Did you know that 20-25% of new businesses fail within the first year?
A lot of people want to start a business, but most don’t really understand what goes into it and they aren’t prepared. I learned a lot of lessons from my first year as a female entrepreneur and I want to share them with you, so that you can hopefully avoid making the same mistakes. Here are 10 things I wish I knew before I started my business. Number 3 was such a tough lesson for me.
10. You’re Not Special
Most businesses take 2+ years to become profitable and find success. Despite reading this fact in multiple places, I thought I’d be able to find success faster than that. I thought having the right skills, a solid plan, and a good work ethic would put me on the fast track to success.
I wish those other articles would have explained WHY it’s going to take time. The thing is, no matter how prepared you are, how good your plan is, and what relevant skills you think you have, it just takes time to:
- Build a good product
- Identify your target market
- Market correctly to that audience
- Dial in the delivery/fulfillment process
On top of that, you’re probably still missing some critical skills and knowledge that you need to find success. And it takes time to learn and get good at those critical pieces.
9. Your First Idea Probably Sucks
I went through several iterations of products, positioning, and branding before I found the right combination. With every single one, I was convinced that it was the best idea ever. The thing is, nobody gets it right on their very first try. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself and your new idea…and also maybe focus on proving the idea first before you worry so much about the branding and business cards.
8. Work-Life Balance Looks Different for Entrepreneurs
When you don’t have a set 9-5 schedule, it can be tempting to work at all hours, or make up arbitrary rules based on what you think you’re supposed to do. But, if you want to still be doing this in 5 or 10 years, you have to set up a work schedule that works for you long-term, not just for a short-term grind. Some things that don’t work long term:
- Working 24/7
- Having no boundaries and letting work intrude in all areas of your life
- Resting just enough to “make it through” another day or week.
- Putting in a certain number of hours, no matter how you feel
Instead, creating long-term balance and avoiding burnout looks like:
- Taking enough breaks and days off so that you can do your BEST work
- Setting good boundaries between personal life and entrepreneur life
- Taking good care of your physical, mental, and emotional needs so that you feel like you’re maintaining or increasing your vitality over time.
- Working based on energy and attention limits, not number of hours.
For me, balance looks like having a short, easy morning routine, deep focus work blocks, only scheduling meetings 3 days a week, daily healthy habits (veggies, protein, enough sleep, movement, joy, gratitude, etc.), working 9+ days in a row, but also taking half-days, sleep-in mornings, and large chunks of time off (think 2-3+ days of mostly ignoring my phone and office), and listening to what my mind, spirit, and body are telling me on a daily basis.
Your version of balance may look different and that’s ok. The important thing is that you should be maintaining your health and vitality at minimum and increasing it over time if you’re really dialed in.
7. It Will Feel Harder Than You Think It Should
Just because it’s the right thing to do doesn’t mean it won’t feel hard or scary sometimes. A lot of the changes I made to follow my entrepreneurial path felt really hard and scary, but they also felt right. If you’re measuring your progress based on how easy it is, you’re not going to get very far.
It’s super important to feel all your feelings, process them, and not store them up in your body and mind. But, it’s also important to not make decisions based on things feeling hard or scary. Things being hard and scary just means that you’re trying something new and different. And, as I like to say: you can always quit later.
So, just accept that it’s going to be harder than you thought it would be. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. That just means you should put less pressure and timelines on yourself, get curious about why it’s hard, and then try to figure out how to make it easier. There’s a ton of solutions out there, you just have to be willing to find them.
6. Working More is NOT the Answer
A lot of us have been taught that we just need to put our heads down and work more and harder in order to find success. But, this isn’t true. If you work on the wrong things or you don’t get good enough at executing the right things, you won’t find success.
Instead, you have to make sure you’re doing the right things and you’re doing them well. If you’re doing the right things, but you’re not very good at it, you’re going to have to get better. Just doing more of the same things isn’t going to get you there. And you have to solve the problems that people want solved. Your product might be awesome, but if nobody wants it, then it doesn’t really matter.
