Episode 82: 10 Valuable Lessons Small Business Owners Need to Consider No Matter Where They are in Business
In this coaching episode, Fiona shares the 10 most valuable lessons every small business owner needs to learn in managing a business. These lessons can make a big difference in improving as an owner and providing better services and products to your customers and clients.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Fiona’s Experience Over The Years
10 Valuable Lessons
#1 Be you, everyone else is taken.
#2 There is enough for everyone.
#3 You don't need to be on every social media platform.
#4 Craft your one-line message.
#5 Get your money up front.
#6 Process equals less stress.
#7 Invest in help.
#8 Build an audience before you begin
#9 Vent outside the home.
#10 Experience is your greatest teacher.
Conclusion
Resources mentioned in this episode
Episode transcript:
Try and look at the channels that are most likely for you to connect and make genuine relationships happen with your audience, but also make sure that you're guiding people from those channels to places you own. I know I say that all the time, getting them off social media into your email list, on your website, getting them to come to an event, getting them to talk to you, getting them to open up through DMS or everything else, but making sure that you're actually forming genuine connections. And you're not just on a social media platform, because you think if you're an early adopter, you're going to get 10,000 followers and that somehow is going to blow your business up.
Hello and welcome to episode 82 of the, My Daily Business Coach podcast. I'm Fiona Killackey. I'm your host. I'm also a business coach. We are currently booking in clients for one-on-one coaching from, I think it's June, 2021. So if you are interested in that, if you listen to this podcast, if you ever thought, “Oh, I'd actually love to do a one-on-one session with her”, please contact us. You can find out more over at mydailybusinesscoach.com, but feel free to also just send me a DM at @mydailybusinesscoach on Instagram, or like I said, an email, hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. And we can go from there.
I absolutely love, love, love, helping small business owners get more time and energy and enthusiasm back for what they do. I know that so many of us start out with this grand dream of our business. And as we move along or we move towards launching it or trying to scale it, or we get staff involved, sometimes we can lose some of the love.
So if you are somebody who's in that situation, or you're looking to transition, maybe, you know, increase your exposure and marketing, build your brand, moving into a different territory, launch a new collection, getting in touch because I would love to help you in any way that I can. All right, let's get onto today's coaching episode.
Now, this is an interesting one because I had written about this years ago now in my Sunday email, I send an email every single Sunday, and somebody contacted me from the US who had just found this article that I'd written and was saying, you know, “Thank you so much. This has really helped me. I'm about to start my business and you gave a lot of good advice.” So I thought I would repurpose it because I'm all about repurposing content for this podcast and kind of bring it into 2021 with a bit of fresh perspective. Now that I've been in business a lot longer than when I first kind of put this out into the world. So let's crack on with it, shall we?
So, back in 2018, you know, that time before COVID, when we all complained about things that were really not that bad now in comparison, but way back in, I think it was December or November, 2018. I wrote a blog article that I had sent originally as an email. And it was about the 10 things I wish I had known before starting a business. Now in that time period, I would have been in business that would have been my third year in business, I'm now in my sixth year. And so it was really interesting firstly, to go back and look at kind of those things that I had said that I wish I'd known before I started a business and actually realizing that most of them are still the same things that I would have said today three years on. But I really hope that from this episode, if you've been in business for some time, really consider what your 10 things are.
If you were to mentor somebody now, what would you suggest to them to kind of look out for or be aware of? And if you're just starting out in your business, I would absolutely love it. If after listening to today's episode, you come on over to Instagram, I'm at @mydailybusinesscoach. And let me know which one resonated most for you, or maybe there's something else that you would love to know that I haven't mentioned in today's episode.
So yeah, the 10 things I wish I'd known before starting a business, really that whole idea came out of a workshop that I'd been running at the time. And I had talked like I doing all workshops that I run when I'm talking about, you know, my background and how I've come to do what I do. I do mention that I've been a published writer and I have been a published writer for numerous magazines, newspapers, ghostwriting for books for close to 20 years.
