11 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My Business

Throw these four rockstars into a blender, and you’ll have a composite sketch of me within the first three months of my business:

Glitter was literally shooting out of my eye sockets as I quit my PR firm job and dove headfirst into entrepreneurship. filled with optimism, living in ny City and surrounded by a tribe of friends who were also launching businesses, art, and gigs, I felt it had been the right time to form a bold move and be my very own boss. I used to be now Officially Living My Dream and dealing For Myself, which meant I used to be responsible for My Financial Destiny and Captain of My Promising Future.
Luckily, my initial hyper-optimism buoyed me whilst, oscillating between euphoria and despair, I used to be systematically forced off The Magic bus and onto the S.S. Battleship end of the day.
I was a fast and eager learner, but despite the hours of webinar watching, countless Friday nights pumping out site copy, and teaching myself everything I could about HTML, there have been just a few things I didn’t get. I had to fall on my ass to acquire the “master’s degree in life survival” every entrepreneur earns on their “journey.” (Yes, those are bitterly gesticulated air quotes.)
Here are 11 things I wish I knew once I started my business. I hope they're going to prevent a while and a few anguish because (experience may be a good teacher here) the sodium from your tears acts as a corrosive melting agent on all brands of premium frozen dessert (although it does make outstanding saline for your dirty martini). Cry over a cup, oh fathomless bird of perineurial gumption!

1. Running the business is your first priority.
Your success (and financial stability) will come from expertly running your business — not writing copy, rebranding your client’s website, running your candle boutique, teaching yoga, selling land, or making jewelry. In other words, you'll spend 15 percent of some time doing what you're keen on (in my case coaching and writing) and 85 percent marketing, administrating, selling, strategizing, and answering a shitload of email. Survival will depend on how quickly you adopt this role of business owner first, creator of pretty things second.
This sucked on my behalf because I wanted nothing to try to to with running a business. I just wanted to be a writer and a teacher who wrote and coached all day. I didn’t catch on.

2. able to meet your soulmate? It’s you.
Entrepreneurship is the most life-changing relationship (like marriage or parenthood) that an individual can have. you'll be confronted overandoverandover together with your fears, insecurities, crappy excuses, limitations, justifications, shitty integrity, and inefficient time management. the quality you held yourself to within the workaday world was ok then, but it won’t be ok to run your own business.
You will learn to simply accept yourself through all this because, so as to urge up a day and be the CEO, you'll need to. Somehow, while you’re busy putting yourself out there in spite of your flaws, you'll come to deeply admire yourself. Not within the over-hyped “Self Love 2018” way, but during a quiet way that sneaks abreast of you after witnessing thousand splinter-sized moments of transcending the baser aspects of yourself.

3. Your trajectory for fulfillment will take as long as everyone else’s, albeit you're SpeCiaL and BRilliANt.
I heard the “two-year rule” once I started my biz, but I used to be confident I could roll in the hay in six months. I believed with every fiber of my glittery, go-gettin’ heart that my work ethic (15-hour days, seven days a week) — alongside my talent, skills, and private magic — I could rip a path to accelerated success. My Myers-Briggs and Enneagram profiles were finally aligned and that i expected nothing but to be #blessed.
Jesus had other plans.

See number 4.

4. Running out of cash may be a common part of the journey.
You won’t expect it, because you ready for the end of the day. You secured a commercial loan, or got some investors, or sold your house, or have one year’s worth of savings and have planned accordingly.
But then all of a sudden, midst the puffy clouds and blue skies, your little Entreprenairplane will sputter, gasoline gauge unexpectedly plummeting to zero, and you'll only have one choice: land on the wild abandoned air strip called Bank Balance: 14 Dollars. this may be the last place you ever thought you’d land, because didn’t you pass this test on No More Amazon Prime Island?
Well.

The good news is that this may be a rite of passage that will launch you into the League of Business Badassery during which, once you're out of the cash hellhole, you'll be unstoppable. You’ve been to the baddest prison there's, looked down the barrel of your worst fear, and stood your ground. You didn’t quit. you bought up the subsequent day, and you wrote your next post, you storyboarded your next product offering, and answered customer emails with zero dollars in your checking account.
There is nothing more beautiful than running out of cash and realizing that you simply do your work because you’ve got the balls to erupt your worst fears when there's no evidence of security. you actually, truly love what you are doing, and you’d roll in the hay for free of charge if you had to.
Irony may be a sassy bitch, isn’t she?

5. Build a hybrid stream of income.
Learn from my mistake: Take a second job if it'll offer you peace of mind. I used to be so immune to “dividing my focus” or taking any action which I interpreted as undermining my commitment to being totally successful in my business. I actually thought by making an idea B I used to be telling the “Universe” I wasn’t one hundred pc serious but hello! I created a worse problem by allowing financial stress to gut me of my sanity.
If having a gentle stream of income would buy you peace of mind, DO IT.
I finally came to terms with the very fact that I used to be being naïve about how money, peace, survival, and timing all work together, and that I got a second job. Since I wasn’t freaking out about money anymore, I liberated more creative land in my brain to use toward my business.

