#24: WINGING IT WILL KILL YOUR ONLINE SERVICE BUSINESS
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Why "Winging It" WON'T Save You Time or Money in Starting Your Business (And what You NEED to Focus on Instead)
I’ll just wing it! Have you heard that saying before? Maybe you’ve even said it yourself.
It often starts as a kid, when you’re in high school sitting for exams you don’t want to do, or preparing for job interviews, anything where you’re not really sure what it is you need to be doing. It’s like if you just turn up – that’s all you need. Go with the flow, and things will work out how they’re meant to.
It’s a romantic view of how to get things done and to succeed in life, and many people do it everyday! They live on a wing and a prayer, flying by the seat of their pants. But does this approach work, particularly in business? Is this ‘she’ll be right mate’ attitude going to get you to your dreams?
Many enthusiastic entrepreneurs, brimming with fantastic ideas, start their journey only to find themselves wanting to quit six months later. I'll share why it's crucial to have a solid plan and a framework to turn your vision into a tangible, impactful, and profitable business.
If you've ever felt overwhelmed or are simply winging it, this episode is for you!
(full transcription below)
Main Points
02:10 The Problem with Winging It in Business
03:01 The Six-Month to Two-Year Struggle
05:02 The Importance of Having a Framework
06:29 Lack of Direction and Aimless Wandering
07:23 The Toll of Trial and Error
08:43 Isolation and the Need for Leadership
10:38 Overwhelm and Analysis Paralysis
11:40. A Skewed Perception of Success
13:21 Focusing on You First
14:13 Developing Skills and Knowledge
17:14 The Power of Words
17:49 Professional Help with Design
18:24 The Importance of Finance Management
20:00 Leveraging Virtual Assistance
22:10 Building a Supportive Community
23:14 Start-Up Success Framework
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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
Hi everyone and welcome back to the podcast today. I'm so glad you're here. I have been thinking about the start of my own online service business or my entrepreneurial journey, as some people like to call it, and how it was very hit and miss. In the early days it really felt like I was just duct, taping everything together and hoping it would stick, and I've been wondering if you've ever experienced the same or had those same thoughts. So that's prompted the topic for this episode. Basically, will winning it kill your online service business or is it the way to go? So let's have a chat about that. 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 16thavcreative.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.
01:17
I'll just wing it. Have you heard that saying before? Maybe you've even said it to yourself. It often starts when you're a kid, while you're still in high school and you're sitting for exams that you don't want to do, or maybe preparing for job interviews. Anything where you're not really sure what it is that you need to be doing. It's like if you just turn up, that's all you need. Go with the flow and things will work out how they're meant to. It's actually a romantic view of how to get things done and how to succeed in life, and many people do it every day. They live on a wing in a prayer, flying by the seat of their pants, but does this approach work, particularly in business? Is this she'll be right, mate attitude going to get you to your dreams?
02:10
I see a lot of new entrepreneurs come up with a great idea for an online business, so they make a logo, they create their Instagram account, and then they wing it. They're so full of passion and brilliant ideas and loads of enthusiasm, but six months down the track, they're ready to quit and say goodbye to their dreams because nothing is working. They started, they dove in headfirst, thinking that that's all they needed to pull them through and that they'll figure everything out along the way. You know they'll cross the bridge when they get to it. After all, there are so many success stories that began with someone going against the grain and jumping right in right. So they think why not me too?
03:01
And quite often what happens with the majority of people who do this is they end up in mass confusion, overspending, not keeping up with their client work, falling behind and falling into a heap. They've actually got no idea of their cash flow, profit margins, what their best-selling services are, or even where their next client is coming from, and it ends up becoming a very stressful situation. There's no business plan, no sales strategy, no marketing in place and no clear business goals, just dreams that become more vague day by day, and this leads to taking impulsive actions that hurt the future of the business. Eventually, they lose confidence in themselves, in their ability, the services they offer, and they start to wonder am I actually cut out for being my own boss? Am I actually cut out for running an online service business? And often, for many people, this is where, somewhere between six months and up to two years after starting their dream online business, they shut the doors and they go back to working in a nine to five job. Their dreams are crushed, their confidence is shattered and they feel embarrassed and uncomfortable explaining to people why they're back in the nine to five world that they hate and we're so glad to get out of. And the sad part is all that confusion, the waste of money and frustration could have been avoided simply by taking strategic steps, one after the other, and embracing their vitality and vision along the way. So I guess that answers the question. Does winging at work? I've sort of answered that question already.