Now, I've also worked as a magazine editor full-time - all sorts of things, a newspaper columnists. And in that background, largely I have interviewed small business owners. So I've interviewed fashion designers. I've interviewed furniture makers, photographers, chefs, a lot of people in the kind of creative space. And what that's done has been really great for my career. One, because I've been able to get an insight into what's worked and what hasn't worked for small businesses and brands that I've seen really flourish, but also it's been able to help me with my content in terms of content marketing, because everything to do with marketing is about holding attention and journalists and feature writers have to hold your attention because it's the quickest thing in the world to just lift your eyes and stop reading. So, anyway, I was in this workshop, I was running a workshop on marketing, which I do a bit marketing for your small business.
And somebody in that workshop asked me the exact same question that I used to ask when I would interview people for magazines and newspapers. And that question was, if you could know then what you know now, what would you tell yourself? And so I was in this workshop and, you know, towards the end of it, I sort of was asking, you know, is there any more questions? Is there anything else I can help people with?
And somebody put up their hand and said, you've been in business now a few years. If you could know, then what you know, now when you were first starting out, what would you say? And what are the lessons that you wish you'd known before you started? And at the time I remember I was kind of standing up the head of this kind of table in this beautiful property in Daylesford, which is run out of open monkey puzzle, which is run by Natasha Morgan.
And I just felt this massive shift in energy because everyone was sort of sitting there waiting for the answer. And I said, you know, some of the things that I'm saying now, but then on the drive, back from Daylesford to where I live, which is some two hours, I started thinking about my answer and about the lessons that I had learned. So here it is, here are the 10 things that I think the most valuable lessons that I wish I had known when I started. And like I said, at the start of this, I originally kind of pinned this back in 2018. And now I'm recording this podcast in March 2021, but I would still say that these 10 things hold true. You know, this is my sixth year of business and I'm in my forties now.
And I definitely think that these are 10 really, really valuable lessons for people to consider no matter where they are in business, but particularly if you are starting out. So let's get stuck in. Okay.
#1 Be you.
Everyone else is taken and I'm being super, you know, hashtag real and hashtag vulnerable. But honestly, this is one of the biggest ones. When I first started my business, I let a lot of fear about kind of not looking a certain way, not dressing a certain way, kind of get to me. I got caught up in thinking that I needed to be somebody a bit different, someone, a bit more polished perhaps than who I am. And when I first started my business, I was consulting a lot more. That was the start that was kind of like, okay, I'm going to consult to these big companies as well as small business, but I needed some logic companies to kind of inject a bit of cash so that I could work with small businesses who didn't always have the money to pay.
And I'm being pretty transparent there. But you know, I did have in my mind, Oh, if I'm going to go into these city boardrooms and I'm going to be presenting to quite often, men who were in their middle age that were going to CEOs, investors, venture capitalists, I did think, Oh, I need to be more polished. I need to have this type of bag. I need to, you know, like I, I let these things really get to me and you know what, like none of that stuff matters when you know who your audience is and what they most need. You know, I dress how I wanna dress. And I sort of stopped if I look back in, when I first started, I was kind of corporate. I was bringing a lot of the kind of corporate attitude that I'd had in my previous career into that place.
And I was, I had my work clothes and I had my weekend clothes and never the two shall meet. And now I just have my clothes. These are my clothes. This is how I dress. Whether I'm going to a book club meeting and the local pub, or if I'm going into a boardroom, I kind of dress the same. Occasionally. I'll like, you know, be wearing my trackies or leggings at home. I don't necessarily wear those into a boardroom, but on the whole, I'm just who I am. That's how I am. I've got my bright nails. I've got my big earrings, usually a crazy colorful top or black with like crazy shoes or something else. But that's, you know, that's who I am and it's never been an issue. And I think if I could tell anyone, starting out one thing, it would be this, you know, shift your focus from how you look or appear or perform to what does your client need.
