The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 239: Things I Would Do Differently

Today, I am diving into everything I would have done differently in my business. I am going to break down everything that I’ve learned over the years in my business. I’ll also be chatting about how I got started and things you can avoid in starting your business.

Things I Would Do Differently

By: Melissa Lin

Welcome back to another episode of the Fierce Business Babe podcast. We are going to just dive in today, really getting into an item that I focused on in my first year in business. And these are things that I probably should not have been spending energy on, time-wasters in your business, things I would do differently now and so much more. So we're going to just go ahead and get started.

Now I started My business back in 2014, which is so weird to hear out loud, almost 10 years ago. And I was in my full-time chemical engineering job. Social media existed, Instagram existed, Facebook existed or Facebook lives. Instagram stories did not exist yet and it was getting close to that and so it was a tie and of course it's even bigger and bigger now which is so cool because we have this incredible tool that definitely has pros and cons. It’s a love and hate relationship with our businesses and connecting with more people which has always been around.

Now back to me, when I started I had no idea what in the world I was doing. I worked at a few companies where I was brought into more of the business side and focused business meetings. I spent a lot of time with the CEO of the company and things like that. When I first started, I really didn't know how to start a coaching business and how to start sending clients trying to DIY my first year. And I remember so many moments on how to start, how to start finding clients and that it was near perfect aesthetically. It was nowhere near my business today and that is something I want to share with you because I know that some of you meet me, or come to my house for the first time and see where it is today. And that's not how it has always looked. And I wish that we still had my original Instagram account, unfortunately. Last year. And if you could scroll back on my other account, you could see the non-brand and see Graphics.

I just want to share some of the few reasons. You number one, I want to share some of the mistakes that I have made to prevent you from making the same mistakes and help save you some time because it definitely took some time to figure out on my own. And also, just show you that there's not like one right way or one wrong way, to start a business and scale. As one of my favorite things about being an entrepreneur, there are no rules because you're the boss.

Create your Own Rules

And so, Started my business and it was so messy and I started to create rules. My business that really served me and started to also build my business upon the lifestyle I wanted to create for myself, which is why it runs the way it runs now and the way it runs now is not how it's going to run 10 years from now, right. It's going to continue to evolve and pivot. However, when I first started it looked so different and I remember spending so much of my free time working on my business. I remember, you know, connecting on social media and I was doing my cardio for the day. Any free moment I had, I was spending on my business and I focused on so many things that weren't actually moving the needle forward. And since I was so new and hadn't had a mentor that time for my business. I didn't really realize she put two and two together that some of these things I was focusing on were not moving the needle forward.

I spent so much time, I probably spent hours and hours and hours attempting to create my own website as a health and wellness coach, right? I didn't even need any of that to sign clients and grow my business. I spent so much time trying to cater to every single person out there, trying to also cater to every client individually. Now, some of the things did move the needle for my business. And I went into this and I believe, two episodes ago, believe it was episode 237, the things to focus on your business, and your first year or two things to focus on when you're scaling to 10k months. Have you listened to that episode? I highly recommend you go back and listen to it. There are so many takeaways in it. And what I shared that episode was that if you're starting your business, in the beginning, stages, I recommend spending 60 to 70% of your business time, if not more a closer to 70 to 80% of your business time, on sales activities, things that are actually going to move the needle forward for you.

And so that means talking about your offer is selling your offers, handling objections, sending out emails to your list and with links to purchase from you, I like sales activities, things that move the needle forward for you and your business, that I did not do that. My first year in business, I was focusing on more of the Aesthetics and The smaller things, right? Making sure my website's bullet points all lined up perfectly like learning how to code. So I can do that myself and all of the things that weren't bringing in money for my business. I didn't sell, I was spending so much time on the things that weren't moving the needle forward and still, no matter where you are in your business.

Take a look at what you're actually spending your time on right now and ask yourself, is it moving the needle forward for you right now or not?