05:02
Now, when you're in the throes of starting your business, I like to think of it, ib's sort of like being in the first flush of a new romance. You're all giddy with passion and possibility for the future and because you're in that state, you can tend to put anything sensible or pragmatic to the side. You don't want to know about the nuts and bolts, you just want to go with the flow and the feeling. But when you decide to start a business, you need some nuts and bolts behind your passion and your drive to make your massive life change successful. You need a roadmap, a plan, a framework to take your vision out of its dream state into something tangible, impactful and profitable. And you can't achieve that by winging it. You need to be visionary and find the ways to make things happen and then do the work. It takes Winging. It costs you emotionally, financially and with your precious time. It's also going to be the most likely reason your business will fail within the first two years. If you're still not convinced, let's have a deeper look at why winging it can be a recipe for disaster.
06:29
When starting your online service business, there's a lack of direction. Going with the flow sounds beautiful, it sounds liberating, it sounds like you're in flow with yourself, but it often leads to aimless wandering. Without having a framework, you’re left second guessing your every move, questions like What should I do next? Am I focusing on the right thing? Is this the right path? They all become your constant companions, and your journey then becomes confused. It's a maze of confusion and eventually what you find is trying to make even the smallest of decisions becomes really hard and you're more likely to make bad, impulsive choices. It's kind of like putting a bandaid on a broken bone. It just doesn't work.
07:23
Trial and error takes a big toll on your creativity, your productivity and your profitability. So sure, learning from mistakes is essential and if you've listened to my podcast before, you will have heard me say many times how important it is to use mistakes as opportunities, as vehicles for growth, and that they're really important in your journey, and that's true and I stand by that statement. But learning by error on purpose is not the smart way to progress in your business. While it's inevitable that there will be mistakes to learn from, by taking strategic steps towards an overall plan inside your framework means that trial and error don't have to be the primary method of your progress. Trial and error can be really costly, both in terms of time and money, which are your two most important assets time and money. We're always chasing those right, so it's sort of like navigating a minefield, blindfolded, hoping you'll step in the right places, but unfortunately, you're going to misstep, and sometimes those missteps can be financially crippling and steal all of your time.
08:43
Entrepreneurship or running your own online service business can be pretty isolating, and when you're winging it, you can't engage the full support system that you have built around you. The people in your business, they need you to be a leader. They need you to make great decisions with great resolve and to really show them the way forward. But if you're bouncing around like a balloon on the wind, no one knows what's coming next or where you're headed or why, and you most likely won't know it either, so it can really lead to you being isolated from the people who can support you in achieving your plans and dreams. So, you want to avoid bouncing around like a balloon on the wind, and that constant bobbing on the wind is also leading to spiraling into overwhelm. It de-energizes you, it exhausts your mind because your mind never knows what to focus on or where to direct its attention. Without having that framework that I keep talking about in place, you can easily become overwhelmed by all the decisions that you have to make, all the tasks to juggle, the strategies to consider, and you become overwhelmed. And overwhelm leads to analysis paralysis, which stops your progress, and it actually leads you to implode with indecision. Have you ever just thought Oh, I don't know what to do, I don't know where to start, I don't know what I'm thinking? That's because your mind is overwhelmed, you've got too many decisions to make and you don't have any sort of goalpost to make that decision from, and that's because you're working without a framework.
10:38
Now, many entrepreneurs have a skewed perception about what success is. They hear so many success stories. You would have heard thousands of, or hundreds of, success stories. I'm guessing you would have seen other people's end results. They've got a thriving business and the natural assumption is that their path to success was really straightforward. But what you're forgetting is that behind every successful business, there's a lot of failure. There's lots of lessons learned, but what's made them successful is having a structured approach. It's the structure that has pulled them out of the mess and back onto the right path. It's really very rare that any true rags to riches success stories relied solely on winging it. Guaranteed, they got their ducks in a row really early on. They got good advice, followed a plan, and had a strategy.
11:40
It's dangerous to get swept up in all those overnight success stories that people like to share on the internet. They're misleading, they're unhelpful. They not only make you feel bad about yourself and where you're at, which is not going to help you. They give a false sense of what is achievable by winging it and it's going to lead you astray. Quite often, it actually takes five years or more to become an overnight success.
12:11
So what should you focus on instead, instead of winging it? You’ve probably got an idea of where I'm heading already, because I've said the word a lot. Instead of winging it, you need to have a framework. You need to develop a clear strategy and focus your energy on the right areas of starting, then building, then growing your business, and it's all having clarity and strategy. The foundation of your business should be built on those two things.
12:43
So, before launching, define your goals, your target audience, and your unique value proposition. Understand your market and competitors. Create a roadmap, the framework that outlines all of the milestones that you need to take to achieve your goals and then the steps that you need to take to reach them. Now, I know you've heard all of that before, but I like to come at it from a slightly different perspective. Before you even decide on your business name, outline the vision you have for the first three to five years of your business.