So every time I've done a workshop or a speaking gig, I've tried to really shift my focus from like, Oh, how am I going to look? Or what would people think of me to what value am I giving these people? Who've bothered to show up for me? How am I going to help them? How am I genuinely going to help them? That's not like a throwaway line. And so I really needed to shift. And so that number one be you, everyone else is taken is so, so important. You know, good business is about helping people. It's not about hyping, your self image. So number one, be you, everyone else has taken beat you. I can't stress that enough.
#2 There is enough for everyone.
Honestly, again, this has been something that I've had to come up against my own kind of ego coming into play, or my own sort of scarcity mindset.
At times, there are a million people doing what I do. There are a billion business coaches out there. There are million, probably even more so marketing consultants. And if I stopped to worry about that and I kind of lived in this constant state of scarcity, chances are I wouldn't be where I am now in my business. When I was kind of researching things for my course, how to start a podcast, which you can buy at my daily business, coach.com. I found out that there are more than 1.5 million podcasts and a large proportion of those are related to business. So, you know, was I going to let myself sit back and be like, Oh no, there's too many of them already. Not like, yes, it took me some time to get going with the podcast, but I didn't let the fact that, Oh, there's, there's so many out there.
I thought, well, no, I've got something a bit different to offer. And you know, I wouldn't be, like I said, I would not be here if I really let scarcity. And that scarcity mindset take over, instead of worrying about what others in my industry are doing, I try and focus on solving problems for my clients, for the people who come to work with me, the people who send me a DM, the people who respond to my Sunday email, what do they need? How can I give it to them? Know, very few ideas are original these days. You know, they, they're just not like we've been around for thousands of years. So, you know, we might think, Oh my gosh, I'm so original. Actually. We're not often when I talk about the buyer cycle with people, they're like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing that you came up with it.
And I'm like, I did not come up with this, this traces back to the 18 hundreds. And that's only the first time that it was documented in print, in a book by a man. This has been going on for thousands and thousands of centuries. You know, anyone that traded anything at any time would have gone through some sort of adaptation of the biocycle or the ADA model. So focus on doing the best job that you possibly can for the customers and the clients in your life and let the other people in your industry tend to their people. There is enough for everyone. There are seven point something, billion people on the planet. There is enough to go around. So really that is number two. There's enough for everyone. Try not to let scarcity, get to try and keep an abundance mindset as you're going through your business.
#3 You don't need to be on every social media platform.
I see so many small business owners overwhelmed by content these days. And one of the biggest problems is that they've been told they need to be on every social platform. They need to be on clubhouse. They need to be on TikToK. They need to be doing Instagram reels. They need to be mastering Pinterest. They need to have five different Facebook groups. They need to be on Snapchat still because so-and-so so-and-so is here. No people. I ran My Daily Business Coach solely on Instagram until I felt that I had the time to add Pinterest. I have a group on Facebook, the Good Business Group that genuinely started with a one to two, share some information.
When COVID first hit Australia with my clients. I literally thought there'll be 30, 50 people in there. Some friends and it's grown and there's a thousand small business owners plus in there, which is fantastic. And this is such a lovely community in there, but I didn't set out to be like, Oh, I'm going to conquer Facebook. I'm going to conquer Instagram. There is so much on Instagram. I'm not even doing, I haven't even touched the surface of what that is capable of platform, but you know that idea, Oh my gosh, this has come out. I need to be there. It has to align firstly, to who you are. If you're not somebody who wants to dance around on tick-tock, don't be on tick-tock. I have a client, actually. I love this client. He's awesome. Yeah. He hates Pinterest. I get most clients to work through kind of mood boards or some other stuff.
