A friend of mine recently asked me about an influencer program she was considering. The program promised to help her scale her business in record time, make millions of dollars (just like the influencer herself), and fast-track her life to wild success. The program was also a whopping $7000 for 4 weeks! “I’ll be hitting six to seven figures in six months!” she told me. As I looked into her big earnest eyes, I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. That she, like millions of people, was falling for a myth (and highly effective influencer marketing) — that entrepreneurship is easy, a path to get-rich-quick and if you haven’t hit six or seven figures in your first year, you basically suck, should give up on your dreams and go beg your tyrant of an ex-boss for your job back.
Here is the biggest truth about entrepreneurship
It’s f***ing hard. I’m talking make little to no money for the first year, cry into your pillow, question your life choices, work 26 hours a day (yes, I know there are only 24 hours in a day, I’m being ironic) hard. Think of it this way, if someone told you, you had to work for 2-4 years, barely make a dime, make all the decisions and carry all the financial burden, would you, do it? If the answer is yes, you, my friend might have an entrepreneurial bone in your body.
Here’s the thing. I truly believe in the power of entrepreneurship, especially for women. I believe, working for ourselves, having agency and creating businesses that not only make income but also make an impact, is a path to empowerment, equity It’s definitely a goal worth pursuing. It just takes a lot of effort, time, and patience to make those dreams a reality.
Last year I started my own media company for women entrepreneurs, and it’s a space that’s constantly evolving. This was alongside a digital marketing agency and consultancy I started with my husband. I have a lot on my plate, I work most days; despite living in a tropical paradise my days are filled with Zoom calls, courses, writing, administration, finance, you name it. My business runs the gamut of tasks any business requires, and I am responsible for pretty much all of it. I’ve only recently started to be somewhat profitable (as in my revenue is outstripping my business costs — a lot of people conflate revenue for profit when talking six or seven-figure earnings). But I would rather do this every day for the rest of my life, than work another hour in the corporate world where I spent the last six years.
Here are 12 lessons I’ve learned after a year of being an entrepreneur:
1. Your first idea, product, blog, podcast will be bad. Do it anyway
Do you remember the first time you learned a new skill or hobby? You probably sucked. But, the more you did it, the more reps you got in, the better you got at it. The first time you do anything, chances are it’s not going to be a perfectly polished version of that idea, product, blog, or podcast. Build it anyway and put it out into the world. No one’s first is ever good. Even first-time hits, like a singer whose first record goes platinum or a movie star whose first film is a box office sensation put in years, or even decades of effort before you ever heard of them. Progress happens the more times you do something. So just keep doing it.
2. You’ll never have a perfect version
You’ve probably heard that done is better than perfect. The first website I built, although I thought it looked awesome, was basic. The user experience was just okay and it didn’t have the functionality I wanted. But the more I created content, the more websites I built, the more articles I wrote, the more real-time feedback I got. I could ask my friends and family about my stuff, but nothing beats the information you get from your audience. The market speaks louder than any friend or loved one. It tells you if people want what you’re offering.
By launching Women in Our Town, and showing up every day for my audience, I learned about them. I got deep insights into the content that worked for them, what resonated and what I could leave on my whiteboard. It helped me get clear on my goals, refine my content, my message, and become laser-focused on serving my audience. So let go of needing things to be perfect before you put your ideas out there. You’ll perfect along the way and likely learn some things about your business from your clients that you didn’t think of.
3. Don’t be afraid to pivot or redirect
Your first version of your business or product is unlikely to be your last. A business is a living, breathing entity. Your business is likely to evolve as you do and to be perfectly honest, it absolutely should. Yet, we’re so afraid to pivot. We feel bound to this imaginary promise we think we’ve made our clients with our very first idea. But I’ll let you in on a secret. Your clients want you to grow, innovate, change and adapt to the times. Otherwise, they probably won’t stick around. Some of the biggest businesses in the world started worlds away from where they have ended up. Did you know that Samsung was a noodle shop? So, embrace needing to pivot, constantly be adapting your strategy, and never forget the golden rule — always be serving your audience or clients.
4. Fail gracefully
Failure is one of the greatest gifts an entrepreneur can receive and it comes in all shapes and sizes — from public embarrassment like bombing a launch, or very small, like a piece of content not performing as well as you’d hoped. The problem isn’t failure, it’s the amount of time you spend fearing it or wallowing after it happens. The ability to persevere after failure, bounce back relatively quickly, and learn is what sets resilient entrepreneurs apart. Some of the best entrepreneurs I’ve connected with, in my relatively short time on this journey, are the ones who take failure in their stride. Their attitude towards it is positive and infectious. They embrace it and learn lessons to become more effective leaders and business owners.
5. Be willing to do anything and everything
A mentor once told me — “never start anything that you’re not willing, ready, and able to do yourself.” Have you ever met someone who considers themselves an entrepreneur but in reality outsources everything to other people? This is not an entrepreneur. This is an investor. Someone who wants to enjoy the spoils of entrepreneurship without doing the work or getting messy. This is a valid business model, but it isn’t entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurs know and understand every part of their business, and more importantly, are willing to do it all. This doesn’t mean you have to do it all yourself, all the time— delegation is critical to success. But it does mean that you can do everything should things ever go tits up.
