In this episode, I’m going to hit you with a bit of a truth bomb, and that is that your ducks will never be in a row… so why wait to start your business?
If you are still waiting to launch your business or waiting to get something sorted before you’re allowed to get started, then this is the episode for you.
Let’s dive on in.
When I talk to women in particular who want to start a business, I can get really frustrated because there are so many things that I hear these women say that they’re waiting for.
Some of those things are valid, but most of them aren’t.
What I wanted to do in this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, is break down some of those beliefs about what you need in order to be ready or allowed to start a business, and what else you could do instead.
Let’s jump in and look at all of the things that people say they need before they’re allowed to start a business.
1. Branding
This is the biggest one that I see.
People don’t want to start their business yet because they haven’t:
- Decided what their business is going to be called (just call it your name)
- Decided what colours they’re going to be using
- Had the right photoshoot yet
- Got a logo
- Got a brand
Whilst branding is important to business growth, it should not stop you from getting started.
When I first started my business, I just picked a colour and I got started. I had some photos taken by a friend of mine who was a photographer, but to be honest with you, they were totally off-brand with what I was actually going for in the end because my business model and my branding developed over time.
It wasn’t until I was several years into my business that I really felt like I found the right branding. In the meantime, I’d made hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Instead of waiting to find the perfect branding and then starting your business, what if you first started your business and got a deeper understanding of your niche and what you want your brand to stand for. Then go and create that branding with a great provider that you can pay for with the profits from your business, and who can give you great advice on how to really connect with your audience.
2. Perfect message
I have so many people that have already started their business, yet they’re still not out there talking about their services. They’re still not actually taking action and moving forward because they feel like their messaging is off, they need to find the perfect message first and THEN they’ll be able to grow their business. They feel that they need to find those perfect words, that perfect catchphrase, have that perfect sales page or elevator pitch, and once they figure that out, then they’re allowed to have a business.
Speaking purely from my own experience, I didn’t know what my messaging was going to be when I first started my business. In fact, I had a very different niche and very different ideas about what I needed to say in order for people to understand my work and what would be of value to them.
No great messaging is built on theory.
The best way to make your messaging really resonant and stand out to your audience is to start talking to them sooner rather than later.
Instead of waiting to craft the perfect theoretical message, and then getting out and starting to talk to your audience, why don’t you just go and start having conversations? This will help you to understand how your audience describes their challenge, what your audience is looking for, and how you can speak to them in a way that really resonates.
That’s another way that you might be waiting for all your ducks to be in a row before you’re allowed to start a business.
As you can see, you don’t actually need it to be perfected before you get started.
3. A website
Woman creating website – why wait in business start-up?
I’ve even had members of my programs and VIP clients who have come back to me and told me that they haven’t done certain things in their business because someone said that they need a website before their business can actually be legitimate. All of these beliefs that you have to have a website in order to seem legitimate or to be allowed to get your business off the ground and started are ridiculous.
I’ve been very open about my own journey with this, but it’s not just my experience in relation to having a website.
One of the great examples I would give is a person who’s in the Take Off program, who has now just surpassed a $15,000 month in her business. She’s been in business for more than three years now and she still doesn’t have a website. She simply has a Facebook page, a way for people to pay her and a way to reach her audience through Facebook.
You don’t have to have a website in order to make money.
You don’t have to have a website in order to have a business.
Of course, a website is brilliant as a foundational part of your marketing, but wouldn’t it be awesome if you could pay for that website out of the profits of your business? Wouldn’t it be awesome if you created that website once you’d worked with a few clients, so you had absolute clarity about what you needed to say on that website, and what your content needed to include in order to really resonate with the right people?
My first website said nothing. It was pretty and it was very professional, but at the end of the day, it did nothing to get clients into my business. In fact, it took over a year for me to make a sale on my website. All of my sales in my first year of business came from social media and having conversations with people.
You don’t need a website.
4. An audience
I see this one happen in so many different ways.
Some people say they need to get their list to 1000 people before they start promoting products or services. Some people say they need to have 1000 followers on their Facebook page, or that they’re just going to do a bit of Instagramming and get their followers up first because that creates the social proof and then they can start selling things.
Basically what you’re saying is that you need to have an audience before you’re allowed to start your business.
That’s not actually true.
You could build your audience with thousands of people who aren’t your ideal client and who aren’t ever going to buy from you if you don’t actually get started building your audience through the lens of building your business.
If you separate those two things out, chances are, you’re going to have an audience that loves you and loves what you share on social media, and you’re going to have your niche – the people who are actually going to buy from you – and they’re going to be two very different groups of people.
Instead of thinking you need to build the audience first, build it as you go.
You only need to have an audience of one to make a sale.
Instead of thinking that you have to hit some certain number before you’re allowed to grow your business and before you’re allowed to start selling things, focus on what the audience is that you have access to today, and how you can sell to them.
One of the beautiful ways that you can do that is actually through existing communities.
I facilitate the Heart-Centred, Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, and in that community, there are over 33,000 women, and I openly encourage them to promote to that audience. You don’t need your own audience, I’m going to let you have mine. I’m going to let you join the Heart-Centred community, become a member and contribute to that community, and you can promote to that audience.
