Here are a few lessons I learnt while running my online branding & web development firm Digital Max Solutions (DMS) in Nepal for nearly 10 years. Some of the lessons maybe IT specific. Enjoy!

1. Be directly, personally responsible to the client. Otherwise chances of success in your project is low.
2. Ensure quality yourself. If you personally don’t do quality checks on your products or services, make sure the person who does it, has your 100% trust.  (Otherwise it will come back to haunt you)
3. Delegate but teach. If you delegate your project’s communication to your employee (your associate), teach them exactly how, what, why and when to communicate.
4. Train your employees (associates).  Do not expect them to solely learn by their own or the internet. Understand the concept yourself first.
5. Your employees value what they can learn from you personally. Substituting respect from them by friendship with them alone, may not work.
6. Repeat yourself. Over-communicate. Your employees may not understand the first time around. This happens often. Ask them to paraphrase (To repeat what they understood.)
7. Client is always right (but only at the end). Do ask them a lot of questions before the project starts. Over-communicate. Have written approvals from clients on exact requirements before starting. If something goes wrong at the end, blame yourself alone.
8. Believe in numbers when confused. Make sure you record and then pull up past project history, client history, project hours, efficiency etc regularly. Track everything!
9. Lead by example. Change yourself first. Learn yourself first. If its technology you want the company to adopt, you should be the one to use it first.
10. Always decide. Don’t “decide not to decide” or leave it for fate to decide for you. Your in-decision will turn into sleep-less nights for you. (I have been guilty of this myself to this day)
11. Fail fast. Let your team experiment with a lot of ideas but make sure you do it small. This way you can fail fast. And if you succeed, you have a new way to generate revenue 🙂 !
12. Groom people with exceptional attitude. If you find such a person in your team, help them, mentor them, train them and partner with them; i.e groom them to lead. They will return in kind (and more). You reap, what you sow. And in the end, your employees or associates as I would rather call them, if they decide to leave for whatever reasons, wish them luck, listen to their plans for the future and even offer to invest in their new ventures, should they ever be thinking of opening one. This is a win-win situation for all. You help transition from an entrepreneur to a serial entrepreneur to an investor to an industry creator! 🙂

If you have started a business yourself in Nepal, I would love to hear your experiences as well. Fire away !