Introduction
Welcome back to the Coaching Hive Podcast. I am so thrilled you’re here for the episode this week. Last week, we were talking about the fact that as an entrepreneur it would be nice if there was a step-by-step approach to building your business that just worked, that you could have every single thing that you needed right. In one list.
And we talked about the fact that that doesn’t necessarily work, right? You can buy lots of different resources free or paid and get a really good approximation of the things you need to do to build your business. But the fact of the matter is that your business is a living, breathing organism that is as unique as your fingerprint, which means there isn’t a single step-by-step process that will work for everyone, and it will always have some gaps in it.
So you might be curious now you might be asking yourself, if there’s not a step-by-step guide that works for everyone that has all of the steps all in one place, what exactly is involved in building a business? Because I don’t really know that much about building a business and it’s tricky, right? It feels a little bit overwhelming.
You’re building a business, but you can’t quite figure out all that’s involved in doing that. So you start learning, you start making these lists, but then you discover even more and your lists grow. And if you’re anything like me, it means your sticky note notes take over your dining room table.
Let me give you an example of what this looks like. When I first started my business, I started with a podcast and I thought, okay, great. I am going to get my podcasts going. And then I’m going to do a founding member launch, which is something that Stu McLaren talks about as you launch a brand new membership.
I’m listening to these other podcasts about how you do this stuff and I feel like I’ve got this great big picture of what to do and even understand the details. I start recording my podcast episodes and I get them out there and I realized, wait a minute, people don’t just come to the podcast episodes. I’ve got to have an audience to get them there.
I started figuring out how to build an audience. And as I’m doing this, my membership’s launching. And then I’m realizing that I don’t really have a great journey for my members in their membership. So how am I going to make that work at the same time, I’m still trying to figure out this audience building thing and the list kind of snowballs, right?
You’ve all been there. We’ve all been there at one time or another in building a business. It feels like every time you turn around, there’s a new book to read, a new article, a new Facebook post that you go, “whoa, that’s mind blowing!” So let’s dig into how you build a business when it feels like there’s always these new things that you’re supposed to have known about.
Let’s talk about that today. If you are ready to get started, grab your notebook, grab your tablet, whatever you’re using to take notes on today, get your water and a snack. And if you’re ready, with our theme of simplicity, clarity, and vision for 2022 in mind, let’s jump in!
The Details of Building a Business
You heard me talking about what happened when I started my business, I had this really high level view of what it meant to start a business. And even though I had started a business in the past, this one looked a little bit different. This one included a podcast for starters, and that was something I had never done in the past. Until about three weeks before I started my podcast, I had never even listened to a podcast. I wasn’t a die hard podcast fan. I had never listened to one until we started learning through podcasts.
Then I bought my first business book and I’m reading through it and then realizing, wait a minute, I need another one. And I need another one. And another one because it felt like the more I learned, the more I realized, I didn’t know all of the different components involved in building a business. And it kind of led on this rabbit trail of business books and articles and Facebook groups until it was just kind of swimming all around.
So how do you learn what’s involved in building a business without the overwhelm? Unless you’re going to go back to school and get your MBA or pursue some kind of master’s in entrepreneurship, you’re going to have to find this information out in the wild. So here’s what I would suggest every entrepreneur do. Whether you are an experienced entrepreneur or you are brand new to the entrepreneurial world, the first thing is to take time each week to learn about entrepreneurship. Take time each week to learn about entrepreneurship, read posts from your favorite entrepreneur. Find articles. Start on a book. Listen to that audio book. If sitting down to read a book isn’t feasible for you, grab the audio book, play it while you’re cooking dinner while you’re driving somewhere, when you’re getting ready in the morning, any little snippets of time that you can sneak in, go for it.
Idea 1: Take time to learn about entrepreneurship every week. Don’t assume that it will just come to you or that, if it’s not “natural”, maybe I’m not meant to do this. No. We have to learn this stuff. This is not something that we are born knowing how to do, we have to learn it, but promise me that your learning will be progress driven.
You’ve heard me talk about progress driven learning in the past. In fact, we talked a little bit about it last week. Progress driven learning is the concept that whatever learning you’re doing, it’s going to help you make progress and take action in your business. So if you are just learning about entrepreneurship, but at some obscure angle that will never impact your business, unless you have loads of time, I would set that aside and focus on something that’s more applicable to your current situation. We want to be focused on what you need right now or what you need in the near future so that you can go ahead and plan for it. So that’s idea.
Idea 1 Recap: One is to take time to learn about entrepreneurship every week.
