New Business Owner Woes and Advice
Please note that in this article I am speaking from the personal experience of a sole proprietor/creatorpreneur perspective. - I am NOT a business guru. I'm just me, trying to make a living and support my family. :-)
Everyone wants to be their own boss... Schedule their own time... Pave their own way... But not many people realize that working for yourself is not all fun and games.
It's stressful! When things go wrong, it's all on you.
But, when things go right, it can be over-the-top rewarding.
Do you work for yourself or plan to in the future? I have a little advice.
Setting up your business correctly and having the right mindset from the start will save you headaches down the road.
But First... Let Me Tell You
My business has recently gone through so many changes. I've made some pretty major changes that involve my selling platform and where to focus my time. It wasn't easy and the process is ongoing.
I had the misfortune of having my Amazon account hacked... This meant a stop to all payments! I broke one of my own rules and became too dependent on one source of income.
Now I'm back to building up my own site and resources in an effort to future-proof the business. I've had to kick myself in the pants for drifting away from this business model a couple of years ago.
My Advice for Starting Out
1. Choose your business name wisely and make sure to grab your domain and social media handles as soon as possible.
2. Get a DBA certificate and open a separate bank account for your business. It's relatively inexpensive to do this and will help with book-keeping.
3. Speaking of book-keeping, make sure to keep track of ALL your business expenses! I now have a database in Notion that has everything in it's proper tax category.
4. Have themed work days. For example, design new products on Mondays, write blog posts on Tuesdays, etc. It won't always be possible to work this way, especially when inspiration hits you, but if you can pull this off most of the time it will reduce some stress.
5. Don't depend on marketplaces run by others. Learn to build your own store and focus the majority of your efforts there. It's fine to sell at places like Amazon and Etsy but use those platforms to redirect people to YOUR store.
6. Start building your email list from day ONE. When you have a list, you can move from platform to platform without losing your customers.
7. Understand that if you really want to have a long-term profitable business, you're going to have to spend money on services. When you're making a profit, these services are worth every cent.
8. Know that when you live in a house with 7 people... they are going to totally mess up your work schedule!... Have patience and tolerance. - or maybe this is just me! :-)
Most of all, have faith and be consistent. You won't know if your business ideas will work unless you have really tested them.
Planning is my thing... it's the focus of the products I sell.
I used to be a die-hard OneNote planner person. I still design and enjoy those planners but I've gone back to using PDF planners because I love GoodNotes. It's just working better for me right now and allows me to copy and paste information directly into Notion for long-term storage and searchability.
This simple monthly planner has been a life-saver for me since last December.
