A lovely reader replied to my email last week re:anesthesia anxiety etc and literally blew me away with this one line:

"I spent decades of my adulthood being unreasonably proud of how well I functioned doing everything myself."

🤯🤯🤯

Um, hello 👋  this is me. How did you climb inside my head, dear reader??

My recent surgery has been a constant reminder of how much I am normally doing.

How many balls I am constantly juggling. 

How proud I feel when I perceive that I'm doing it all by my self. (eeekkk) 

And how low I can feel when I can't do any of that right now because I need help and must spend all this time resting.

This 👇 is me "resting" with my humans this weekend. We're pretty cute. 

I've been running my own business for a little over 6 years now and mostly on my own. I had a brief stint where I had an employee and two contractors a few years back, but otherwise it's always just been me. Doing it all. 

My ideal client for business coaching is folks in their first 3 years of business. I looooove me some beginners. I've coached folks at all stages of business in truly all kinds of businesses... 

But it's folks in their first couple years that are my favorite. 

Folks in their first few years are learning endlessly about who they are, what they have to offer, how they want to contribute, and how the business needs to be structured. And they do all of this usually by. them. selves. 

The first couple years is like endless opportunity land and I love that. 

But as a new business owner?

Oh, man. Those first few years can totally suck eggs. You have literally no idea what the hell you're doing and at some point you have this totally terrifying realization:

Being a business owner is TWO completely different roles: you have to be good at your craft AND you have to be good at business. 

Now I have met very few small business owners that went to school for business. Like maybe 3 ever. 

And I've met just as many business owners that actually like the business side of being an entrepreneur.

This realization is hard for a lot of folks. You didn't get into business (likely) because you just looooove business. 

You likely got into business for at least one of these reasons (if not all of them):

✅ You figured out how to make or do something that actually brought you joy is this excruciating world/economy and held on for dear life. 

❌ You absolutely despise working for other people and thought, hey, starting a business can't possibly be worse than working for greedy, selfish, evil aliens. 

🆘 You want to help something/someone (people, planet, etc) and felt like you could really do that if you went out on your own and/or saw an unmet need or want that made sense for you to try and meet. 

(baby me 👇 when I first announced my business on socials in the fall of 2018. 🥰)

Now how this relates to the sentence we started with. 

Often as business owners we get into business to fight that status quo. To say fuck that, life doesn't have to be that way, I'll show you! 

But more often than not we take all of our capitalist, individualist, colonialist conditioning with us and it pops up in these hard to pinpoint ways.

Like taking too much pride in doing everything by ourself... 

Or giving pretty much everything away for free because you never could afford these things...

Or working more hours than you ever did working for someone else because you're all alone and who else is going to do it...

Or holding not enough boundaries around your time, resources, or self worth because deep down you still question whether your idea is any good...

Or one I've seen with folks a little later on in business, hiring folks and treating them the same way you hated being treated when you worked for someone mostly 'cause we rarely see good examples of governance or leadership. 😭

But the joyful reality is you don't have to do business this way! 

None of us do. 

You get to ask for help building your business and you should. 

So I will leave you with a few tips that I wish someone could have given me in my first few years of business. Ready??

Tip 1

All the work you do in your business can be broken down into 3 buckets: Delivery, Marketing, and Sales. (and a quick little tip here: we can actually do an anti-capitalist analysis of each of these buckets in your business. check it out here.) Take a little time to make goals and organize your work around these 3 buckets and understand that if it's just you, then you likely can only work on one bucket at a time. 

This means that setting off to build a new website (marketing) while trying to write all the slides for a new workshop (delivery) AND perfecting your sales pitch for the upcoming winter artists market (sales) all at the same time is likely not going to feel fun or flowy. Work in sequential order to the best of your ability, focusing on one bucket at a time. 

Tip 2

There are two kinds of people you're trying to reach when it comes to marketing and it's essentially impossible to talk to them both at the same time. You will drive yourself nuts and run yourself ragged trying to make content that's relevant for both. 

Instead you should take turns speaking to each of the 2 audiences. The 2 audiences? The first group are the folks who have never met you. They do not know you yet. The second group are folks who already know you and are ready to build trust and deepen their relationship with you.

An example: My group one folks are often in workshops I run. They haven't met me yet and are being referred in by a partnering org or a friend. Group two folks are people on my email list. They've done a workshop or have downloaded a freebie from me and are ready to dig deeper, to learn more. Make sense?

The content and way I hold myself for group 1 folks can't be the same as group 2 folks. It's like asking me to speak to a stranger the same way I chat with my neighbor or vice versa. It's just weird. 

and Tip 3

Do your research. I think something really wonderful happened sometime in the last 10 years where this messaging came out that anyone could make a business online and pay their bills doing it. I love this. And I'm always gonna say hell yeah, where there is a will there is most often a way. 

But along that way I think the idea of market research got lost. I don't know that there's necessarily bad ideas (ok lies, things that actively exploit people and planet are bad) but I do know that there are ideas that don't make money.

Unfortunately, while capitalism is still alive and on its path of total destruction none of us can afford to not make money (unless you're independently wealthy in which case I have other thoughts for you 😘).

Your business idea is not a hobby and so it's going to have to make money. 

It is in your best interest to go out into the world and ask people if they want your idea. Would they pay for your idea? How much would they pay? 

Back to the pride and do-it-by-yourself idea, I've seen a lot of beginning business owners feel a lot of fear and vulnerability around market research. You obviously don't want to hear a bunch of people say, "nah, I wouldn't pay for that", but guess what? It's gonna hurt a hell of a lot more learning that lesson months or years from now. 

Plus it will be more expensive to learn later.

Every single thing you sell in your business should be validated through market research. 

And if you're feeling panicked at that sentence and wondering HOW does one do market research, comment below and let me know because I'd be more than happy to dedicate a future post to that topic. 👍

Alright. No more doing this all by yourself and feeling unreasonably proud about it, ok?

I'm here on the other side of this post if you need me, just leave a comment below! 

Here's to feelings of adequate pride and sharing the load. 

xx

Emily