When we're working on an early kind of brand information and audience and stuff. And I said to him, so, you know, let's look at Pinterest and he's like, Nope, Nope, Nope, hate Pinterest, hate Pinterest. And I was like, okay, let's look at an alternative. If you don't have to be on something that you hate and you detest, I am all for Pinterest. I'm like the biggest Pinterest pro person. But the point is you don't need to be on every social platform. So don't get sucked into that idea that, Oh my gosh, I'm missing out on everyone because I'm not in clubhouse right this second, or I'm missing out on this because I'm not on Tik TOK or somebody else told me, I really need to, you know, uncover this thing. Maybe my space is back again. Who knows, try and look at the channels that are most likely for you to connect and make genuine relationships happen with your audience, but also make sure that you're guiding people from those channels to places you own.
I know I say that all the time, getting them off social media in, into your email list, on your website, getting them to come to an event, getting them to talk to you, getting them to open up through DMS or everything else, but making sure that you're actually forming genuine connections. And you're not just on a social media platform because you think if you're an early adopter, you're going to get 10,000 followers and that somehow is going to blow your business up. Yes. If you're strategic about it, potentially you could use those followers and utilize them into whatever guided funnel that you have. But social media needs to stop being this stressful thing for people. And I think it is sometimes because we think we need to be on every single platform out there. So number three, you don't need to be on every social media plan.
#4 Craft your one line message.
So I've talked about this many times and I've run workshops or with my clients or in group. In my first few months of my business, I had many friends that were really great. They were trying to get me to come out to events, to meet people that potentially could become clients. And I had a friend, a good friend introduced me to someone at an event as a copywriter. I knew then and there that I kind of failed in letting people know what I actually did. And it wasn't really her fault. It was the fact that she didn't really know what I did. So she wasn't like, Oh, this is my friend Fiona, she's a consultant. She works with businesses on their structures and particularly around brand and marketing. So she said, “Oh, this is my friend, Fiona. I think she's like a copywriter. Or she works in social media or something.” And then I was talking to this person who she just introduced me to trying to explain that I'm not a copywriter. I write sometimes for magazines, but that's not the bulk of my work. And I kind of just, you know, rambled, fancy that I mentioned me rambling, but I remember kind of feeling like, gosh, I have not got away of succinctly informing people of what I do. And I'm kind of faff about, and I'd say I do this, I do that. I also do this. And sometimes I do that and looking back, I was possibly worried that I wouldn't get work. And so I was kind of saying, Oh yeah, I can do it all. And in the words of Donald Miller, who, who has a great podcast called StoryBrand and is an author and has a whole business, he uses the tagline quite often.
If you could fuse you lose. And that's exactly what I was doing when people were introducing me, I was confusing them to the point where they're like, I don't really care what you do. Okay, cool. Whatever. And so now I have it down to kind of like a one line answer and I use what's called the introduction formula. And that is I help. Who do you help with? What do you do so that they can, how you achieve achieve results? So what's the outcome. So I might say I help small business owners with understanding their marketing in a way that feels aligned to who they are so they can get more time and energy back. So that is a clear way of saying what I do. I might change that if I'm consulting to a larger company or I'm helping them build out their marketing team.
So that's number four, craft your one-line message. Understand I help. Who do you help with? What does your business offer? So that what's the result.
And again, if you are listening to this on the go, you can always find the full transcript of this over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/82 as this is episode 82.
So let's recap on those first four.
#1 be you, everyone else has taken
#2 there's enough for everyone.
#3 you do not need to be every social media platform.
#4 craft your one-line message.
#5 Get your money upfront.
I feel like I need to like throw dollar bills out or something, but get your money upfront. Particularly if you are in the service based businesses like myself, I learnt the hard way. I've had two problem clients in six years, and I think that's really great. I attract amazing people. Thank you very much to every client who's listening. You are such good people. You pay your bills, you have full of integrity. It's amazing. But I have had one client at the start who just fooled me, pulled the wool over my eyes. I did all this work. About six months of consulting. She continuously didn't pay her bills on time. She had a PR company that she was working with and she just stopped paying them. And they came to me and I was a consultant and kind of marketing and brand and were like, “Hey, do you know why she's not paying us?”
