Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Hello and welcome to the solopreneur Sisterhood Podcast. A podcast designed to help heart centered service providers like you build a purposeful, profitable and sustainable business that supports what matters most to you. I'm your host, Becky McCleery and I am so grateful that you are here.
[00:00:24] Hello and welcome back to welcome back to the solopreneur Sisterhood Podcast. Today we're talking all about my recommendations if I were to start my business all over again, and how to design a business that works for you. And I have to say that I have been thinking about this one a lot lately as I record this episode. I'm in the middle of a beta test for Mastermind Community and I love seeing these amazing women come together to support one another and cheer each other on. Now, at the same time, I'm starting to notice some common challenges and struggles, some common points where we seem to be holding ourselves back in business. I know that there's simply a lot we don't know as we start a business, and at the same time, I feel like there's a lot of misinformation or simply bad information online about what will really help you succeed. So today I'm hoping to share some of my top recommendations to help ease your journey and speed up your path to success.
And before we dive in, I want to make sure that we are on the same page when I talk about success in business, that is success on your own terms. I know that there's a lot of talk in the online business space about hitting certain numbers, but I don't buy into that. My thinking is that you decided to create your business for reasons that are personal to you, and so your goals are also personal.
Now, my version of success looks like making money to cover my business expenses, enough money to pay myself enough to meet the needs of our family and to have some leftover to contribute to causes I care about. But that's just the financial piece of my business. My version of success also includes doing work that I feel makes a difference and helps others. It also looks like putting family first and working a schedule that works for me.
That being said, I can also say that this has evolved over time and has changed as my children have grown older.
So before we continue, I invite you to pause for a moment and think about what success in your business looks like to you. Are you clear on your financial goals? And if you are, are you clear on why you have these goals? Do they have personal significance to you beyond the financial piece of business? Are you clear on what success looks like to you in terms of your schedule, the work that you're doing, and the impact you're making.
If not, I invite you to take a little bit of time to explore this as clarity around this will make it so much easier to know what to focus on next in your business.
So no matter where you are in your business at this moment, I really believe that if you are willing to commit and put in the work, you can build a sustainable business that works for you and the life you want to live.
I also believe that unfortunately a lot of the advice you will find online just doesn't tell the whole story.
So as a woman who has pretty much made every mistake I think you can make when it comes to building an online business and now has a solid business that helps to support our family with more income than I ever made in a regular job, I wanted to do an episode sharing what I have learned and what I would do differently if I was just starting out. So if you already have a business, you might be a little bit too far along for this one or for some of these points, but there might be a few tips that are helpful or at the very least, hopefully you will relate to my story and realize that you are not alone. I'll also do a future episode for those of you who have a solid start and are ready to build momentum. But for today, let's start with those of you who are in the earlier stages of your business or maybe even just thinking of starting a business.
So if I could talk to my younger self when I was just starting out, here's the advice that I would give her to hopefully ease her journey.
Number one, start by getting crystal clear on what you do and who you help. Make sure that this is something you have experience with and that people will pay for. So if you've been in the online space for any time at all, I'm guessing that you have heard about the importance of niching niching. However you want to say it down. And while I believe it is true that you need a focus, I don't think that you need to worry about this too much as you're just starting out. If you have a general audience and offer, that's enough to get started, you will learn as you go and can further niche down from there.
So many years ago when I just started out online I thought I wanted to be a coach. I completed my coach certification and set up my website. The problem was that I just wanted to help people and I wasn't clear enough on who I worked with or how I helped. Even when I decided I wanted to be a coach for moms, there were some bigger problems I just wasn't seeing. Though I had great intentions, the truth was, at that point, I had been a mom for a couple of years and looking back, there was so much that I just didn't know. I'm not saying you have to have years of experience if you want to coach moms, but I can say that now that I've been a mom for almost 18 years, I would probably struggle to work with a coach who was in such an early stage of parenting. So with that, I would highly recommend that you choose an area of focus that you have a fair amount of experience in. Either you have achieved success personally or you have supported others and gotten results in this area.
Adding on to this, the more specific you can get, the better. Again, I started off just wanting to help people, and while that was nice, there was no real reason for anyone to invest in working with me because they weren't clear on the results they would achieve by working together.
There are a lot of parenting coaches out there. I know of one who helps moms who want to stop yelling. That's a really clear outcome. I know of another one who helps parents with newborn sleep. That is another clear outcome. Ideally, you'll want to come up with a result that your right people want or need and and will be willing to pay for because that result is going to improve their lives. So the first thing I would do would be to get clear on who you help and what you offer. That being said, please don't worry about figuring it all out before you start because here's number two. Once you have an idea, test it out. Now, I am a planner. I love mapping out an idea and figuring out all of the details.
However, one of the biggest lessons I have learned in business is that you are going to learn so much more by taking action. Once you start acting on your ideas, that's when you see what works and what doesn't. That is when things start moving forward or you see what you need to change in order to make things work. The only way for your idea to become a business is to actually try it out and take action. So for this I highly recommend coming up with a mini offer of sorts. So for example, if you're a coach, this might be a four week coaching package. Or if you are a graphic designer, this might be a set of social media templates. If you are a copywriter, you might create a package around writing or rewriting a homepage for a website. The idea is to make it an easy yes for people to agree to work with you and try out your services.
Depending on your level of confidence, you can either offer a few of these free of charge. This is an easy way for people to say yes, but the downside is that freebie seekers aren't always great clients.
Or for a low price point, I would say less than $200. The purpose of this isn't to make money. The purpose is to one get some experience and see if you like doing this work. Number two start connecting with people and getting your name out there. Number three build some examples for a portfolio or collect testimonials that you can use in future marketing. And number four to learn what works and what you need to adjust so that the process works more smoothly moving forward.
And if you are listening and you're thinking, okay, well that sounds great, but how do I even find people who need my services? My best recommendation is to start networking and building your connections I used to recommend Facebook groups, but lately I am loving LinkedIn and now I say this as someone who thought that I would never be on LinkedIn because in my mind it was for corporate people and I've never been in corporate.
So I would recommend that you start making connections Join Virtual networking sessions On a side note, we have a monthly free networking session inside the Solopreneur Sisterhood community and you can find that link in the show notes and let more people know about what you do and who you help. It's not that you are selling to these connections, it's that you are sharing what you offer. And the more people who know you and know what you do, the more people who can help you connect with people who do need what you offer. Now I could go on and on about building relationships and that will definitely be a separate episode at some point, but for now just know that building relationships is going to be essential in building your business. Now additionally, with this idea of the Mini offer, my recommendation is to only take on a few clients for this Mini offer. Ideally you will want at least three, but probably no more than five. You are not going to build a solid business off of a Mini offer, but it's enough to see if you are on the right track. I would also say that anytime I've done this, I've usually filled my openings within a day or two of initially putting it out there. So if you are really committed, you should be able to get it out there and test it out in less than 30 days depending on what your offer is. If you're doing something like coaching that has a month long commitment, that's going to take a little bit longer, but for the most part, this is something you can get off the ground relatively quickly.
So the third thing that I would recommend or do differently, this kind of goes with number two. I think one of my biggest recommendations is to choose something that you can commit to for the next year or two. So when I first started out, I think I was trying to figure out what to do for the rest of my life and that feels really big. Since I was a kid, I had wanted to be a teacher. And when I decided I wanted to leave teaching to be home with my kids, it felt like I had to figure out what to do instead.
Rather than that, I would try to figure out what to do. For now, my business, my role has changed a number of times since I started out online. And I think that actually matches more of what a lot of people are doing in more traditional jobs. So if you think about it, you are probably not the same person you were 10 years ago or even five years ago. You've changed, your life has changed, your interests have probably also changed, as is your level of experience. And so it makes sense that over time your role or business would change. So rather than trying to figure out a business for the rest of your life, look at planning for the next year or two. When testing out your mini offer, check in with yourself. Is this the type of work you think you would enjoy doing for the next year or two? Because the truth is that most businesses, in fact every business that I know, take time to succeed. So you have to be committed enough to stick with it in order for it to succeed. If the answer is no, you don't see yourself sticking with it for a year or two, I would go back to number one and reevaluate your audience and offer. If the answer is yes, move on to number four. Before we do that, a quick note that you will notice that I am not covering some of the practical advice like legal aspects of building a business or setting up bank accounts. I'm not covering this for two reasons. Number one, I'm not a legal expert, so I'm not qualified to give you that kind of advice. And number two, I find that a lot of business owners kind of jump into all of that too soon. They're forming LLCs before they have a single client or even know what they want to offer. So again, I'm not offering legal advice or financial advice, but these are the steps that have worked for me. Okay? So the fourth recommendation I have is that once you have tested out your mini offer, it's time to build one main offering. I have become a big believer in having one offer at least until you are booked out. So hear me out here. The reason for this is that it's a lot easier to sell one offer. People are either in or they're not. And it's a lot easier to market and know what to focus on when you're aiming to fill that one offer. So with this, here are a few other guidelines that I would offer as you're trying to map out your offer.
