business alone and that is why she didn't do it on her own. She started RedBalloon as a partnership.
2) If you are going to run a business, recognise and accept that you can't do everything on your own. You need to delegate tasks and find a team of amazing people that can help you achieve your goal.
3) When you are talking about shareholders; try to keep that side of things less complicated. Single ownership is ideally the best option because once the business takes off, the greed in people and their demands concerning their share can get messy. If we are to learn from her own experiences then it seems it's best to settle things upfront and sooner rather than later.
4) The road to success is long and hard but you must have a goal to envision where you are going. It makes it easier if you set targets.
5) Set numbers or achievements that you wish to achieve and keep track of them to see how you are progressing. Also, once you reach that goal it gives you an opportunity to celebrate it, so do that too!
6) You don't have to know everything about technology and IT to get in to the industry. Naomi admits to not writing a line of code to make her business function but she certainly went to university and got a background knowledge of what she was attempting to do and the rest just sort of fell in to place through luck, opportunity, effort, education and a combination of the aforementioned.
7) She is not afraid of the competition and simply keeps focussed on her goals and her business without paying too much attention to who is trying to copy her or do things better.
One last thing that i took away from that session was just how long it took to get to where she is today. From the initial idea and the way she started the business and how it progressed, to where it is today, ranked in the top ten places to work in Australia in a recent poll. That is a mark of true success not to mention the retail side of things, which has seen the company sell millions of vouchers and 'happy experiences'. A key point that stood out to me was when she mentioned that it took 10 years to sell the first million vouchers but it only took another two years to sell the second million. That success story and the second million lot of sales only came to fruition from the decade of sweat, tears and hard work that preceded it. That to me is the most important lesson because i think in the world of digital, technology and startup obsessed communities that are now embedded in the 21st century, we often forget that the success stories that come out on top now, have really been brewing for months, years and sometimes decades before we even knew that company existed. So as it turns out, there is no such thing as overnight success. It takes years of practice, mistakes and polishing that gets you to a near perfect product and even then; there will always be room for improvements and enhancements to the business.
The business: http://www.redballoon.com.au/
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