And I thought, naively, “Oh, they must've not done their job properly. Or, you know, that's her issue to deal with?” And the same thing happened to me. And I ended up having to get legal advice and send legal notices and, and try and get the money back in the end. I didn't. And I sort of thought, well, comma, comma, we'll get you some time, but it's now a stock standard. My part of my business, I invoice. If I'm consulting, I invoice 50% of my fee upfront before any work is done and 50% upon completion. I also, if I'm charging for a longer piece of work, say like 12 month business coaching package, people get a discount. If they pay all of it upfront or they can pay on like a retainer. And it works that way prior to COVID, everything was paid up front and people still do that.
They go into my website, they find the business coaching package they want, and they just buy it in full. We do offer payment plans now, and a lot of people have taken those up, but I make it really, really super clear from the get-go. This is how I operate. And if you want to work with me, that money needs to be paid up. I'm running a business. I have budgets. I have other things as well. And when I first had a business in 2007, I ran around copywriting kind of branded content business. And I totally learnt the hard way then that people just didn't pay. They would pay eventually, but it was very much a, Oh, I'm waiting for money to come in. So I can't pay yet, even though you've done the work. And I always say to people, you would never go and see a dentist and get all your stuff done and then leave and be like, you know what?
I'll pay you when I can. I'll pay you when the money comes in for me. And yet in the creative services in particular, people kind of have that attitude. So number five, get your money upfront. And if you're running, you know, a product based business, you might consider taking pre-orders or adding subscription services to your offerings to help kind of keep your cash moving in the right direction. So number five, get your money up front.
#6 Processes equal less stress or process equals less stress.
Now I've talked about this before, but if I find myself doing the same thing more than a few times, I'll look at creating a process and if need be templates to help streamline things. For example, you know, instead of going back and forth a million times to set up an initial coaching call or a consult, I have an email template that my VA sends out.
It leads people to a Calendly page, which is the tool that I use for scheduling. And they can book in a session it's all automated. It then generates a zoom link for the session. It generates a Google calendar link. It asks them a series of questions that then I can review before that call. And so it's all sort of automated. And we then have, you know, templated questionnaires that people need to fill in before they start working with us. Once they've kind of booked into the system, they fill in quite a lengthy questionnaire. So that again, when we start working together, we can just hit the ground running and I'm not spending their time and their money asking a bunch of like sort of stock standard questions. This has meant, you know, every time that I've done a process documentation for my virtual assistant or for anyone else in the business, I've had to spend time and do the tedious work, you know, just get the work done and literally list out the steps.
We have our processes in Asana, which is, uh, an online management project management tool. And literally I'll just sit there and be like, okay, what would I do next? Number two, go to this Google doc, number three, open the Google doc and look at this. It's very, it can be a tedious thing, but actually it doesn't take as much time as you think it takes. And the amount of time that you save and the stress levels that you don't have because you have a clear process is incredible.
So that's number six process equals less stress. Can't stress that enough, get a price. And if you need help with processing you, don't creating your processes. Definitely book in a business coaching session with me. I love that stuff. That's what I love.
#7 invest in help. So I started hiring virtual assistants in 2018, or maybe it's 2017 even, but I hired, you know, I was like, okay, I don't know necessarily if I can't afford this person, but I'm going to hire them.
And to say that it's helped has been a huge understatement. Huge. I also invested in a bookkeeper. I have a really great accountant that I invest in. I have a fantastic editor for this podcast. Hi Scott, all of these things cost money, but they've actually really, really helped me be able to build the business that I want to be able to build. Now, I definitely held off perhaps too long on kind of worrying about the cost of hiring a virtual assistant. Also, I held off in some other parts of my business as well that I wish I'd invested in earlier. And I wish I'd done that sooner in a time is precious both financially and emotionally. And if you can afford it, I suggest you look at investing in help before you absolutely need it. And that's really so that you can get back to doing what you do best and help doesn't necessarily always have to be a staff member.