Start with one on one offerings. It's much easier to quickly build a profitable business working one on one than it is by selling group programs and courses. I know group programs have a lot of appeal and we can get there eventually, but if your initial goal is to build a solid income, one on one work is the way to go.
Take your mini offer and stretch it. So if you started off with a four week coaching package, you might make your initial offer a 12 week coaching package. If your mini offer was social media graphics for a month, you might make your initial offer social media graphics for three months. Take what worked from your mini offer and build off of it. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Simply take what worked and then make it a more substantial offer.
When pricing your initial offer, my recommendation is that you start with something that feels a little bit low to you, but that should be an easy yes for your right clients. The reason for this is that you won't be worrying about people saying no because of the price. Now this is the key. After you have a few people, probably three, sign on at your initial price, raise your price so you can keep the offer the same but charge more. Because now you know that your offer is something people want and as you book out more, you have less availability.
Pricing is a tricky one because there is so much involved and so many ways that you can come at this and it will definitely be a separate episode at some point. But my recommendation is to gradually increase your price after every few clients until you reach a number that you initially had in mind for your offer. So for example, I know a woman who had a branding package where she would create your brand, including your logo, your fonts, colors, all of that. And I would see this woman post in a Facebook group each week, each month she would promote the branding package and say how many spots she had left at a particular price. And then once those spots were taken, she would bump up the price by $100. So I think the first group got it for about $300, and then the next time it went up to 400, and then 500 and then 600 and so on. I'm not sure what number she landed on, but you can see how if you start off at a price, that's an easy yes. It's a great way to get your first few clients and then grow from there. The other thing about this approach is that you're not just getting clients, but ideally you're getting testimonials. And as people have a good experience working with you, it can open the door for referrals or for them to want to sign on with you for other types of packages or an extended package of support. So it can open up a lot of opportunities for you as an easy entry point for clients.
So my fifth recommendation is actually something that I think I did pretty well starting out. It's just that I didn't have a real offer when I did it, so it didn't get me anywhere. So number five is to start making connections. I'm feeling a little bit old here, but when I started my first business, Facebook groups did not exist. So I actually started out by hosting a few virtual summits. These were actually on the phone where you had to get like a teleconference number and people would call in because video and podcasts weren't being used as they are today. I would choose a topic for a summit, I would research various women I wanted to invite as speakers, and then I would reach out with invitations.
Looking back, I'm actually surprised by my nerve and initiative and how well this worked out. Now, I was doing this to build my email list, something I actually wouldn't recommend as a priority when you are first starting out. But the biggest benefit was connecting with other amazing women. And through this, I had this sort of instant network where we would support one another. So these days you don't have to go and create your own virtual event. I am a big supporter of virtual events for building your community, but I don't recommend that at the start. I will do another episode at some point in time walking you through more of that if that's something you want to do.
But you can easily start off by connecting with people through social media, networking sessions and coffee chats. So I would just start looking for people in your groups and start networking. Remember that you are looking for real connections. You're not selling anything. The best way to start off is to show a genuine interest in what others are doing. Comment on their posts or send them a DM if you want, but make sure that it's personal and lets them know you admire or appreciate something that they have shared. Once you have started making connections, you can start inviting people to coffee chats. So if this is a new idea for you, these are just short calls. It's 15 minutes, maybe 30, where you simply connect and learn what the other person is doing and how you can support one another.
So there are a few reasons why I suggest this. The more people who know what you're doing, the easier it is for people to discover you and your work. And this can be a great way to get referrals.
Building a business can be lonely, so connecting with other women and having a support team of sorts can make a huge difference on those days when it feels like nothing is working.
And just as you have a lot to share, others do too. If we come together in the spirit of collaboration and community, I think it makes it easier for all of us to succeed. You never know the difference an idea you share might make for someone else or the impact a new idea might have on you or your business. So the key here with number five is that I wouldn't focus on this, on building your network, on building connections, until you actually know what you're doing in business. Meaning you have a solid offer and you know who it's for. Otherwise, it's really easy to fill up a lot of your time by staying busy with connecting, but it's not actually leading to building a business or bringing in clients because you don't have an offer. So you want to have an offer and a clear audience first. Okay, so my sixth recommendation is to really focus on what matters most. So it's so easy to get overwhelmed in the online business space. It's easy to stay busy or to stay stuck. It's easy to feel like you are working all the time and not seeing results. After all, there is so much information out there and so many things experts say that you need to be doing.
