10 Things I Wish I Had Known BEFORE I Started My Business [Part 3]

by | Dec 12, 2018

10 Things I Wish I Had Known BEFORE I Started My Business [Part 3]

Before we move on to part 3 of “What I Wish I had known BEFORE starting my first business,” I wanted to take a sec to tell you about my week.  Last week, I went to Colorado to volunteer for a Disabled Sports USA ski event.

There were survivors from the Boston Marathon bombing, Las Vegas bombing, Vietnam, Afghanistan, TBIs, Spinal Cord injuries and more. Every person in the room had overcome and risen above unthinkable circumstances. It was humbling and sobering.

I got paired with Lamin, a 3 limb amputee from Gambia (Africa) who had lost his limbs serving in the British Army in Afghanistan.  He said to me “Never in my wider world did I imagine I’d be skiing.”  In fact, he had never seen snow before this week. He told me, “Where there is life there is hope…” and he gave me a few pointers for how to view life when dark times come to pass…

I cried for 4 hours on my way back to California and am still processing a lot from this experience. Not because it was sad, totally the opposite. I was simply overcome with emotion. Mine and theirs. I felt guilty for receiving so much more than I could ever give.

As someone who has had my fair share of unique experiences, this week was different than everything else. There are very few experiences that have changed my perspective so rapidly, if any.

It was life changing.  I don’t use that expression lightly.

I am cuing up an email about what the week taught me and how applicable it is to all aspects of life and building a business so stay tuned for next week’s email…

But in the meantime, take some time to acknowledge the difference you make EVERY DAY to the people around you. We could all be doing more but…we also need to recognize the profound contribution we make to our family, friends and clients/customers/employees every day.

Ok….(insert graceful transition)

Let’s continue with the things I WISH I knew BEFORE starting my business…

7. What Should You Focus On First in Your Business?   This of course depends on the kind of business that you have. But a good start (if you already have a fully developed product or service) is with activities that get u clients or customers – there is no business if there is no clients. AND…clients are key for helping you to develop products or services.  Don’t try to do this in a vacuum. Their input is invaluable.

Then the question becomes HOW… and this is where you need to KNOW your own skills/proclivities and where your ideal clients hang out. There are many ways to get clients but I recommend the ones that are a natural fit for what you like to do.

Here are some examples:
DIGITAL and EMAIL MARKETING:  Do this If tech comes naturally to you or if you have some $ to invest in hiring help to build an email list and a digital marketing funnel. It’s NOT as complicated as it sounds.
EVENTS/ NETWORKING: If you love attending events and networking comes naturally to you, build in-person relationships where your potential clients are or cross promote with others.
PHONE: If you have a niche, target them by picking up the phone and know what to say when they answer!
SOCIAL MEDIA:  If you have a product that lends itself to a particular social media channel or amazon, focus solely on that channel and become an expert in that.
WORD OF MOUTH: If you have a brick and mortar business like I did, word of mouth is important. Reward people to spread the word.  Set up a scheduling system or a loyalty program where you capture emails addresses, and then email them when there is an event, sale or new service or just to remind them to come in. Also, if you have anyone selling your products or services, train your staff BEST PRACTICES for sales.
WEBINARS: This works best for service based business and if you LOVE teaching 
TRADESHOWS/Distribution: If you have a product based biz that you need to get your products into retailers to sell for you. You need to connect with distributors and attend trade shows in your niche. Have a great story about your brand ready and know the transformation your product or service makes.
LOCAL ADVERTISING: Signage, Flyers, Mailers, Cross promotion with other local vendors and locally targeted digital marketing works great here for product, retail and brick and mortar businesses.

The #1 Client Attraction Tool is QUALITY CONTENT: NO MATTER what avenue you choose to reach out to clients, you need to be armed with quality content about your brand.  A great brand story, an elevator statement, a transformation statement and case studies and examples of who you help and how. Weather you are picking up the phone, networking, teaching, doing a live video on social, writing a post on a blog. In all of these contexts, you must know how to communicate clearly what you do and the value your product or service can add.  Your potential customers must know, like and trust you and your products to buy from yo. The delivery mechanism is up to you and where your ideal clients hang out. (If you don’t know who that is, I can help you with a strategy to get one.

8.  Batch Produce for Best Productivity: Learning this was a game changer for me. My most productive times are always when I focus solely on accomplishing one project at a time. The times when I am spinning without direction I have always lost sight of this methodology. This is actually easier than you think, even when we have life and other things pulling us in different directions. The most important key to this is blocking out substantial blocks of time for the same task in your calendar. So for example, if you need to shoot video schedule an entire day or work block for just that with no distractions. Same with meetings, admin, sales activities and content production. I always liked to work this way, but I only recently learned why. My friend Todd Herman told me about context switching and when you switch contexts you lose 20% of your time EACH time.

9.  The Productivity Game: This is actually kind of fun and a good way to get the smaller things on your to do list finished. If I have little bursts of time in my day, waiting in the pick up line at school, waiting for an exercise class to start, waiting for a friend, time while driving somewhere.  I always try to think how I can used the time to shrink my to do list and I turn it into a fun game. Categorize my to do list into 3 Main Categories similar to Franklin Covey’s Big Rocks concept but with my own twist. If I only have minutes I go straight to pebbles to try to get that minutia that doesn’t take time but takes up brain space.  If I have two hours, I set a goal for what I can get done in that time. Tasks expand to meet the time you have available so we need to manage this carefully. Right now it’s 1 pm and I have 1.5 hours until I need to leave to pick up Ella. So my goal is to finish this newsletter, distribute it, and then work on a landing and payment page for my new group coaching program launching in January.

A) Big Rocks: EXAMPLE (Launching my podcast, Creating a new workshop or course, Creating my content plan, or setting up a sales sequence or funnel)

B) Small Rocks that move the big rocks: EXAMPLE (Hiring a new VA, setting up a new Facebook Ad, Designing a new Opt-in, Changes to my website, writing an instagram pot  Pebbles that have to get done: EXAMPLE ( making a change to my website, signing a permission slip, making a dr. appointment, enrolling Ella into dance lessons.)

10.  ASK ME ANYTHING!  Just Hit Reply and Ask.  If it’s not in my area of expertise, I will reach out to my network to help with this one! So don’t forget to ask your burning biz building questions here.

Amy Selbach
Follow Amy
Latest posts by Amy Selbach (see all)

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *