Here’s to the small-business owners, who take the risks, make the mistakes and come through the other side shining

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Thank you.

Job well done.

Keep battling—you’ve got this.

As a small-business owner, accolades, words of support and thank-yous—if any—are few and far between. At times, it can be an intensely lonely existence.

Let’s try to rectify that. At least for 800 words or so.

Here’s to never having real days off. You may have a cleared schedule, but you never truly turn it off. Your business is always running in your mind. Payroll is coming and cash flow is king. Keep battling. You’ve got this.

Thank you for paying yourself last. There is no stress like the stress of making payroll. You’ve either felt it or you haven’t. But the commitment you make to others changes lives. Thank you for the homes you’ve helped to buy. Weddings you’ve helped to pay for. Educations you’ve invested in. Thank you for making lives better.

You took an idea and made it come to life. You created your business—out of nowhere. You took the risk—even when you heard the doubt from others. Take a moment and appreciate what you have created. Job well done.

At 25 years old, with our first baby on the way and still finishing an MBA at UNLV, I was too young and dumb to know the risks of walking away from a guaranteed paycheck to focus on my small business at the time, Imagine Communications. And I’m so glad I was. Life would forever be changed.

Nearly 25 years later, the focus is now the second business we founded—Xs & Os of Success, a people and culture company. But the journey—and the people we have met along the way—remain the prize.

Many of those people are entrepreneurs themselves and we asked them for help with writing this, posing them the question: What advice would give yourself if you could go back to when you first started building your company?

“For me, it wasn’t about dollars and cents, it was more about my mindset that needed to mature,” said Brooks Downing, who founded the Lexington, Kentucky-based sports marketing and event management firm bdG Sports in 2012. “My advice to me would be to stay humble. It’s very easy to get cocky at the first sign of success, which can lead you down a road of irrational decisions. It’s important to grow organically. One mistake I made was adding staff too quickly, and when conditions suddenly change—a bad business decision, a pandemic, other factors—that affects your profit and loss. The worst part of this job is letting people go.

“I would rather maximize ‘cap space’ for staff than quickly add others to the mix. When you’re trying to develop a family-oriented, people-first staff, finding yourself in that position is not desirable. What’s the old saying, ‘the pig gets fed, but the hog gets slaughtered?’”

Over the past decade, Downing’s team played a big role in the growth of college basketball in the Las Vegas market. Through that relationship, we met Jason Kohll, the founder of Houston-based Professional Sports Partners, a sports marketing agency focused on helping brands tell their story and getting the most value from athletes, teams, leagues and events.

“Be patient: Building it the right way will pay off,” Kohll said he would go back and tell himself over a decade ago. “Those first few years are so stressful as you build—a cycle of two steps forward, one step back. Have the gumption and grit to stick to it and focus while blocking out distractions.”

One friend who blocked out the distractions was Tim Brooks, who, despite naysayers everywhere, opened the Emerald Island Casino in downtown Henderson over two decades ago and turned it into one of the most successful local casinos in the state.

“Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, and admit them when you do,” Brooks said. “Consider yourself a baseball batter in the business world. If you are successful 30% of the time, you’re an all-star.”

And then there is Alex De Castroverde, who always pushes me to think bigger. He and his brother, Orlando, have grown Las Vegas-based De Castroverde Law Group to over 100 employees and into one of the leading Hispanic law firms in the Southwest.

“Dream and think big,” Alex De Castroverde said. “You and the firm can accomplish much more than you think is possible.”

Whether you already run your own business or are thinking of chasing your dream, it will be lonely. But you are not alone. We are always rooting for you.

So, thank you. Job well done. And keep battling—you’ve got this.

D.J. Allen is a performance and communication coach with Xs & Os of Success, which he founded in 2008. He co-wrote the book Xs & Os of Success with College Basketball Hall of Fame coach Lon Kruger. Allen is also the founder and a former partner of Imagine Communications.



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