13:21
What do you want it to achieve for you personally, for you as a human? What do you want your business to do for you? What do you want your business to achieve for your clients? So, what's the impact that you want to make in the world with your business? And, thirdly, what is the best way that you can deliver that to your clients without creating a 24 hours a day, seven days a week job for yourself? Because that's important to think about right at the beginning, because too many people fall into the trap of starting their business for freedom, and then they realize that what they've actually done is create a time-sucking job for themselves. It's the total opposite of what they wanted.
14:13
So, if you get really clear on how this business can work for you to achieve those three big-picture goals, you're getting off to the right start. Then what you do is you can work backwards, reverse engineer the perfect business model that gives you both the business and the lifestyle that you want, and you're creating the framework, creating this structure to build your business on, and it's the first step to your success. And now, here is what's most important during this initial phase, during all this planning, what I want you to do is keep fanning the fire of your vision and your passion and think of ways you can intertwine them into your business. That's what's going to set you apart. Your uniqueness. It will help you create a bold, distinct business that is the only choice for your ideal clients.
15:17
And this is where I tend to disagree with a lot of other experts on growing your business. They all start with the customer. They all start with creating the client avatar first, and I think this is a mistake. You need to start with you. It's your business. You're the heart and soul of it, and that automatically is a qualifier for selecting the right people to work with you. I think it's a mistake to just start with creating and focusing on the customer. I know at the service end, customer first is essential, but designing your business and designing it in a way that's going to create the business model and the lifestyle that you are searching for and want to create starts with you, and this is super important because I can almost guarantee that there are already thousands of businesses offering the services that you do offer or that you plan to offer. Some of them will even, if we're honest, do them better than what you do. So you need to stay firm in your why and your you. They need to be a huge neon flashing light that instantly tells people if they're in the right place or not, and that all starts with you. I get so excited talking about this because it's keeping the heart, the soul, and the creativity in your business. Business is personal; don't let anyone tell you otherwise. So make it personal and start with you, and everything else can stem from that. You're going to have a really valuable business that aligns deeply with you, your vision and your end goal if you do this. Super, super, super important.
17:14
Skills and knowledge are the next thing. Success in your online business requires specific skills and knowledge. You can't wing it when it comes to marketing, branding, finance, and operations. If you don't know these things, do something about it now. Invest in learning these skills or outsourcing them to an expert. Your copywriting is critical in every area of your business, from your emails to social posts to your website copy, YouTube scripts, your marketing, everything you do in your business. Have a think about it.
17:49
It involves words. You're either speaking them, or you're writing them, or you're typing them. Everything you do revolves around words. People don't place enough importance on their words. Words are power. Words are what get sales across the line. Words are what invite people into your business. Words are everything. So, if you're no good at words, either learn the skill or hire a copywriter, and that is going to elevate your business from day one.
18:24
Same with your website. Hire a website designer and get it done right the first time. You will save yourself years of faffing around trying to DIY something and doing a job that you're no good at, unless you're a website designer. Get it right. Get it done right the first time. Hire a brand designer and, again, get it right the first time. Hire an accountant and a bookkeeper. Your finances are the lifeblood of your business, so you need to manage your money really well. So, get help with that early, and you will reap rewards from day one. When you can hire a VA (that's a virtual assistant) or an OBM. An OBM is an online business manager and they are fantastic to help you with the overall day-to-day running of the business, keeping you on track, keeping you focused on what you need to be focused on so that you can do the money-generating activities in your business while they look at the operational side. So you don't want to be doing all the busy work. Your job is to do the visionary work. Remember, I kept talking about before fanning your vision, fanning your passion and making that an intrinsic part of your business. That's your job the visionary work, the work that's fulfilling and is going to make the business create impact and profit and change the world. That's where you need to focus on.
20:00
Community and support. Entrepreneurship doesn't have to be solitary. It's actually better to surround yourself with a supportive community of fellow entrepreneurs. Lean on mentors and experts who can provide guidance, who are an ear for you to talk to about how everything's going, want to just chat, to get ideas off your chest with, bounce things around. And surround yourself with people who are at different stages of business to you. People who are behind you, people who are at the same stage as you, two steps ahead, ten steps ahead, and, really importantly, if you can get in a room with people who are many, many, many hundreds or even thousands of steps ahead of you, that's where you're going to really get the insights you need to fly within your own business and help you really understand what's possible and where you can go. Because when you're in the early stages, when you're just starting, or you're in your first two to three years, your mind has only been opened to limited possibilities. And to really grow and become a true success, a true visionary leader in your industry, you need to have a limitless outlook. And to help you achieve that is by surrounding yourself with people who've been where you can't even imagine is possible yet, and it just makes the whole journey so much more exciting and invigorating, and it keeps fanning that visionary aspect of your business and it keeps fanning your fire and your passion. So surround yourself with other visionary entrepreneurs. There really are so many reasons for not winging it, and I've developed a special framework that does take you through five steps, I feel, that are needed to start and build, continue building your online service business, and I call it the Start-Up Success Framework.