6. Don’t try to do it all, delegate
Contrary to the point I made above, is the entrepreneur who never delegates, micromanages and trusts no one. Yeah, not great either. While you should be able and willing to do anything and everything in your business when needed, it’s also critical for an entrepreneur to be able to know when to delegate tasks and responsibilities to other people.
As your business grows, you may need to focus your attention on bigger, more strategic problems. It’s why hiring and onboarding the right people is key. Many people fall apart at this stage. They are overwhelmed so they rush to hire, don’t train their staff, and then micromanage their employees till everyone has been driven up the wall. Hire the right people, set your employees up for success, build good relationships with your team. Enjoy not having to do it all yourself!
7. Put relationships first
Businesses are run by people. Our culture portrays business as this non-sentient evil thing, but most businesses at least start with a person or group of people with a mission and vision. The businesses that last and stand the test of time put relationships first.
I was recently talking to a fellow entrepreneur who told me about how a podcaster with millions of downloads, appeared on her show when she was just starting out. At the time she had under 10K+ downloads of her podcast. She now has 200,000 and has exposed her former guest to her audience. You never know who might become a valuable contact or strategic partner. People that might be in the early stages of business, will grow and someday they may even outstrip you. Stay humble and build long-lasting relationships that will stand the test of time, whatever season of business you’re in.
8. Take care of yourself
If you’re an entrepreneur, your business is likely your baby. You pour hours of your life into perfecting your idea and marketing it to the world. And like babies, businesses need a lot of love and care. Unfortunately, we can only pour from a full cup. Passion and drive can only fuel you for so long until eventually, you burn out. The stress of trying to make a business profitable, especially if your neck is on the line financially can be really taxing. Taking care of yourself by getting enough sleep, exercise, and finding healthy ways to unplug from work are all crucial to your health and consequently to your business. Remember, you’re your business’s biggest asset. You can’t deliver from a shallow resource pool.
9. Success isn’t linear
This one took me a while to grasp. Coming from the corporate world where success has one trajectory and that is up (in the form of promotions), understanding what success looks like as an entrepreneur was trickier. What I’ve discovered is that success takes many shapes and forms and not all of them are monetary.
Early in my journey, I was mentored by a woman who is a C-Suite level executive at one of Wall Street’s biggest fintechs. To be in this woman’s orbit and more importantly get her time was a huge win for me. Booking our first client for my digital agency was an incredible milestone for both my husband and me, as was booking our tenth. Every time my podcast gets a download it lights me up inside, every comment or DM from a reader and more recently booking my first and then second speaking engagement in short succession felt better than any sale or paycheck I’ve ever received. Success as an entrepreneur isn’t a straight line. It might be an orb filled with blue light that glows every time an employee expresses how much they love working at your company.
10. Get friendly with the numbers
As much as business is about creativity, passion and all that jazz, every single entrepreneur needs to know their numbers like the back of their hand. And I don’t just mean the financials. I mean the metrics for anything you create — content, social media, web traffic, clients, and yes your balance sheet. One of the quickest ways to lose money early on in a business is to not have a grip on your expenses. One of the slowest ways to grow is to not measure and optimize for your audience. Your numbers tell a story — they show growth, they show areas for concern, they tell you if your product, idea, content is something the market wants. So measure, optimize, and measure again.
11. Find creativity through the work, not through inspiration
Mark Manson writes, in his article 5 Boring Ways to Become More Creative that creativity doesn’t come from inspiration but rather from putting in the reps. Through examples ranging from Darwin’s so-called “aha moment,” which was never an aha moment at all but a culmination of years of studying countless species, to the hours of musical practice when the Beatles were an unknown London band, Manson argues that creativity comes from putting in the work. And I would tend to agree. It’s more palatable and frankly comfortable to chalk up someone’s success to their creative genius, than to good, old, boring hard work. Turns out, most creative people throughout history, had a killer work ethic.
12. Stop manifesting, start doing
Manifestation has become the go-to self-help buzzword for our Reels/TikTok age. Manifesting your dream life, money manifestations, and all kinds of techniques pedaled by influencers makes it easy to fall for the seductive idea that visualizing your dream business, career, life is enough to make it a reality. Unfortunately, that simply isn’t true. Almost 99% of it is consistent action. Action day after day, even when you’re frustrated, even when you feel like it’s all pointless and it’s never going to work. Because if you execute enough, eventually it will. And that’s what separates the entrepreneurs who make it from about everybody else. They have an unwavering belief and they never, ever, give up.
Here’s the secret about becoming an entrepreneur that no one really wants to talk about. It’s tedious and at times soul-destroying. Most of the time you’re in a battle of wills with yourself and your own ego. It’s a far cry from the glamourous world of seven-figure businesses and yachts and first-class travel that we’ve been led to believe. And yet if you can get through the down days, of which there will be many, it’s worth it.
