#22: Unlocking Success: From Online Business Newbie to Thriving Entrepreneur

Written By Samantha Bell
 
 

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My Entrepreneurship Journey: From Confusion to Clarity

Have you ever felt overwhelmed and confused when starting an online business?

That was me once, lost in a sea of endless online courses, tech choices, and advice. But here's the thing - I didn't let that stop me. I want to share with you my journey from being a total newbie to owning a thriving online service business. I'll be pulling back the curtain on my trials and triumphs, letting you in on the embarrassment of failed strategies and the joy of finally cracking the code to business success.

But this episode isn't just about me. It's about you and how you can start a successful online service business. I'll be guiding you through a step-by-step process, emphasising the crucial importance of self-belief and confidence.

And since I'm so passionate about helping ambitious women start their own online service, I share my amazing new course, 'Start-Up Success, ' which helps you get the idea for your business out of your and translate it into a fully launched and profitable online service business - step by step - in just 60 days. Ready to reclaim your confidence and build the business you always dreamed of? Let's get started!

(full transcription below)

Main Points

01:15 My Entrepreneurship Journey: From Confusion to Clarity

03:24 Online Business: A Sea of Confusion

05:05 Overcoming Obstacles and Self-Doubt

06:31 The Pitfalls of Shiny Object Syndrome

08:39 The Missing Puzzle Pieces in Online Business

09:42 The Importance of a Step-by-Step Framework

10:45 The Limitations of Having Only a Plan

11:24 Searching for the Missing Steps

12:17 The Overwhelming Abundance of Information

13:11 Navigating the Nine-to-Five to Online Business Transition

14:34 The Importance of a Supportive Community

15:20 Isolation and Its Impact on Entrepreneurs

16:37 Creating a Complete and Consistent Framework

18:13 Finding the Missing Steps to Online Business Success

19:01 Fast-Track Your Business with Start-Up Success

20:09 Why a Plan Alone Won't Cut It

21:24 You're Not Alone on Your Entrepreneurial Journey

 
 

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Thank you so much for being here! I look forward to seeing you for the next episode.

 
 

The Brilliant Business Beautiful Life Podcast is dedicated to you - because you deserve the business – and life -
of your dreams!

It's time to be brilliant, Samantha Bell
 

PS. Download the Brilliant Business Beautiful Life Playbook and start designing the business and life you deserve today!

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Samantha Bell, Host of the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life Podcast (16th Ave Creative Studio)

Hi, I’m Samantha Bell

I’m all about helping you build the business – and life – you’ve always wanted.

Listen in for the simple, actionable strategies, mindset shifts, and practices you need to make your business thrive. Plus, a healthy dose of self-care, health, and wellness so you can live the life you absolutely adore while building your beautiful business.

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Transcription

00:00

Hello, and welcome back to the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast. The last four weeks have been dedicated to the amazing women who are yet to start their online service business. Today is the last part in the series of Start-Up Success, and it's a little more personal for me because I'll share some of my journey with you, from how I went from a complete newbie to building a successful online service business that helps female coaches and service entrepreneurs around the world to grow their own online businesses. Welcome to the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast, where we share simple, actionable strategies plus the mindset and wellness practices you need to build the business and life you love. Head to 16thavecreative.com/playbook and download your free guide to design the business and life you deserve, today. I'm your host, Samantha Bell, and this is the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast. Are you ready for the business and life of your dreams? Let's get started. 

01:15: My Entrepreneurship Journey: From Confusion to Clarity

These days, I am completely in love with my business complete love, heart, eyes. But it wasn't always that way. When I first started, I had no clue where to begin. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know where to start, where to start looking. I didn't know what I needed, what I didn't need. It was just a whole big mess of confusion. I came from a very strong corporate background. I had run a brick-and-mortar business before, so it's not like I was new to running a business and making money for myself. It's something I had done previously, very successfully. But this online world is completely different to what I knew, and I didn't realise how different it was until I started and started getting into everything. I felt like a complete baby. Because shouldn't I know this? Why don't I know this? So, I had a really clear vision for my online service business, and I knew that it was going to be something big that was going to change my life. But, like I said, I was so confused as to how to get there, I didn't know how to make it happen, and I was so overwhelmed and confused by all the questions running through my head, the number of nights that I did not get any sleep because I was just, you know, my mind couldn't stop. How do I figure this out? What do I do? When do I do it? I don't know. Where do I find the answers? Those thoughts wouldn't leave me alone. I had no idea what tech to choose. I didn't even know about all the options out there, let alone knowing which ones to choose, and I didn't know where to find the information I needed. And then, when I found information, I didn't know who was a reliable source that I could trust. So, yeah, it was just a big shamosal and, like I said, so very different to running a brick-and-mortar business or working in the corporate world. 