Idea 2: The second idea that I would offer for you is to create an idea notebook so that you aren’t doing everything at once. Have you ever been somewhere? This happens for me when I’m in the shower, have you ever been somewhere that the ideas just start flowing? You’re thinking, oh, I should do this. And maybe I need to think about that. And oh, by the way, maybe this offering might be the next kind of revenue stream I want to incorporate into my business. Have you ever had that moment? You’re in flow.
Remember Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow”? It feels like everything just kind of falls away and you’re in the moment, everything is truly flowing in your brain and you have these ideas, get them down in your idea notebook. I actually carry one in my purse and one stays in the house so that I always have one. And the purpose is to get all of these ideas down so that you don’t feel like you have to implement all of them right now, because if you try to implement everything right now, your business is going to be so complex, so complicated that you’re going to burn out or resent it. Okay.
So when you are just learning about business, lots of new ideas are going to come to you. As you’re learning about entrepreneurship, lots of new ideas are going to come into you. You’re going to see people posting ideas for you and you think, yes, this is it. I need to do this. And suddenly that list is really long. Go ahead and get it down.
What happens in writing it down is that you don’t have to worry over remembering it. You can set it aside and come back to it when your business is ready to look at that idea.
Idea 2 Recap: Create an idea, notebook, get everything down, get it out of your brain so that you don’t have to worry about it so that you can keep learning about what’s involved in building your business and implementing what you’re learning.
Idea 3: The third idea here that I want to share with you today is to accept that there will always be things that you don’t know about. That’s a big one, except that there will always be things about business that you don’t know about, or that you wished you had known three months ago or that you know now and cannot figure out how you could implement them just with your situation currently.
Just accept that there are always going to be things that you didn’t know about, that you wished you had known about, that you wish you could implement, and recognize that it’s okay not to implement everything right now. Taking it one step at a time like this, when you take time to learn, when you create your idea notebook to set aside the stuff that’s not relevant right now you are inviting room for continuous growth. You are saving space for new knowledge and then you get to step into your business instead of watching it from the outside.
You’re taking it one step at a time. You’re making change happen. You’re building that business while you’re learning about it.
Idea 4: If you find that this kind of concept feels really big, I’ll give you one last idea to help you kind of think about the idea of what’s involved in building business. And that’s to find a mentor, someone who is at least 10% ahead of where you’re at, who can offer you advice, who can guide you, who can listen to your situation and help you see things from different angles. That is going to be priceless. As you’re thinking about how to build your business and figuring out what’s even involved in building a business.
Action Item
So this week, because so many of our listeners are new to building a business. What I’d like to do is focus your action item on something that is simple, but will move the needle quite a bit.
Action Item: Choose two articles to read this week about entrepreneurship and growing a business. Now I’m not going to narrow it down any further than that for you, because each one of you is at a slightly different point in your business. You have, as we’ve talked about a unique business, as unique as your fingerprint.
For me to tell you to go find an article on XYZ may not be relevant for you right now. What I’d like you to do is choose two articles to read about entrepreneurship and growing a business this week that are relevant for YOUR living, breathing organism of a business, and think about how you can use what you’ve learned, whether it’s something you can implement right now, or it is something that you want to put in your idea notebook for later.
Last Thoughts
So as a quick reminder today, we were talking about the idea that you want to build a business. You are building a business, but you can’t quite figure out everything that’s involved. It feels like every time you turn around, there’s something else that’s popping up. You learn, you’re making those lists, but really what do you do? How do you manage this? And so we talked about three ideas:
Idea 1: Take time to learn about entrepreneurship every week. And in fact, that circles directly back to your action item for the week.
Idea 2: We talked about creating an idea notebook to get down all of the things that you’re learning that aren’t necessarily applicable right now, but perhaps they would be good for the future.
Idea 3: And then to give yourself some peace by accepting that there are always going to be things that you didn’t know about or don’t know about in terms of building your business. There’s always going to be something new that pops up and the sooner you can recognize that it’s okay to not have known that three months ago, when it would’ve really helped, the better off you’re going to be, that your mindset will allow you to keep moving forward with much more ease.
Action Item Recap: And we talked about your action item to choose two articles to read this week about entrepreneurship and growing a business and then implement what you’ve learned or if it’s not applicable right now, put it into your idea notebook for later.
I hope that was helpful.
That’s all I have for you today. I look forward to seeing you back here next week for another episode of the Coaching Hive Podcast, where a focus on mentoring and community removes the overwhelm of building your successful and profitable business and adds in a dose of momentum.
Until next time, have a healthy, safe, and happy week!