22:10
Step one is to reveal your dreams. Deep dive into your entire dream business idea, uncover what's holding you back. Uncover how to move yourself forwards. Dive really deeply and get specific and make that plan. And step two is the plan with purpose, where you set up your plan, your pricing. You strategize your way to a brilliant and profitable business from day one. Step three is to design with intent your online home, your online personality, your brand assets. Bring them to life in a unique, cohesive way that is melded with your vision, the vision that you're keeping fanning. The vision and passion. Allow it to shine through everywhere so that you can attract the right people and really show yourself as a visionary leader in your field. Cut through all the noise of all the competitors. This is where you're going to stand out.
23:16
Step four is to build with strategy. So grow your business. It's how to grow your business. It's how to, as you entice people into your business, welcome them, nurture them and educate people. Build that audience on autopilot. Do it systematically, streamlined and easily. You want to keep everything as simple and streamlined as possible. I do talk about this a lot. You would have heard me say it before and it's probably something you're going to hear me say many, many more times.
23:52
Step five is to launch your business with confidence, and that means taking big, bold, audacious actions every single day. You don't just launch your business once. You actually launch your business every day, because every single day, new people are discovering you, so every single day, you're launching it to someone new. So keep fanning your vision, keep fanning your passion and go out there big, bold and audacious every day to entice the right people into your business every single day. Now, by following the Start-Up Success Framework, even if you're already in business, you can really turn things around and create a truly impactful, profitable and aligned business that you love. And not only that, it creates the lifestyle that you are really craving, one where you're not building a business that is actually creating a job. You don't want to just create a job. You want to create an impactful, profitable, aligned business. Now, where can you get the Start-Up Success Framework I've been talking about? It's inside our Start-Up Success online course.
25:14
Starting a business isn't just about the logistics. It's a deeply personal journey. It's what I said to you before. It's about bringing you into your business, making you the focus, and that is where you're going to differentiate yourself and shine in comparison to your competitors, even when there's a thousand other people doing exactly the same thing that you do. It's about bringing your dreams to life, creating something you're passionate about and achieving independence while you make a positive impact in the world with your services. And we understand the emotional roller coaster that comes with this journey, but also the excitement and the hope and the determination, and that's why our Start-Up Success course is more than just a compilation of business concepts. It's a comprehensive, hands-on approach that is designed to guide and support you on your journey.
26:17
We celebrate your wins. We help you navigate through challenges and keep you motivated, fanning your vision towards your goals while building your tech stack, getting you online, creating your brand assets, creating your marketing materials, registering your business, making all the behind the scenes processes, putting them into place and welcoming and nurturing your clients with an effective sales and marketing strategy. You start with your dreams and you finish with a complete online service business. It's a no-brainer game changer. So, if you're dreaming about starting your business or if you're still in the early stages where you are winging it, join the waiting list for our Start-Up Success course today, and we can make your business dreams come true, together with a step-by-step framework. The next round starts at the end of January 2024, and the waiting list is open now, and if you jump on the waiting list, you'll be the first to know when the doors open. So jump on the waiting list for Start-Up Success and get ready to start your business with success in 2024. The link is in the show notes below.
27:36
I love this entrepreneurial life. It's such a joyous and challenging ride that's even better than what I could have dreamed of. And even if you're further down the track of your business journey, even if you're past this startup stage or the early stage, I hope that this episode has reminded you of how important it is to keep fanning your vision, to keep pursuing your passion, to keep being on this joyous ride, because it can change your life and if you're feeling stuck, you can get past that. There's ways of moving past and I'm here to help you do that, no matter what part of the journey you're on, whether you're at dreaming stage, startup stage or you're ten years down the track, I have ways and means of helping you build and grow your business with joy and ease, so that you can continue to fan your vision and your passion and grow and create a greater impact in the world. So do jump on a call with me the link is in the show notes below, and I'd love to chat with you about how 16th Ave Creative Studio can help you grow the business and life that you adore.
28:58
Thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you next week on the Brilliant Business Beautiful Life podcast. 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.
