[00:00:00] Emma: Not everyone should own their own business. Ooh, I know, controversial, huh? Well, I just don't think everyone is suited to having their own business.
You might think you are, you come out of corporate, you've got this idea, you want to make a difference,you want to be in charge of your own time, you want to have flexibility, all the things, but the reality and the dream can be two really different things.
[00:00:26] Don't get me wrong. I love having my own business, but I am seven years in and I've done the hard grind and I am not interested in that anymore. I reckon there's a few things people don't necessarily realise until you are in the thick of business ownership.
[00:00:42] And I thought I'd talk to you about them today. If you're thinking about starting a business, you've got your own business and you're like, why isn't it working for you? Maybe some of these tips might help. , number one is no budget. My goodness. In corporate, you're normally working with bigger budgets, so it's much easier to get stuff done and to work on bigger projects, right?
[00:01:04] When you're running your own business, Your capabilities, in terms of resourcing and time are a lot less. Sometimes you need to be okay with doing things on the cheap scrapy, non-perfect, et cetera, et cetera. When I first started out, I was on the train and I thought, I do need a web presence.
[00:01:23] So I got on GoDaddy. . I registered my business. I'm not proud of this by the way. I registered my business. Bob's your uncle. I had a website. I had a rule with myself when I first started my own business that I would not spend any money until I had made money, which meant I didn't spend any money for fair amount of time, right?
[00:01:42] Number two, You don't have anyone to answer to. Woo hoo! You don't have a boss. Well, you are the boss. No one is going to validate your choices or hold your hand when the going gets tough. You don't have the office network, although co working spaces work just as well, for building some camaraderie, but you do not answer to anyone.
[00:02:03] That is a pro and that is a con. I don't answer to anyone. I could procrastinate all day and no one's going to fire me. But also I'm probably not going to make any revenue. Number three, the hours aren't as set, especially in the beginning. You'll probably be needing to work some nights, some weekends to get your ideas off the ground.
[00:02:25] You need to prove yourself in a new market, in a new way,in a new business, and that takes work. When I first started out, I was offering coaching sessions in the evening. Cause I'm like, I'll take anything that I can in the evening. And do you know what happened? Everyone wanted evening sessions. When I stopped offering evening sessions, guess what?
[00:02:46] They all moved to daytime sessions. Amazing. Amazing. It does get easier over time, especially if you set it up correctly or if you've evolved differently, but going into business for yourself, thinking you're always going to be working less than your corporate hours isn't always the case to begin with.
[00:03:04] In fact my first year in business, we had a great year. We actually had a really good year from a revenue perspective because I knew what the family needed. I was very clear on what I needed to bring in from a revenue perspective and how much profit we needed. I knew all of those things. I worked my butt off and my husband was like, this is not sustainable.
[00:03:24] I'm like, yeah, you're right. Well, I didn't tell him he was right because why would you say, tell someone that they're right, that you have to live with every single day. The other thing about, the flexibility of hours is yes, I had flexibility of hours, but I had to work really hard on getting my mindset out of, I sit at this desk from nine to five, Monday to Friday, even if I'm the most unproductive I've ever been.
[00:03:49] I had to shift that mindset to say, Hey, if I get these three things done, I can go have a coffee. I can go for a walk around the block. I can take my 16 year old dog and we can go have some fun. But it took me a while to get out of that corporate nine to five kind of got to be sitting at your desk, smashing through stuff, spending every minute being productive.
[00:04:07] That's just not how it works. And now I don't even do that. Now I have a nap every single day and I love it and that's the flexibility you get for having your own business. Number four, you are in charge of your paycheck. How much money you make is in your court. I find this liberating. I am in charge of my own paycheck.
[00:04:29] Don't you reckon that's amazing? I mean you need to do things to get that paycheck but you're still in charge of it. You have to also organise payments. I found that a drag. Tax. We love the tax man. The tax is the privilege of doing business. There are more bills to pay as a small business owner. So many more bills.
