You have to be willing to jump up off the floor and to go again

03/11/20213 Minutes

“Never give up” – Why self-belief (and the right partner) matters in business

Currently, I’m the Co-founder and Partner of Devonshire Media – a technology and digital media company that provides software products and digital marketing services to other businesses.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost my entire career and throughout that time, I’ve worked alongside the same business partner. We met in our early twenties, during a brief spell working for someone else, and have been together ever since. Devonshire Media was set up ten years ago, after we previously ran an online publishing business together.

My business partner and I get along very well. We share the same values and have complete trust in each other. Equally, we have different personalities and contrasting skills.

Ultimately, this is a good thing.

While I enjoy working in a field led by innovation and change, I have no specific technical knowledge, so my business partner leads overall responsibility on the tech side. Meanwhile, I’m more involved in the business’ commercial side, working particularly with our largest clients and marketing partners. I’m also involved in exploring corporate opportunities, as we look to scale up the business.

The highs and lows of running a company all relate to working with people. The best moments are always those where you experience a shared triumph – this can be as important as securing a big customer contract, or as trivial as surviving a tough client meeting and sharing some battle scars. My business partner and I always look back on these with a sense of shared achievement.

The toughest times, for me, are usually related to the challenge of managing everyone’s expectations – whether it’s the members of your team, or any of the many other people you deal with every week.

You can try as hard as you like, but you’ll almost never manage to keep everyone happy.

I’ve started and grown a couple of businesses, been involved in different capacities in a few others, and I think there’s a very clear trait in anyone who manages to do it successfully.

Resilience.

You have to be willing to jump up off the floor and to go again, no matter how many knockbacks come your way. That doesn’t mean being stubborn, blindly pushing on, unwilling to compromise. Instead, it’s about being thoughtful in adapting to the inevitable failures and rejection that comes with running a business.

Ultimately, you have to possess enough self-belief to never give up.

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