Biggest lessons from my FIRST year in business
Wow! It’s been already one full year in business and I still can’t believe I took the plunge. Till this day I am constantly grateful to life, to God, and to all the people that have inspired me, supported me, and even to the ones who didn’t believe in me I am truly grateful. I always like to say… entrepreneurship is a complete rollercoaster (the really intense type like the ones at Disney World haha) but I’ve enjoyed every single UP and learned from every single DOWN. It’s beautiful how starting a business transformed my life, but most importantly my mindset and the way I think about myself, about others, about failure, and how it’s made me such a resilient person. Starting a business has taught me so many lessons and I want to share with you some of the most important ones I’ve learned throughout my FIRST year in business.
Mindset is everything
With so many ups and downs it’s no secret that mindset will be your #1 tool and you need to be freaking prepared for everything that’s to come! This past year has been a complete year dedicated to my personal and mental growth and I’ve grown like never before. In entrepreneurship, you are going to have some pretty freaking amazing days, but hey!… you will also have the not so pretty days, the falls (the really deep type), and the failures, but you know what matters here?! That you come back up. That you stand up and come back at it with much more passion, potential, and learning from your mistakes. Mindset plays a huge role in the road to resilience.
Learn to say no!
We have all heard this….“learn to say no” but at least for me, I never really listened to this advice. I always took it for granted and thought “what is the worst that could happen?” Well… there is a lot! It wasn’t until I had a bad experience with a client that it all changed for me. I used to be one of those people that thought something like that could never happen to me. All I can say is you definitely learn from your mistakes. I now have my own ‘red-flag’ list with characteristics of people that I know will be hard to work with and therefore I say ‘no’ because we are simply not the right fit. It’s one of the deepest forms of self-love. Plus, you are also benefiting that person by being honest and straight-forward with them. It’s true… you are not going to be liked by everyone and your work will not appeal to everyone so stick with your target audience and if something doesn’t feel right with a potential lead since the first call… trust your gut and learn to say no! You will avoid so many sticky situations.
Simplify, Automate & Outsource
Another big lesson here… simplify your business as much as you can! When I started my business I was doing everything- EVERY. SINGLE. LITTLE. THING. and hey! It’s ok. You are starting out and your budget might be low so my first tip of advice is to really think about the tasks that are moving your business forward and actually making you money. Make a list of those tasks and then make a list of every single task you do. You will find that many of those tasks are not getting you anywhere, therefore you should simply delete them. If they are not serving you get rid of them!
After going through that process my mind was blown away and I had so much more clarity over what I actually needed to focus on. Now, by looking at your new list of tasks that actually move your business forward think about what can be automated or outsourced. Nowadays, there are so many amazing tools that can help you automate your business at a little or no cost at all. For example, if you spend so much time drafting and creating proposals it might be time to look at getting a CRM tool such as Dubsado, which is a business management tool designed to cut out the busy work, or little things like having canned emails will save you so much time!
Finally, you will eventually get to a point in your business where you are able to outsource and all I can say is DO IT! It will honestly save you so much time and give you peace of mind. I just hired my first VA and she is amazing! Apart from helping me do the little tasks that take so much time away from my client work she also serves as my accountability buddy because I need to finish my content before she can really work on it. It’s honestly worth it in every single way.
Busy doesn’t mean productive
I learned the difference the hard way. After working 10 hour days without seeing any signal of progress I started questioning if it was worth it. The truth is… it doesn’t matter how many hours you work a day. The true importance lies on how many of those hours were truly productive and spent on doing work that moves your business forward. Take a moment and think about that. When I started realizing this, I would time myself to find out that out of those 10 hour work days about 60% was spent on either useless tasks or not being productive at all.
That’s when I desperately went on the search for a remedy and found batching.
Batching is basically grouping similar tasks together to complete during a certain period of time with no interruptions. Batching will improve your focus because you are doing the same tasks for a long period of time. It will maximize your concentration, creativity and therefore increase productivity to its fullest. If you think about it, batching five Instagram posts in one day might take you only one hour to complete, but you’re creating IG posts as you go on a daily basis spending about one hour every single day in order to create that post. Don’t feel proud to have the ‘busy badge’ instead focus on productivity.
Organization is key!
You need to have a game plan in your business. I had to learn this the bad way. It got to a point where I would wake up and not know what task I needed to be working on next in order to continue growing my business. I was spending most of my time trying to figure out my next action step and creating infinite number of to-do lists that eventually ended up being lost.
Then, I heard about Asana, a project management tool, and my life changed completely! Asana helped me get my business together and organize all my tasks in a color-coded calendar. If you have daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly tasks that you repeatedly have to do, you can automate these in Asana to set as repeat so that you don’t have to spend another day creating a to-do list with the same tasks. Now, I simply wake up, open up my Asana and I know exactly what I need to work on next. It’s a complete beauty and I’m so proud of my color-coded calendar.
Your mission-passion-love for what you do is what will keep you moving forward in the hardest of times
Always remember that having a reason behind what you do will literally save you in the darkest of moments. You will fail, trust me, you will fall hard, but the most beautiful thing is when you get back up and move forward. In order to do this, I had to have my mission really clear. What am I here truly for? Is it all about the money? No! It’s that deeper passion of wanting to help amazing women start or grow their businesses with a beautiful and effective website that will help them grow in so many different ways. Never forget your why and keep it really close to your heart at all times. This is truly the driving force to a successful business.
I would love to know if this resonated with you in any way. Please leave a comment telling me about where you’re at and your experience in this beautiful crazy entrepreneurial journey.
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