It could be freelancer. It might be a copywriter. Maybe you spend way too much time really trying to perfect your writing because you don't feel that confident in it. It could be that, you know, you spend ages trying to get the perfect shot with your iPhone, and it might be best to invest in kind of social media photographers who come out and, you know, get 40, 50, 60 shots for you in a short amount of time. It could be investing in a business coach. I invested in my first business coach in 2017, 2018, and I have used a few business coaches I've recently invested, you know, the largest amount that I've ever invested in a U S mastermind. And, you know, sometimes you need to take that kind of leap and that jump and do those things. So number seven, invest in help.
#8 Build an audience before you begin.
You know, I have a whole range of people that I work with. And sometimes I'll get people booking for a one-off session where they're building a business, they have a business idea and they really want to kind of have a sound board and they want to validate certain things. And we go through all sorts of stuff from the values that underpin that to how the brand is different. The USP we talk about all sorts of stuff, money, time management, all of that. And what I tell them often is, you know, do you have your Instagram handle? Do you have a way for people to sign up to an email? Do you have a basic pitch deck that you can show people? Do you have a holding page on your website? This is all to build an audience before you begin. I started building my email list and my social following.
Well before I kind of knew exactly what My Daily Business Coach would offer. I started my business as Fiona Killackey consulting, and that is still the company. And I have a whole trust thing for my business, but I started the handle on Instagram, my daily business coach kind of, I didn't really know what I was offering because I'd sort of transitioned from consulting, largely consulting to, to being a business coach. And so, you know, these are things that I wish I had known before. I wish someone had said to me, start building your audience because I just did that off my own back. I didn't tell anyone that I was changed. I told one friend, I told her I'm going to change it to my daily business coach. What do you think? And she was like, do it, do it, do it. And she really had to coax me because I was like, Oh, the term business coach.
And she was like, get over yourself. That's what it is. That's what it's known as. So, you know, just do it. And so yeah, started building that. I remember I had a URL on my LinkedIn that went to tiny letter, which was a platform. I don't know if it still exists, that allows you to have people sign up to a newsletter. And so people just started signing up and I didn't know them. I was like, Oh my God, who are these nine people that want to hear from me? Well, and one thing kind of side note, I started writing to those nine people, the same way that I write to thousands. Now on my Sunday email, I gave them as much, you know, I didn't think, Oh, there's only nine people. I can't send an email. I was like, no, these are nine people that want to hear from me.
Oh my gosh. And I was so excited. So no thank you to those nine people who first signed up, but yeah. Started building my email list. I started building Instagram. I started posting on there. You don't need to be selling it to start building a community. I mean, it's great. If you can build a community and then really understand what they need and maybe validate things that maybe you thought that they would love, that they probably wouldn't or, you know, get all these insights from people. And by doing this, it's not just about having this actual audience to kind of sell to once you launch a product or service, but you have this ready-made focus group to figure out if what you're offering is the best thing that it can be. And maybe just one comment from somebody is going to change your trajectory a little bit and you create something that's even better.
So that's number eight, build an audience before you begin.
#9 Vent outside the home, people. And I know this is hard depending on where you're listening. I know some of my good friends in the UK is still in lockdown and parts of the U S and they have a lovely client in group coaching who's in the U S shout out to Tatiana, and maybe it's not necessarily able for you to get out of the home right now and vent, but no business runs smoothly. It just, doesn't not a hundred percent of the time. No partner wants to hear about your problems. A hundred percent of the time, I have an incredible, lovely, supportive husband. He's literally just come in while I'm recording this and brought me a cup of tea to my office, which is out the back of our garden.
But even then, he's not appear to sit and listen to me crap on and on about every single thing. That's not going to plan in my business. I strongly suggest that anyone who's starting a business or who has a business cultivates their bounce off crew, as soon as they can, you know, you might be like, well, what's the bounce off group. It's basically having people that you can vent to. You can bounce your business ideas around with, you can ask for advice or encouragement on things like pricing or pitching or platforms or people management and business coaches like me can be great, you know? Absolutely. But nothing beats having people, you know, that you've maybe grown up with or people that are in your kind of inner circle of trust that you can meet with every month, even on zoom or Skype, or, you know, talk to about things to do with your business.
And I'm fortunate to have like an incredible amount of fellow business women in my life. You all know who you are. If you're listening, thank you. And it's not only being grateful work, but it means I don't put everything onto my husband. Although, you know, he does hear a lot. Thank you, Jerome. But yeah.
Number nine, vent and learn to vent outside the home, because you may have a partner who's just the most supportive person in the world, but he or she, or they don't want to hear about every single thing. And sometimes you want to have a bounce off. You want to talk to somebody who's in the same industry who has the same sort of problems going on and really dissect and get into that meaty issue. And sometimes it's not always the best place to do that at home. So that's number nine.
#10 Experience is your greatest teacher, no amount of reading books or watching YouTube videos about a topic is going to teach you as much as just doing it, literally doing it. And I'm all for preparing. I'm all for planning, but there's only so much of that you can do before. You just have to take a leap and hope for the best. I have run so many workshops now, like I don't even know maybe a hundred, including like the amount of like master classes and stuff that I do in other people's masterminds and, and membership groups. And I can say like the first few that I ran were probably absolutely crap black Bay, just, I remember one in particular, I ran now that is a full day class and I thought I could run it in like two and a half hours or three hours.
Like I wouldn't even let people go to the toilet. I was like, no, no, we need to get going. You need to go going, but I wouldn't have been able to run any workshops if I had not started somewhere. If I had not taken that leap, if I'd not learnt, Oh, Fiona, like in your head, it's a really short workshop, but actually people ask questions. People want to know more about this. People want you to really explain what's in the slide. This is a full day workshop, not a two hours. So, but I wouldn't have known that if I just didn't start. And so if there's something that you want to do in your business, ask yourself, what's really holding you back. And chances are it's your ego rather than some sort of inability to execute on whatever it is that you're trying to do.
So that's number 10 experience is your greatest teacher. And sometimes, you know, those experiences are going to be negative. Sometimes it's about not being able to trust certain things, or sometimes it's about, you know, disappointment, but experience is also going to show you some great stuff. Maybe you're like, Oh, I'm a better speaker than I thought I was. Or, you know, I'm not so crappy at that thing that I've been telling myself for years, that I'm not good at. And so experience really is your greatest teacher.
So to recap, the 10 things that I wish I'd known before I started a business.
#1 Be you, everyone else is taken.
#2 There is enough for everyone.
#3 You don't need to be on every social media platform.
#4 Craft your one-line message.
#5 Get your money up front.
#6 Process equals less stress.
#7 Invest in help.
#8 Build an audience before you begin
#9 vent outside the home.
#10 Experience is your greatest teacher.
So this list of course, is not a finite list of every single business lesson that I've learned or that I would share, but I am in a constant state of learning. And I genuinely believe, you know, every person and every situation has something to teach us if we're open to it. So I'd love to know which one of those 10 really resonated with you or which you think I've completely forgotten about. So please send me an email. hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com or come on over on Instagram and connect with me in the DMS. I'm at my daily business coach. If you found this useful and you think that another business friend would definitely share it also hit subscribe so that you don't miss out on any other future episodes.
And if you are new around here, firstly, welcome. Thank you so much. Definitely go back and binge. There are so many episodes. What are we in the 80s? Now, there are 80+ episodes for you to go and binge and learn from again. If you would like a full transcript of this episode, you can find that along with all the links that I've mentioned over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/82. Thank you so much for listening. I really, really appreciate your time and I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