You don’t need to wait to get 1000 followers on your own Facebook page, you can promote to existing audiences when it’s done really well.
5. Fame or media coverage
This could look like needing:
- An influencer to buy your service/product
- Someone else to legitimise what it is that you’re doing
- Television coverage
- To have a newspaper article
- Some level of fame or media coverage before you’re allowed to have a business
This one doesn’t happen as much these days. I think people are really starting to see that there are so many opportunities online. It’s really easy to buy an audience and it’s really easy to buy fame if you want to, and that doesn’t necessarily mean you have a legitimate audience anyway.
I do see it a little bit more in the influencer space – attaching your success to someone else saying your product or service is a good thing. Some think that if that person would just endorse it, then everything would be okay.
Speaking from experience, both myself and many of my clients in the Take Off program have been endorsed, have had that media coverage or have had some level of fame that doesn’t necessarily equate to business success.
Of course, there are ways to create momentum from that, but if you haven’t been growing your business before you get that coverage, then chances are that when you do get the coverage, people are going to be seeing copy, messaging, imagery, and even products and services that don’t necessarily resonate.
I always say that your audience will never be as small as it is today. Now is the time to get started on experimenting with your messaging, your content, and your products and services because when you test them on a smaller audience and then scale, you’re scaling something that you know works.
6. Money
I know that there is a lot of security and safety that comes from knowing you’ve got your expenses covered for six months before you start your business. I know there’s a lot of security that comes from being able to invest in a $25,000 mastermind as your starting point into your business. And I know many people who are still saving so that they can start their business.
I totally understand where they’re coming from, and I totally understand different people’s needs for different levels of security. But I also know that for a lot of people that I speak to, that requirement for having savings in the bank, needing to have more money set aside, needing to have $25,000 to invest in a program because that’s how they’re going to succeed, is actually stopping them from taking the powerful action that would get them growth in the first place.
You might feel like you need to quit your job and just be in your business full time in order for it to be able to start, but most of the people that I’ve worked with actually started their business on the side of a job, or they started it during maternity leave, or whilst they were still working in a family business.
I quit my job and started my business with zero savings.
I know that that was because I come from a massive baseline level of privilege, in that I was university educated and I had a handsome six-figure salary. Even if I spent six months trying to grow my business and ended up $15,000 in debt having tried, my worst-case scenario was going back and getting another consulting job.
I had a lot of security, even though I didn’t know what the job was that I would fall back on. Even though I didn’t have savings, I still had a lot of privilege in that space to be able to do it.
I believe when you’re first starting a business, even if you’ve just got an hour a week to put into it, there is always something that you can do.
There is always powerful action that you can take to get that business started now.
The reason why I encourage people to just get started immediately is similar to the whole principle of investing. The best time to start investing was ages ago, the second-best time is right now.
It’s exactly the same with starting a business. The best time to start an online business was probably five years ago, but the second-best time to start a business is today.
The reason why is because those actions that you take today, will have compound interest effects on your results in years to come.
Similarly to that compounding interest effect, it is so powerful to make small decisions and take small actions on a consistent and regular basis.
You’re going to make more money from compounding interest, if you are investing $10 a week for years and years, then if you have a big chunk of money and you just have it sitting there and you never contribute again.
It’s exactly the same with business.
I’m not talking about giant big actions that you need to take. It can be as simple as opening up three spaces a week to work with clients, and investing an hour a week in marketing and admin.
It doesn’t have to be massive.
Those little actions that you take now will have such a compounding interest effect on your business growth.
In the short term, you’re bringing in clients so you’ve got income, you’re testing your messaging, and you’re working with people who can help you refine what it is that you offer.
In the long term, you’re growing your audience, and nurturing and warming that audience up so that when you do decide to go more fully into your business or scale things up a little, you’re not starting from scratch, you’re starting from a really solid platform.
The whole reason for me doing this podcast episode is to encourage you to know that there is always something that you can do to get your business started sooner rather than later.
Join a couple of Facebook groups, do the bare minimum activities to try and make a couple of sales. Prove to yourself that this business is viable, that there is an audience for the work that you’re doing and that you are someone who can do a little bit of work consistently to grow this business.
If you do want to get this business off the ground and you’re done with waiting for your ducks to be in a row, I have a beautiful free resource for you.
It’s called Fast Track Your Startup and it is a free training.
It goes for just over an hour, and what I do in that is break down the myths about what you need in a lot more detail and give you a step by step strategy to actually get your business started the fast, simple, easy and lazy way.
Go and grab the free resource here: tashcorbin.com/fasttrack
As always, if you’ve got any questions or lightbulbs that have come up for you as a result of reading this episode, head on over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, and let me know you’ve been reading episode number 234. If you’re ready to stop waiting and you just want to get your business started and make a public declaration that today is the day, then go and use that #podcastaha in the Heart-Centred group and share your commitment with us.
There are thousands of women waiting to cheer you on and share your excitement for finally getting started.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
