The #1 Thing I wish I knew before starting my business
→ Watch this if you've been thinking about starting a business and transforming your life. This video is about some of the biggest things I wish someone had told me before I started my first business as a side hustle while I worked a soul-sucking full-time job. Might be an unpopular opinion — you've been warned!
Note: This was written as a transcript for the video. Please excuse any grammatical errors.
Hey imaginary friend,
Today I wanna let you in on a little secret I wish someone had told me years ago.
Growing your business to a full-time income doesn't have to happen slowly.
It doesn't have to be a super long process that requires years of working a day job until you've saved enough money to make the leap from side hustle to full-time. It doesn’t have to look like gradually raising your prices as a freelancer, and 'paying your dues' for X amount of years until you feel like you’re 'worth' charging more.
Of course, those stories work for a lot of people, so I'm not here to tell you not to do it that way.
But what I do want to tell you is that it doesn’t have to be that way for you, if you don’t want it to.
It’s actually possible to scale your business much faster — so you can finally start living that dreamy ‘being your own boss’ life you’ve been fantasizing about for years.
And maybe that sounds too good to be true.
But, it’s really not. As long as you know what to actually focus on.
This was my own lived experience.
I used to have a ‘side hustle’ online store for over 5 years that never reached the level of success that I was able to reach in just the first year with my new full-time creative business. I recently hit that elusive $10k/month milestone and it happened way sooner than I expected.
And it was without paying for ads, without sending awkward DMs to strangers, and without growing my instagram following (I actually lost followers).
And there’s nothing wrong with those strategies, they just weren’t what actually made the biggest impact.
ok so now it’s UNPOPULAR OPINION TIME — you’ve been warned.
One of the things that I learned from my experience was that trying to grow my business the ‘safe way’ as a part-time side hustle, was actually the thing that was keeping me small.
You hear it all the time, what you’re supposed to do is “start your business as a side hustle and don't quit your day job until you can match your income and have a years worth of living expenses saved up.” And that’s the advice I was trying to follow when I started my first business as a university student.
But the really big problem with running your business as a part-time ‘side thing’ for 5+ years before you “make the leap” — is that it doesn’t ever push you out of your comfort zone. And it puts you at risk of burning out before you've ever even made that jump.
Now that might sound controversial, but stay with me here, ok.
Because the big problem with always staying in your comfort zone is that it doesn’t push you to become that higher level “boss” version of yourself. So when you finally do make the leap — you haven’t developed the entrepreneurial mindset to overcome the challenges and stress of actually being your own boss for real.
And I’m just speaking from my own experience here ok, when I had my ‘side hustle’ business, I was thinking like a side hustler. I was making decisions like a side hustler. So my results, were all side hustle level results.
And don’t get me wrong okay, there’s nothing wrong with just having a side hustle, if that’s what you want, just an extra income to supplement your day job, and explore your passion part time. That is beautiful and works for a lot of people.
But the thing is, that wasn’t my goal. I wanted to grow my business beyond the side hustle level. I always wanted to be my own boss, set my own rules, work whenever and wherever I wanted, and make a full time income doing something I actually cared about.
This is one of the things I talk about in my free training all about how I went from struggling side hustler to now being a thriving creative business owner. If you haven’t watched that video yet, definitely go check it out, I’ll put a link in the description below.
In that class I talk about the biggest lesson I learned from my years of making mistakes as a struggling side hustler — I found that the most important thing to do as a business owner is to set a strong foundation, because as your business grows and evolves, everything you build and layer on needs to be rooted and supported by something strong.
And in my experience,
the best way to build a strong foundation is starting with an intentional brand strategy & an elevated mindset.
But unfortunately a lot of people put that stuff off, they put it at the bottom of the priority list when it comes to building their business.
Instead of building a strong brand identity, they just use free templates, and DIY a logo using a random free font they found on Pinterest.
And instead of levelling up their mind, they jump from one thing to the next, constantly pivoting their strategy, trying to figure out the ‘magic formula’ to success.
I can’t help but think this might be why so many entrepreneurial businesses fail in the first few years. Because they never bothered to build a strong foundation.
And if you’re watching this, I just want to do whatever I can to make sure that doesn’t happen to you too.
Now, obviously I’m not telling you to quit your day job right now if you have one!
But what I hope you can do now is start shifting into that future version of you — that successful independent business owner you really want to be. Start elevating your beliefs. Start defining the strategy behind your brand — what do you want to be known for, who are you here for? Things like that.
And because I love helping people like you build successful brands, I have a couple freebies for you that will help you start shifting into that higher “boss” version of you.
Ok bye!
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