03:24: Online Business: A Sea of Confusion

I just felt completely out of my depth, absolutely out of my depth. And the to-do list, oh my goodness, it just kept growing. It was never ending. Every day I'd be adding 45 things to my to-do list, and it became such a stressful event looking at it. I ended up not looking at it because it just made my head hurt, and I spent hundreds of hours Googling. I wasted thousands of dollars buying short courses, long courses, master classes. Also, I downloaded all the lead magnets, hundreds of lead magnets, all trying to find the answers, trying to put all the puzzle pieces together, but nothing delivered. Nothing gave me what I needed. Even my, like I said, my previous business experience in brick and mortar and corporate didn't help. Even my Uni degree that supposedly prepared me for running an online business. 

04:25

I can now see that the concepts that they taught were so archaic and outdated that I had wasted years of my life learning things that were completely unhelpful. So, I was feeling really dejected, really feeling down, and just like I was drowning in a sea of confusion. It just felt like my dreams were never going to happen. Everything was out of reach, and it's easy to lose faith in yourself. You know, it's a bit of a bash to your confidence too. You start not feeling as secure in yourself and second-guessing decisions that you shouldn't. 

05:05: Overcoming Obstacles and Self-Doubt

I'd find an expert, and I would listen to everything they said. I'd read their website, look at their socials, download their things and do what they said I must do, and then I'd find out there are actually three other things that I should have done before that one thing. So, then I would backtrack, do the other three things, try to remember where I was, reconnect all the dots and restart from that point again. It was just so confusing, just so much. Everything was just all over the place, and I didn't know if I was ever going to figure it all out. 

05:43

And I think over time, I tried every tip and strategy in the book, and, honestly, 80% of it didn't work. The number of people out there teaching you how to start an online business, they have no clue. They have no clue about tech. They have no concept that there's an order that you should do things in to maximise your efficiency, or start from profit from day one, or make everything seamless. All they did was make everything confusing because they only knew their little piece of the puzzle. They didn't know the big picture. They didn't look at the big picture. They certainly didn't teach the big picture. It was like, here's this little piece, you go and do what you like with it. 

06:31: The Pitfalls of Shiny Object Syndrome

Off you go. I must admit that I was embarrassed because I should have known. In my head, I should have known. I'd run a business before successfully. I've spent so many years in the corporate world in different areas. I've got so much lived and learned experience that I was embarrassed that I didn't know what I was doing. I was even more embarrassed that I'd spent so much time trying to figure it all out and still couldn't figure it all out, and even more embarrassed again because of the amount of money that I had spent on all these things, thinking it was going to be the answer, and it wasn't. 

07:19

So, yeah, I was really deeply embarrassed, really disheartened, and at one point, it got to a point, it was probably even I don't know six months in, 12 months in, and I thought I can't do this anymore. This is ridiculous. Why am I keeping banging my head up against the wall? Why am I continuously paying money for things that I don't understand, or I don't need or whatever? So, yeah, I sort of hit a bit of rock bottom and felt like just throwing it all in. But the reason I didn't is because, deep down, I still had my dream. I still knew and believed within myself that I was meant for more, that this was my thing. I just had to find my way. I just had to believe in myself, I had to trust in myself, and I had to back myself. And once I started reshifting how I thought about things, that's when things started to change, and I started to slowly claw back the confidence that had been so badly beaten. So, yeah, there was a time where I thought, no, this isn't for me, I better just stop now. 

08:39: The Missing Puzzle Pieces in Online Business

So back to all the puzzle pieces. I guess at one point, I also thought, does anybody have any common sense? Is there such a thing still in existence? Because I was just so frustrated at the time wasting, and I was so tired of hearing the same old rhetoric about starting an online business because everyone was saying the same thing and that is, ‘All you need is a plan’ or a marketing strategy, and I bet you've heard the same you need a plan, you need a marketing strategy, you need a content strategy. Well, yeah, you do need that, but that's not what you need to start your business. There's about 45,000 steps you need to do before you get to that point of creating a logo and creating your marketing plan. So, how are those things going to help me start my business? Why are they telling me this? Why are they leaving out so much? Why are they keeping everything to themselves? 