6. Create a healthy distance between yourself and your work.
Does Lizzo walk around the house checking what percentage likes she got on Instagram? No honey, she’s too busy planning D-Day.
Lizzo doesn't identify with “Lizzo.”
Lizzo employs “Lizzo.”

7. Spend less time researching, longer doing.
Researching, studying, and consuming Tai Lopez’s “5 Tips to Email Marketing” may be a sort of resistance. so as to urge clarity, you want to act.
Clarity doesn't come by learning more — it comes by jumping in together with your instincts and putting yourself out there, albeit you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.
Block out the distractions (turn off the phone, social media, and email notifications) and take inspired action that feels tangible and measurable. Set a timer for 25 minutes and attend town on a task. don't search. don't attend the toilet. don't cruise the fridge for cheese sticks. Get something done, despite the very fact that sometimes you'll desire you're pissing into the wind. Piss into the wind fourfold each day, and you’ll make a difference in your bottom line.

8. Only say yes to business partners and projects that are hell yeses.
Scrutinize any joint project carefully and qualify the person you’re collaborating with (even if they're your friend and are in business longer than you). Get everything in writing before you start the project, with a transparent division of labor and deadline dates. If you've got a business partner, draft and sign an operating agreement. don't skip this.
You will presumably be splitting the profits, so have two numbers in your head: the amount you would like to form so as to buy some time, and therefore the number you'd wish to make. Set the primary financial deadline early in order that you both have the liberty to steer away if the project isn’t getting to be profitable. Have a transition strategy in mind so just in case that happens and one among you wants to continue on with the project, there's how to pass the baton gracefully.
Summed up: communicate about everything — albeit you’re friends, albeit you're keen on one another, albeit you trust one another, albeit you’ve worked together at XYZ Company because projects have how of going sideways and making everyone a touch custodial and overreactive.

9. you want to devote time to becoming an excellent marketer.
I know you only want to spend all of your days making CBD candles, or sarsaparilla-scented beard oil, or writing your YA fantasy novel, or life coaching entrepreneurs to stratospheric success, but if you don’t spend time marketing you'll not make money.
This was my biggest weakness once I started. I assumed marketing meant slimy sales letters with big arrows and opt-in boxes, and that I couldn’t! I wouldn’t! So I put my head in magical fairyland sand, stubbornly insisting that my customers would be tractor-beamed into my budding practice by the pulsating, heavenly light that radiated from my vision boards and 4 blog posts.
And then I ate canned foods and spaghetti for an extended, long time.
What rescued me? Knowing what marketing personality I embody. There are three main types:
The Wisdom Advisor (Brene Brown, Danielle LaPorte, Marianne Williamson, Seth Godin), whose marketing seems like, “This is what I’ve found to figure best. Let’s brainstorm together, and I’ll assist you determine what’ll work for you.”
The Guru (Mel Robbins, Dave Ramsey, Gary Vaynerchuk, Marie Forleo, Tony Robbins), whose marketing boldly states, “Listen to me. I even have the answers.” and eventually,
The Connector (Joe Rogan, Oprah, Tim Ferris, James Altucher), who connect people with experts and resources.
Once you've got found out your marketing personality, selling to your customers is going to be a thousand times easier because you'll be working within your aptitude. find out how you wish to plug and stick with that. roll in the hay consistently and sometimes. albeit you hire a professional, you'll be performing some marketing yourself. Keeping your website fresh and current is important, so also learn the backend of Squarespace or WordPress. you'll be within the guts of your website tons.

10. don't screw your own time economy.
An email will become your new best frenemy. Your inbox will explode. You care about everyone, but you can’t help everyone. Read: Not most is your customers. Your job is to quickly discern who’s who and respond within the most appropriate way.
For Your Customers: Acknowledge things, request, or problem and extend an invitation to a 20-minute call. Include your available dates, times, and telephone number.
For Non-Customers: Acknowledge things, request, or problem and supply other resources, experts, or articles that might be a splendid fit.

11. This last tip may be a hodgepodge.
Do not work your business seven days every week. Cover your legal ass from day one. From time to time, forget everything you recognize about the “right way” to run a business and run it sort of a neighborhood lemonade stand. don't price your offerings around your personal ability to buy it — you're not your ideal customer. understanding perplexing issues in your business will resolve problems in other areas of your life. Take a walk around the block a day at lunch. And lastly, if you would like to be smarter in business, don’t ever forget that you simply are serving real, the live citizenry (not demographics, stats, or your pipeline).