The initial phase of a business journey is pretty amazing, but it’s also hugely challenging. It’s one of those beautiful periods of time where your brain is constantly learning but your capacity is also being tested in every way. While you’re working your furry little rear off and learning so much that some days you feel like your brain is literally going to explode, you’re also typically earning very little money. And you’re usually stretching yourself across what feels like endless commitments in order to earn a living and develop a business at the same time.
There’s no point in each of us battling through this world in a vacuum when others have had similar experiences. So, I thought I’d list six tips that have helped me survive the early years of a business:
1. Squeeze the absolute most out of the money you have
The financial side of developing a business is often not a lot of fun, to say the least.
Usually, the dollars are not coming in yet.
In some cases, business owners have to work long and hard in the early years to purchase business equipment and/or pay off debt. Some of us also don’t have a snug lump sum of savings to support us when we start a business.
When I started one of my businesses, I literally would work a job and then go straight to the grocery store with the cash I’d earnt to buy food to live on. Since then I’ve established a buffer again (and I’m working on building this into a much larger buffer), but at the time I really was “earning a living.” I’m so proud that during the early days of my business I personally generated the money that kept myself fed and my bills paid and proud that I didn’t have to ask for money from anyone else. My initial efforts paid off and the business grew over time. And I have to say, it really was the most beautiful thing when I eventually had money that wasn’t all going to clearing debt or purchasing business equipment.
Of course, none of us forget our experiences. These experiences make us wiser in relation to what we do with the income our businesses generates. Personally, I’ve always preferred to take pressure out of my life by avoiding debt as much as possible and by living simply, and these experiences simply reinforced my beliefs.
Whatever way you do it though, you’ll become extremely good at research. And you’ll become an ace at buying products and services for your business that give you the best possible value for your money. Personally, my business has benefitted enormously from using the extremely simple Profit First model as it shows me very clearly when I’m not charging adequately for a profit, and ensures that I have money allocated for expenses to maintain and build my business. But you can use any system that works for you to nurture your business from a tiny seedling upwards.
The most important thing to know is that you will clear your debt, reach your business goals, and start gaining more and more traction in your business. Just stay focused on your goals, maintain an extremely lateral approach to solving problems, and have faith that you’ll get there. And make sure that you enjoy the journey, even if you have to find previously unimagined ways to recreate on a budget.
And if you’re in this early phase of your business journey and you haven’t seen financial reward just yet, it’s also important to state that there’s other gold at the end of it.
Commencing a small business journey will change you as a person permanently. Your capacity and your humanity are forced to expand as a result of starting a business. These changes will have positive long term effects on the rest of your life that cannot be measured.
So chalk it up, baby.
You’re going to win out of all this.
2. Establish an effective business framework early on
The second tip that helps make the most of the early stages of a business (and stops it becoming an unwieldy mess) is to create an underlying structure and framework for your business during this time, like the solid pylons beneath this jetty.
The time that you spend doing this when the phone is still quiet is extremely well spent. The business framework I refer to here includes such things as mileage rates, the hourly rates you use privately to develop quotes, and the products, services and packages you want to offer. Personally, I was still working out business goals as I went along that I should have clearly outlined as soon as I decided to start a business, however I’m so pleased that at least I set up the structural elements of my business well initially. I established concrete mileage rates, set up quotation and invoice spreadsheet templates as well as a tools and equipment spreadsheet when literally no one was ringing to request my services.
Like many things that we embark on in life, a business is most demanding at the start. But once you have frameworks in place you really do benefit from an underlying foundation that supports you and frees you up to focus on other things.
3. Keep talking to people as part of marketing your business
The early years of a business are definitely the loneliest stage of any business journey.
At this point you’re still working to gain clients and a business network of any kind around you, and in my experience this can feel awfully lonely. It really is so much better once you have a few clients under your belt, especially the kinds of clients that give you semi-regular work.
The important thing is to keep making contact with people as part of marketing your business.
There are so many wins in this. Making contact with people grows your business, automatically rewards you with constant new ideas as to how you could improve your business and what you offer, and reduces the horrors of of entrepreneurial loneliness.
I’m really lucky these days as a couple of my semi-regular clients have even become friends.
4. Find a mentor in your industry if you can
If you can find one, a good mentor is absolutely priceless. I was really blessed when I started one of my businesses because a good friend of mine ran a business in the same industry. He is a generous person and he naturally became an amazing mentor, helping me with pricing, quoting, equipment, insurance, clients, and so much more. Of course, mentoring relationships should be the kind of relationship where you also give back. I’ve tried to do this with him, actually paying him in lamb chops on occasion and helping him in other unrelated areas. I’ll need to continue to give back to him in the future, but I was very pleased this year when I received some valuable information associated with our industry that I was able to immediately pass on to him.