[00:04:50] Don't even get me started on subscriptions. And then the need to be across all of this. So you don't get pounded by the ATO. Shout out to Jamie Juraski. he is my bookkeeper from Oak Business Solutions. And, , I just talk to Jamie and I get it all sorted. It's lovely. Number five, you have to do business development.
[00:05:11] Oh, I know. When I tell people that their face drops and I'm like, what's the matter? Business development, it means you get to go out and build relationships and get connections, which might lead to some amazing work
[00:05:23] and meeting some amazing people. Oh my goodness. If I had a dollar for everyone who said to me, can you just do my BD for me?
[00:05:29] I would be very rich I need to put a PSA out for business development. It can be fun. I promise it can be fun. We overthink it. We overcomplicate it. We don't realize we necessarily have to do it. But if you're the CEO of your own business, who else is going to do it? Yes, you can outsource it, but they are not you.
[00:05:49] They don't bring your vibe and your vibe attracts your tribe. So you have to do the business development. At the moment, we are smack bang in the middle of a challenge with the thriving women gang. The challenge is to do one hour a day. of business development for the entire month of October. I get so excited about this.
[00:06:11] Now everyone's doing a different one. We can all see each other's plans. We all have a plan. I think that's really important. You don't want to sit down for your hour of power of business development and be like, who should I call? No, no, no. You want to do all that thinking beforehand. So if you're in the corporate market, you would spend a lot of time on LinkedIn.
[00:06:29] If you're in the business to consumer space, you might spend the time on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. If you're anything like me, you want to get personal with people. And that means belly to belly, face to face. I love meeting people. I also love picking up the phone. I know, I know I'm a dinosaur. I can't help it.
[00:06:45] I just love picking up the phone
[00:06:46] and love talking to people. BD. We all have to do it. It is a non negotiable. I recently told a group of people that I. counted up the hours I'd done VD. So I've been in business for seven years. Now, to be fair, I work about 40 weeks a year, not 52 weeks a year. I work about 40 weeks a year.
[00:07:05] Every day for seven years, I have done an hour of power a day. So you do the math on that, five hours a week for 40 weeks, times seven. I know I don't want to do the math on that, but anyone, if you're listening to me and you're doing the math, tell me what that is. It's a lot. It's a lot of BD. And as the CEO or as the director, we need to show up and do that.
[00:07:30] If you don't have the want, or the need to be the face of your business,you cannot go into business. You need to be visible. You need to do business development. Yeah. And number six, I reckon some people are just more suited to clocking in and off on an, in and out, in and out, right? They get the job done.
[00:07:52] They get a regular pay. They clock off. They don't think about it anymore. I just don't know how many jobs are out there like that anymore. Really? Even when I worked in an organization, I didn't click off. but some people just like that. Some people feel like they can have more impact working in an organization, especially our beautiful not for profits of which I spent 12 years in World Vision Australia.
[00:08:14] And I loved my job and I gave everything to my job. And I love the impact my job had, but I love this one even more,
[00:08:21] because we're impacting in a different way. Now we help women be financially secure. And I couldn't be more happy with that. It sounds really exciting to start your own business.
[00:08:32] I get it. But I want you just to think about the factors around. Are you prepared to do those things that we've talked about? It is not suited to everyone. In fact, I've had many a clarity call when they have been in consulting roles, normally consulting gigs. And so I'm thinking about going out on my own and I say to them, are you prepared to do business development?
[00:08:56] And they're like, Oh no, I'll get someone else to do that. Who else will you get to do that? I'm super curious. Who else will you get to do that? Don't do that. You don't give away your power. You don't give away your business development. If you want to start your own business, go for it, but just go in eyes wide open.
[00:09:11] What do you think? What have I left out? Have I left anything out? And by the way, if you're listening to this and you're leveling up your business, same thing applies. It's just leveling up, right? Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this one. This one's been a fun one because they've been a bit heavy up until now over the last little while because we've been dealing with some really serious situations and I don't want to make light of it, but this one is a fun one.
[00:09:33] And if you're thinking about starting a business and you're already in an organization, come chat to me. Let's have a clarity call and let's see if you would like to do your business development. Take it easy.