09:42: The Importance of a Step-by-Step Framework

It was so difficult to find all the missing pieces to help me start my business and run it for profit from day one. Like, seriously, how is a marketing plan going to help me start my business? Like I said, those things are really important, but they come further down the track. So, what I was really searching for, but no one is talking about, is the journey, the steps from having the first thoughts of running your own business to actually implementing all those 45,000 steps you need to take and knowing when to take them and why to take them, to transform my dream, my thoughts, into the reality. And if you want the real, uncomfortable truth, a simple plan isn't enough to turn your idea into a thriving online coaching or service business, at least not by itself. And here's why. Merely having a plan won't cut it in reality. 

10:45: The Limitations of Having Only a Plan

A plan on its own can lead to confusion or lack of clarity, especially when it's not considering the big picture view, which was what all the other things were doing. They're only looking at one piece of the puzzle, not the big picture. A general plan doesn't give you the specific steps you need to take the idea out of your head and turn it into a business. It leaves you grasping at straws. Where are all the middle steps? You're bouncing around different concepts that don't connect the dots in between. 

11:24: Searching for the Missing Steps

So that's why I spent so long Googling, desperately seeking answers to the thousands of questions I had, only to waste hundreds of hours lost falling down rabbit holes trying to find the puzzle pieces and then put them all together, and what did I get at the end of it all? A big, confused, scribbled mess. You should have seen my notepad. It was idea, idea, idea, idea. And then, it was so confused and so disoriented that I couldn't even understand what I'd written down or which step came first. If I couldn't understand my own writing from putting together all these bits and pieces, what was I going to do? I was overloaded with information. 

12:17: The Overwhelming Abundance of Information

There's just so much information around, and you'd actually think that that's a good thing, right?

But this abundance of advice and information is confusing. It leaves you feeling overwhelmed and really unsure of where to start. And there's so many programs, products, and courses that they make really big promises, but they fall short, and none of them seem to cover everything. Like I said, they're only just one little puzzle piece, whereas we want the whole box. We want the puzzle box so we can put it all together. They only teach you the bits and pieces, and then they're not in any particular order. So, you constantly feel the need to keep searching for and buying more, in the hope that one day you're going to stumble across the holy grail and have an ‘aha moment.’ Well, for me, that moment never came. 

13:11: Navigating the Nine-to-Five to Online Business Transition

Plus, the other thing when you're a start-up, you're pretty much on your own. You're it. Without anyone to help keep you on track or give you that roadmap. It's really easy to get side tracked by all the shiny objects, and let me tell you, shiny objects syndrome is real, it's a thing, and I was very guilty of getting side tracked by all the shiny objects out there. It's actually quite debilitating. 

13:40

So, it was not only a lack of clarity around what I needed to do, when, and why. There was the isolation. I was the only person starting my own online business. There's no one else doing it with me. There was no one I could really bounce ideas off. There was someone else around at the time who had just started a business, but they sort of got out of it quite quickly, too. So, there wasn't the ongoing support. Oh, how are you going with this? How are you going with that? What do you think about this? No opportunity to bounce ideas off and talk and work things out together because sometimes having that community or just someone in your corner who understands what you're doing and why you're doing it and can help you get there. That was all missing. 

14:34: The Importance of a Supportive Community

So that was a bit of something that held me back too. I'm very independent and I love working things out on my own, but, as I said in one of the other episodes, being a successful entrepreneur is not doing everything yourself. It is reaching out to quality people around you and having the right team around you mentors, coaches, etc. So, I need a mentor at that point, but I didn't know that I needed a mentor, so that held me back. There's all these things that I just had no clue about, which left me floundering. 

15:20: Isolation and Its Impact on Entrepreneurs

But I pushed through because I knew that this was for me, so I pushed through, kept going and, despite getting all side tracked and the shiny object syndrome, I just started figuring it all out, and I put it all together. I actually sat down and started to think, okay, what did I do that worked? What did I do that didn't work? Why didn't it work? Or why did it work? And just getting a little analytical about things, and by doing that, I sort of was able to create a process from the beginning to the end. And what I've been able to do now is put that process into some of my client work as well, because during this whole time where I was trying to figure everything out, I was actually doing client work as well. So, I was floundering around, bumbling along in the background, trying to get everything sorted out, but I was still also working in my business because, you know, it's a business. I need to make money, I need to work with clients, and that's my joy and what I love to do. So I was able to do that and, in the background, figure all this stuff out. So, it was actually a really good process because I was learning and growing my business. 