Lack of Boundaries

I also had such a huge lack of boundaries in my business. Now I am such a people pleaser like we're covering people pleaser and it's something I've been working on for quite some time. And when I first started in 2014, I had zero boundaries in my business. Zero boundaries in my business. Do you have any business hours right? I would have all of my notifications on so anytime somebody would comment on my social media content or send me an email or some me a message, everything was getting pinged to my phone.

I was constantly in my business and I had no separation between my personal life and business and I was letting that bleed through in every aspect and it wasn't even just verification coming through the lack of business hours. I also was getting back to everybody within minutes of receiving messages, right? I had no boundaries and I will get more into that a little later in today's episode around what some of those other boundaries, or I guess the lack of boundaries look like and how they look now. And even if you're starting, if today is day one of your business, you can set these boundaries today and you don't need to be in business 12 months to set boundaries. You get to decide right now, what do boundaries look like? And how you want to really be running your business.

Now, my first time that I invested in my business was after my first full year. So I didn't really know what it could look like to run one. And as a quick side note, this is a huge reason to join other group programs in masterminds so that you can experience what it can be like and also see how they can be run. As an entrepreneur, you are starting to really figure out who you are as a business owner and what your identity is going to be in that season, write your first few years. And so, if we spend so much energy creating all of these things, the first six months of business, you will be recreating that a year later.

Time Wasters

I want to share a few other time-wasters. I experienced my first year in business and how to avoid that as well for you. Trying to stay busy felt like that was moving the needle for me, when it really wasn't. Trying to spend hours inside of canva training, captions, spending hours creating sales pages, and future planning for things that didn't even exist.

As I started to grow my business another big time waster, for me, was keeping all of the admin tasks to myself and keeping a lot of the things that other people can actually support me with in my business and things that could be handed off. So that I can really focus on growing of the business and supporting my clients and doing the things only I can do like recording this podcast, for example. Now, there are so many businesses currently that I outsource because I am only one person. I know that for me to be able to create a bigger impact, I get to serve more people and help more people. And that means that I get to start to send out and delegate out a lot of the things that I was spending time on.

So for example, my support email inbox that is all delegated out to my team, most of my admin tasks like setting up email, our newsletters etc. I'm spending time on the things that only I can do. And also the things that I love doing. I've always been the type of person where I felt like I could do it faster. So much of my business is delegated and I know how hard and how scary it can be delegating some of those first few things and there are even some things now into the state that I have a hard time with delegating that has taken me longer than I would have expected to delegate out.

My team supports me 100%, so if there's anything that you can hand off, start handing it off but hire when you're starting to feel overwhelmed as long as you're bringing in some income in your business, but you can definitely delegate out and I recommend doing your bringing in at least $3,000 in your business per month. So you have some cash flow coming in. Like at least one virtual assistant that you can hand some of these things off and I know you don't enjoy a lot of the admin stuff anyways, so start handing some of that off first so that you can focus on the growth of the business and sales in your business and supporting your clients.

Start with Higher Ticket Offers

The second thing I would do differently is I would have started with higher ticket offers much sooner. I was selling private coaching at a very low ticket price. It was seen by a ton of people in my niche in the industry. That had a huge following selling very low ticket and I, of course, was brand new. And so I was looking and, of course, comparing myself to, you know, this is unreal numbers have been in business for years and years and have this huge audience and I thought to myself, you know, if they're selling for this price, there's no way that I can sell for that price. I have to give a discount and go lower than that. Which just isn't true, right?

Thank you for hanging out with me today. Did you love this episode? Yes, please share it with a friend, a best girlfriend or other online coaches you know that might find this helpful. Please leave me a review on iTunes and let me know your honest opinion, any questions? He might have thought takeaways all of the goodies who you want to send my way. I'm always going to be your biggest cheerleader. So you are taking time out of your day to hang with me. Truly means the world to me.

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