So, instead of just working more during my first year as a female entrepreneur, I had to learn to get strategic and figure out how to get to the next level, and then the next, and so on, until I got to the point where I was doing the right things, doing them well, and had it baked into a business system.
5. Getting Noticed as a New Business Requires Big Thinking
When I first started, I thought that if I just built a really good product, people would find it. But, the truth is that if you’re a new business, it’s likely going to take time and a marketing budget to get noticed.
The world is noisy and people are used to tuning out anything they think is salesy. So, be prepared to go bigger in order to get the results you’re looking for. This may mean doing more ad volume, more cold calling, more social media content, etc.
This does not necessarily mean to just spend more time and effort. It means to have a strategy and to think bigger. If you think you need to reach out to 10 people to get 5 clients, you’re likely wrong. You may need to reach out to 100 people when you’re first starting in order to get those 5 clients.
10x your thinking to get your desired results.
4. You have to use both logic and intuition
There is a common fallacy that people fall into when they are manifesting for their business. While it’s true that the universe sends you the things that you attract, part of successful manifesting is using your logic too.
Think about it, you have a brain for a reason, so consider all the factors and see if they are all pointing in the same direction. When I quit my job, I had a solid financial plan for the next year. I didn’t just do it and hope it all worked out.
There is an element of trusting the intuitive downloads and messages you are getting, but I have found that when I’m on the right path, the logical and the intuitive often line up and they definitely aren’t opposites. If your intuition and logic are at war, there is something that needs to be examined there. It could be a variety of things, but it’s helpful to slow down, avoid making snap decisions, and do a deeper dive into what’s going on.
3. Do the Most Important Work First
It’s so easy to get distracted or to do the work that just makes you feel productive, instead of the work that actually moves the needle in your business.
So, figure out what the most important things are, pick the absolute MOST important one and do that thing FIRST every day that you’re working.
Too often we get lost in email, social media, and other distractions that really don’t make that much of a difference. And before you know it, another week has gone by without you actually making progress towards your goals. This habit takes time and practice to build, but it’s definitely possible to quiet the part of your brain that’s distracted and make progress every day and week. It also feels amazing to see your business taking shape as the weeks go on.
2. Once you find your niche, it gets easier
It took me a while to figure out exactly what I wanted to offer the world. I had been in my career for 18 years before I decided to fully quit it and I had to try a lot of different things before it all clicked into place.
Then, I finally found the combination of things that resonated with me and that I felt that I could do long term. When I did, everything got way easier. Marketing, social media, coming up with ideas, working with clients, and just about everything else started to fall into place.
But honestly, there is no shortcut to get there. You just have to keep trying things. You can use this list to know if you should keep going with your current path:
- Does it FEEL like a perfect fit, or does something feel off?
- What do the business numbers say?
- Could you see yourself doing this in a year, two years, etc?
Once you find the correct fit, you’ll know it. It does sometimes take some tweaking to get it 100% right, but when that last little puzzle piece falls into place, you’ll be glad you put the effort in to getting it right.
1. You Won’t Find Success Until You Become the Right Person
To be really transparent, I spent a lot of my first year as a female entrepreneur just becoming the type of person that I needed to be in order to run a successful business long term. If you find yourself showing up inconsistently, dealing with burnout, poor coping mechanisms and habits, or there are mindsets and beliefs that you can’t seem to shake, you might need to do some of this work in order to finally get to that next level.
Self-identity and self-care are often overlooked by people starting a business, but the truth is, you can only ignore it for so long before it catches up with you. You can be the entrepreneur who burns out, or worse, never really gets started, or you can become the right person and guarantee your success.
I took the lessons I learned over my first decade of being a 9-5 rebel, as especially the things I learned from my first year as a female entrepreneur and put them all together into what I call Holistic Alignment.
Holistic Alignment is what helped me go from being stuck in a life of burnout, stress, and work I had grown to loath, to creating a business I love, manifesting my dreams, and waking up happy, peaceful and purpose-filled.
When you create the right foundations and put the right things into your daily auto-pilot, you set your life and business up for long-term success and happiness.