I’d definitely recommend approaching the right kinds of business people in your industry for mentoring, as long as you are also returning something to them to recognise the value of their help. We all have something we can offer in return for someone’s help. You can also simply approach a business person on a one off basis so that you get a feel for what it’s like to work with this person as a mentor without any pressure on either side.
5. Look after your health
The development of a business can not only be lonely, it can also be very demanding because everything is new. You’re new to the business you’ve started, your clients are new, your understanding of what clients need from you is new and your offerings are new. You’re flat out earning client’s trust and working hard to find out how they work and what they want your role to be. Life really is so much easier (it’s actually totally blissful) once you’ve established a relationship and trust with a client, and you can just get on with the job. Clients love an established relationship just as much as a business does because they can simply leave you to get the job done, givingthem one less thing to worry about and more free time.
It’s important to recognise that this early period of establishing relationships with clients is energy intensive, and you need to increase your self-care as a result.
In addition, celebrate every job you win (even if it’s just in a small way) and every testimonial a client is happy to approve. Soon you’ll have a more established base of social proof to display (as well as less loneliness through a broader network), both of which in turn help you drive further business momentum.
The universe always rewards anyone who puts continual effort into anything.
You also of course need to look after yourself with a good diet, exercise and sleep, and force some time to relax into your day. Personally, I find meditation really good for this (even though half the time I fall asleep when I’m doing it), but anything that gives you a period of complete relaxation in your day works. I also find journaling really useful because it helps me clarify and process my thoughts and feelings, and helps me draw out possible solutions when I’m tired and feeling like I’m out of options.
Make sure you also maintain contact with your supportive network of family and friends. And while so many small business people work evenings and weekends and squeeze working work into any other nook and cranny they can find, don’t do this every day, or every evening/every weekend. Exhaustion won’t help you achieve your goals, whereas rest and a break will. Rest gives you renewed problem solving perspective and energy, and you’ll need this.
You’ll need this because you’ll make mistakes, and you’ll make them on a continual basis. If there is one thing that small business always teaches human beings, it’s that we are constantly making mistakes, and constantly having to dust ourselves off and get back up. And let me tell you, if you make any of the mistakes that I’ve made, they’ll be the enormous and cringe worthy variety. The kinds of mistakes where even thinking about them makes my face burn bright red with embarrassment, and where I have to quickly black them out and move on.
But as they say, if you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not learning anything. Just learn from the mistake, get back up off the ground, and carry on. As time moves on mistakes will fade away, but your life overall will be happier because you are continuing to expand and grow as part of the personal journey associated with building a business.
Personally, I’d take large cringe worthy mistakes on a regular basis and personal growth any day over the stagnant dull life I used to have.
6. Have faith in your dream for your business
Most importantly, have faith. Believe in yourself and your dream for your business no matter what. We often start businesses because there is something that wants to be created within our individual soul, and eventually we can no longer ignore its increasingly loud and persistent calls.
The early stage of a business involves literally creating an enterprise from nothing. It involves working super hard when you don’t have clients, testimonials, income coming in or a wide network around you.
But what you can always have and must always have is faith. Go back to the image you have of what you want your business to be in your mind continually, and just keep going. It seriously does get so much easier as you progressively acquire clients, experiences, testimonials, a stronger business network and a broader business foundation to support you.
Please also note that when I talk about the initial stage of your business journey, I mean multiple years and often decades. While you may get your business cranked up fairly quickly, I worked one of my businesses as a side hustle for almost 10 years until I was able to change my mindset on it and saw it also start to gain some traction. As Marie Forleo says, whenever you look at any business that has gained some traction and is making some money, you find that in most cases, the business owners have been working away for years, if not decades, before their business has gathered the momentum it needed to achieve this maturity. And there’s a personal journey that a business owner has to take in order to get their business to this point too. Always have faith in your goals and dreams, and know that you’ll find a way to achieve anything you need to even if you’re absolutely exhausted and things look really bleak at the moment.
And as we all know, the joy is not in reaching the destination, the joy is in the journey. Money and public attention doesn’t make any of us happy. Yes, money is great to have, and we all need to have goals. But money is simply a resource that allows you to do things. Nothing more, nothing less.
Having faith in your dream for your business is so important because it allows you to enjoy the journey. Even if you are going to experience permanent ecstasy for the rest of your life as a result of achieving your business goals and arriving at whatever you define a successful business to be (which you won’t), life is way too short to defer joy for later anyway.
And always remember, every business started absolutely tiny and took time to develop. The amazing entrepreneur, author, coach and philanthropist Tony Robbins came from poverty to develop a number of hugely successful businesses that are now reported to earn him annual revenue of over $1 billion. But you get to define what a successful business is for you. All businesses start from nothing, the main thing is that they give you the freedom to choose how you live your life and that they eventually give you a life and an annual income that works for you personally.
© Annemaree Jensen