But here's what I've learned over the years. You need to tune out the noise. Get clear on what matters most in this stage of your business. If you're just starting out, what matters most is signing your first clients and starting to bring in some revenue.
And my recommendation is to keep this simple. Yes, I absolutely believe that at some point you will probably want to build an email list and have a website. I also believe that social media can help build your online presence and make some great connections. And I know that PR can be huge for your growth strategy. However, I also know that I tried several times to follow these steps. I had a gorgeous professional website. I was posting to social media at least once a day, even when I hated it. And I built up a mailing list into the thousands. And with all of that, I didn't have paying clients. I was very busy, but I didn't really have a business.
And yet somehow, when that friend I had connected with online asked if I would help her in her business as a virtual assistant, something I had never thought of doing, when I said yes to that opportunity, that's when I started to make steady income. And the beauty with this was that once I was doing that work, my confidence grew and it became easier to say what I did and to tell others about it. And so I found that it became easier to connect with others who needed the work I was doing. And as I repeated my offer with others, that's when I grew that income and eventually was booked out.
So all of this happened, growing the VA business, even into the OBM and agency. All of that happened without having a website, without having a mailing list, and really without social media. I connected with people on social media, but I wasn't posting on social media.
Instead, I had a solid offer. I knew who I helped and how it made a difference, and I focused on connecting with more people who needed what I was offering or who knew people who needed what I was offering. I'm not saying that you're never going to need all of these things. I'm just saying to clarify what your priorities are right now and to focus on your quickest path to reaching those goals. I also recommend reevaluating about once a month to see if your top priorities are the same or if you need to reprioritize. But I'll share more about that process in a future episode.
So finally, number seven is to give yourself some grace and have patience. This is probably the biggest one I wish I had known or done way back when I started and many other times along the way in the online space. I think that it's easy to see all of these success stories and think that building a business should be quick and easy. And when we put something out there and nothing happens, it can feel like we are failing or there's something we're doing wrong. Over the years, I've really come to believe that the biggest difference between those who succeed in business and those who don't is that those who succeed stick with it, even when it looks like nothing is happening. Even when it feels like they are failing, even when they're full of self doubt, they keep going. Now there are definitely times when we need to make some adjustments along the way, and I will share more about that in a future episode. But for the most part, your success will come down to consistency and your commitment to keep going. With every business owner I have worked with, there have been times when it feels like nothing is working. But those who have had the most success are those who just kept showing up. They kept reaching out, they kept making offers. They didn't allow the lack of results to stop them from taking action. And then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, things started clicking. They were signing clients rapidly getting invitations for new opportunities and their business grew to a whole new level, seemingly overnight. But the thing is, it wasn't overnight. It felt like it, but really it was after weeks and months of putting in the work to make their business work. So give yourself grace and patience along the way. Please stop putting so much pressure on yourself.
And if you're thinking okay, but how long do I have to wait? I don't have a set answer for you, but generally speaking I can say that whatever you start doing now consistently you'll start to see results around that 90 day mark. You might see some sooner, but it's often after you are consistent for about three months when things start to come together with greater ease. Okay, so that's a wrap for this episode. Honestly, I struggled with this one because there are so many things that I would love to tell you to help you start your business with greater ease and to experience faster success than I did. But I know that we're all busy and I want to be mindful of your time. So I am hoping that these ideas are giving you something to start with and know that in future episodes I can give you even more support in building a business that works for you and the life you want to live. And if you are listening and thinking, you'd really love some extra support in building a sustainable business that makes a difference and helps you live the life you want to live. Come and join us in the solopreneur Sisterhood community. This is a free online space where you can ask questions, receive support and encouragement and start building genuine connections with other heart centered service providers. When you join us, you'll receive access to the online community as well as the member dashboard where you can find other service providers and they can find you. You'll also receive access to a library of mini trainings to help you build your business with ease and invitations to join our monthly intentional networking calls as well as other workshops and events. I invite you to learn more and join us by visiting thesolopreneursisterhood.com community and we'll also have a link to that in the show notes for this episode
Thank you so much for joining us and listening to the solopreneur Sisterhood podcast. I hope this episode has offered you some encouragement, some insight, and some new ideas to support you in building a business that works for you. Remember that our world needs you, your gifts, your vision, and your work.
And I'm cheering you on as you bring your vision to life and build a purposeful, profitable, and sustainable business that supports what matters most to.