16:37: Creating a Complete and Consistent Framework

And then a lot of the clients that come to me, they were exactly the same place that I had been. They didn't know how to start, didn't know what to do, didn't know where to turn and were completely overwhelmed. And the majority of them hate tech with a passion, dislike it, don't understand it, don't want to do it, no clue. So, they come to me because I solved that problem for them and would do the tech for them. But I guess where I was going with that is working out the what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and creating a bit of a process or a framework. Eventually I was able to then transfer that information into my project work with my clients, and I was amazed because I could see it helping them in their businesses too. I was able to guide them I was able to say okay, you're at this point, so this is the next step, and then this is the step after that, or you've missed this step. We need to go back here and fix this up first, then we can move on to the next. It was like they had their moment, the aha. Everything starts to fall into place. The confusion and the overwhelm and the frustration just fell off their shoulders, which was really beautiful to see. It was quite satisfying to me because it's a process that I had figured out. I was able to help them with it too. 

18:13: Finding the Missing Steps to Online Business Success

Long story short, yes, a plan is a great way to get really clear on what you want and start the process of building your online business or your side hustle. But it's actually not the be all and end all, because you also need the step-by-step process. You need all the nitty gritty. You need a framework that tells you what to do, when to do it, why you need to do it and how to do it. All that tech, the mindset, the tools, the prompts, the accountability, everything to help you just get it done quickly, easily, without frustration, without wasting time, without wasting money, so that you can transition from your nine to five into a thriving online service business quickly. 

19:01: Fast-Track Your Business with Start-Up Success

It wasn't just having a plan that really turned things around for my business and for my client's business; it was creating that complete, consistent, repeatable framework, and it would have been amazing if I had discovered it earlier. Certainly, my business would have grown more quickly and more easily without all the stress and self-doubt that I had. But I'm sort of glad the beginning was a bit icky and confusing because I've been able to create something really meaningful that can help others, too, and so that no one else needs to go through the same trial and error I did and waste years or months or thousands of dollars trying to find the answers to the what, the how, the when and the why of building their online business. Instead, now I have a step-by-step system that gets them genuine results without wasting time or money and happens in a beautiful flow. It's just priceless. It really is. This can really help you. 

20:09: Why a Plan Alone Won't Cut It

So, if you want to escape the nine-to-five grind, start with downloading my free 9-5 Exit Plan so you can map out your freedom in the three hours and the links below in the show notes. But also, if you really want to fast-track things, get on the waiting list for my amazing new program called Start-Up Success, which is where I use this framework that I developed so you can build your business from scratch without overwhelm, without confusion, without falling down the Google rabbit hole, without any wasting of time or money, so you can start your business in 60 days. Start-Up Success is using the exact framework I created so you can start your business with ease and joy, and I've got a very special limited spot Foundation Round. It's opening at the end of October, so you can actually give notice and start your own business in 2024. Isn't that amazing? You can literally stop dreaming and start doing what lights you up. So, jump on the waiting list today for Start-Up Success. You will be so glad you did. The link is in the show notes below. 

21:24: You're Not Alone on Your Entrepreneurial Journey

If you've been feeling lost and confused about figuring out how to start your online business, I really hope that this episode has reassured you that everything you're thinking, everything you're feeling, you're not alone. 

21:39

It's such a common problem and there is a solution that will give you the exact step by step process of setting up your business to be successful from day one. Remember, you can do it and now, right now is the time for the brilliant business and beautiful life you adore. Thank you so much for being here, and I hope you enjoyed our Start-Up Success series and are fired up and ready to start your own online service business. Thanks so much for listening. I'd love to know your biggest takeaway from today's episode, so leave me a comment below or send a DM on Instagram. If you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe button wherever you listen to the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast and feel free to share it with someone else who'll love it too. I look forward to seeing you for the next episode and remember the time is now for your brilliant business and the beautiful life you adore.

Samantha Bell

Hello!

I’m Samantha Bell, the Creative Director & CEO of 16th Ave Creative Studio.

Based in Brisbane but serving clients around the world, 16th Ave Creative Studio specialises in helping service businesses become the stand-out choice for their clients—even in the most crowded markets.

Work with us to supercharge your online presence and drive tangible business growth through strategic Squarespace website design, copywriting, marketing and brand identity creation.

It’s time to be brilliant!

Samantha

https://16thavecreative.com
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