Here’s the thing… you don’t have to do business alone.

I want to share 5 lessons that I have learned in business so far. I want to hand these tips over to you so that you don’t have to start from scratch and learn these lessons the hard way.

1. Find 5 business owners you admire, and learn from them

I use to download a lot of freebies from business owners when I first started my business, and I found that:

1. I surrounded myself with a lot of noise, often too much

2. I had too many varying ways of doing things and opinions on things that I began feeling confused and overwhelmed

I felt so overwhelmed by the noise, so to reduce the stress and noise I found 5 business owners that I could learn from. I chose business owners that aligned with the core values of my business, were further ahead in their business journey, who demonstrated a business model that I wanted in my business, and who had great quality content (free and paid) that I could binge on and learn from.

For example, I love learning from Ashlyn Writes. Whilst I am not a copywriter, I love the way she does business and her business model. I didn’t want to copy her, but rather be inspired by her. So she was one of the five business owners that I chose as inspiration for my business.

2. You don’t have to do it all but what you do, do it well

When I first started, some business owners recommended being on every platform… I got overwhelmed with the ‘use this Instagram strategy,’ ‘here’s this Facebook workflow,’ ‘you’re making this mistake on Pinterest…’ and while all those are super helpful, I felt the pressure to show up everywhere… but I wasn’t doing it wholeheartedly. Not because I didn’t want to show up wholeheartedly, but because I didn’t have the systems (or enough content) to support myself on the platform.

So I started with Instagram and word of mouth to grow my business… then once I had a steady workflow and strategy in place for that I then started on Pinterest, and then I started a blog, and then I started interacting in FB groups. Through all of this though, I never put pressure on myself to add another platform or task until two things happened:

1. I felt ready to add more, and realistically could in an informed way

2. I had a great system and workflow in place for the tasks I currently was committed to.

So maybe there are some things you need to drop, in order to get really good at the tasks that are driving the most traffic for you.

Whatever you chose to focus on, set up the systems well, and then you might choose to layer other platforms on top of a strong foundation.

3. Under promise, over deliver

This was a hard lesson for me to learn because I’m a perfectionist and an over promiser. I wanted to promise the world to my clients. What I found was that the more that I promised and tried to perform for my clients, the more stress that was put on myself.

In my opinion we have to learn the fine line between going above and beyond for clients, and burning ourselves out in the process.

I now have a pretty strict on-boarding process and tasks that I am able to do within the times I work on my business… yet I have also learned that there are other ways we can add value, when the clients don’t expect it. E.g. sending a kind message or taking time to encourage them on their work, or when you have some spare time offering to do something extra.

It’s important we care deeply about our clients, yet it is also important that we care deeply about ourselves and what we can realistically commit to.

4. Don’t be afraid to invest

I love what Jenna Kutcher says on her sales page ‘people that pay, pay attention’ and it’s so true. Whenever I have invested, I have found that my business grows because of it. In exchange for money I receive valuable training and education, often time saved from trying to DIY and confidence from the work I do because I know that experts in the field recommend it.

In saying this though, we need to be wise about our investments… here are three questions I ask myself before I invest:

1. Is this someone I trust and want to learn from? [often, like in point 1, it will be from a business owner I have researched and know their work, and oftentimes I will scroll through their free work. For example: Blog posts and opt-ins to see what the value is like.]

2. By investing in this, will I save time and stress? [e.g. I bought Pinterest templates online because they were created with the style I liked and it saved my hours of DIY time]

3. How will this help my business? I will often look at testimonials for results from other people who have invested, I will look at what the product includes and see if it will work for me, and I also evaluate if I have the time to go through it and implement it.

5. Protect your time

If we try to spend forever in our business, we’re actually not going to be productive and effective.

Trust me, I’ve been there! I struggled to protect my time. I was scared to say no to anyone, and I genuinely just loved my business and therefore was always working on it.

What I have learned is that as business owners, we actually have a responsibility to protect our time.

I’m not saying neglect our clients, I think we really need to care for our clients well, however, I am finding that clients actually do understand the importance of your time. It’s important that you, the business owner, honour your clients by communicating boundaries, and putting them in place. This allows you to show up refreshed and ready to serve your clients wholeheartedly.

If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to managing your time, I’ve created a free roadmap to guide you on the right path.

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