What I Wish I Knew Before I Started My Business
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[00:00:00] Teri Holland: Same show, new title. Welcome to Success in Mind. I'm going to share with you in a little bit why I changed the name and why I chose success in mind. But before we get into that, let's talk about what we're actually gonna talk about in this episode, which are the four things I wish I knew when I was starting my business before I ever started my business.
And if you are new in business, this is a great episode for you. But even if you've been in business for a while, I think you can still learn from these lessons. Or at least appreciate them because you might relate. You are listening to Success in Mind with Teri Holland, the show for high performing entrepreneurs, leaders, and changemakers ready to take your life and your business to the next level.
If you're ready for whole life success, keep listening. So why the name Change to Success in Mind? This show has been through several evolutions since it began almost eight years. It'll be eight years in May. Can you believe that? I can't [00:01:00] believe it. Eight years ago I launched the show as The Empowered Life, which suited me then, and then I changed the name to the Teri Holland show after getting some advice from a Numerologist and now where success in mind, and I think success in mind really encapsulates everything that I want this show to expand.
But more than that, that name has been rattling around in my mind for probably about two years now. I've been thinking about it, mulling it over. I thought about launching it as a second show, but the content would be so similar. What would be the point? And then last week as I was guiding a group through the five day Launcher podcast challenge, I kept thinking about the name as I was talking to them about the names of their shows, I kept thinking about the name of my.
And I decided to bite the bullet. So first I changed the cover art and updated that. And then right after I had the cover art approved, I thought, you know what? I'm gonna change the name. I'm gonna go for it. So [00:02:00] welcome to Success in Mind. I hope you embrace the new title. I hope you like it. Let me know your thoughts.
As always, find me on Instagram at the Teri Holland. That's the best way to connect with me, and I'd love to know what you think of the new title of the. Now without further ado, let's jump into what we're actually here to talk about today, which are the four things that I wish I knew when I was starting my business before I started my business.
So number one, the first thing that I wish I knew before I started my business was that I won't always love it. I think when we start our businesses, we think that we're doing this thing and we love it, and that we're gonna love every aspect of it. And it's a very romanticized view of what being an entrepreneur, what being a business owner is all about.
And the truth is, is that you're not going to always love it. And even today, after being in business for myself for about 15 [00:03:00] years, I still wanna quit many days. There are many days where I, I. , man, it would be so much easier just to go get a job. But I won't do that because I know at the end of the day, I do wanna be self-employed.
I do wanna write my own schedule. I do wanna make my own income and have full autonomy over my life, so I won't go get a job. Although if the right job were to come up, I'd probably consider it, especially if you caught me on the right day. You're not always gonna love it. There's gonna be days where you want to quit, where you wanna throw in the.
and there's gonna be parts of your business that you don't absolutely love. I don't love doing my bookkeeping. I do it because it's important to my business. It's important for me to have clear records in my business and to keep an eye on my money and on my spending, so I know I'm not mismanaging. My funds learned that the hard way.
I think many of us have been there where tax time comes [00:04:00] around and you're not prepared for how much you owe. Ouch. That one really hurts. That's a tough lesson to learn. So now I know to stay more on top of things and a really great resource for that. If you're like me and you, you know, bookkeeping maybe isn't your strong suit in business, read the book Profit First.
I recommend this book to probably every single client who works with me. I often gift it to my clients. and I highly, highly recommend reading it. And often I have clients who come back to me and they're like, oh, you know, I'm my, my books are a mess. Or I, I need to come up with some kind of system. And I'm like, have you read the book yet?
And they're like, no, not yet. It's sitting on my nightstand Read Profit first. It's an easy read. I'm digressing a little bit here, but I really believe in this system. Profit first. Highly, highly, highly recommend the book, so you're not gonna love every aspect of your business. There's going to be clients you don't enjoy working with.[00:05:00]
Ideally, we want to get to a point where you work with the people who you do really enjoy working with, but what people don't tell you is that you are not going to know who those people are until you work with a bunch of different. And many of those people you won't enjoy working with. I've had some clients who I will never work with again.
That's how we learn Now, I'm grateful to say that every client who I'm working with, I fully enjoy working with, but it wasn't always that way. I had to work with some real, real assholes of clients until I discovered. Who is a client for me and who is not for me, and how to distinguish them very quickly on in the sales process.
So there were clients that I haven't loved working with. There are things I don't love doing in my business. There have been times where I'm really not in love with anything in my business, and it's time to change something to [00:06:00] reignite that passion or just the joy even that I have in my business. So you're not always going to love it, and that's normal and that's okay.
It's also okay if your business isn't your passion, and I know a lot of people out there and a lot of coaches talk about how your business should be your passion. I disagree. I don't think that your business should be your passion. I think it can be your passion. If what you're passionate about in life is something you can monetize and turn into a business, but something you're passionate about might not be something that you can monetize.
Or it might not be something that you want to turn into your business because maybe that passion serves a purpose as a hobby for you. Maybe that's the thing that gets you out of your business once in a while. So I don't think your business has to be your passion and passion is transient. When I look back over my life, my passions have changed, and this is something I really learned by working with Paul Davis because [00:07:00] I always thought that my business was supposed to be my passion.
It's. My passion has changed. My passion used to be theater, that my passion became producing theater, that my passion became personal training and nutrition. It's transient, it changes. I'm also very passionate about growing plants, growing my plants as a hobby. I have no interest in creating a plant business where I sell plants.
That does not appeal to me by any. But I love taking care of them. That, for me, is very meditative to take care of my plants or in the summer to get out in my garden and take care of my outdoor plants. It's relaxing. It's a way for me to shut my mind off a little bit. Uh, I don't wanna turn that into a business.
So what you're passionate about might not be your business, and that's fine. I don't think the two need to overlap. I do think it's great though, if you love what you do or if you enjoy what you. And I also [00:08:00] don't think that there's anything wrong with starting a business strictly to make money because maybe what you really love in life, maybe what fulfills you in life is raising your family and your business is just a means to create the lifestyle that you want to be able to provide the kind of lifestyle and experiences that you want for your family or just for yourself.
So I don't even think you have to love your business necessarily. I. I think you should at least like it though. You're gonna spend a lot of time in it. You should at least like what you're doing, but you're not always going to love it. And even if you do absolutely love what you do and you are passionate about it, it doesn't mean it's always going to be that way.
In fact, it won't always be that way. And there'll be parts of your business you don't love and you'll do it anyway because it needs to get done. Alright, number two. The second thing that I wish I knew when I was starting my business before I started my. is that not everything is an opportunity. [00:09:00] There is a great Warren Buffet quote, and I'm paraphrasing it cause it's not in front of me, so I apologize if I don't get it correct, but close enough.
It's that the difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything. I love that quote. I had to learn that the hard way because I thought everything was an opportu. , when I was in personal training especially, I can't even begin to tell you how many MLMs I joined thinking that would add to my bottom line.
It would add to my revenue that would help me grow and expand my business and create passive income. All it did was create huge effing distractions of my business, because now I had two different things to focus on, and a split focus produces less results. , you wanna have really clear focus in your business.
Not everything is an opportunity. Most things are simply distractions. [00:10:00] I used to get horrible fomo. I thought that if I didn't say yes to everything I was gonna miss out. And what if that was the next opportunity? What if that was my next big client? What if that was gonna take me to some new level of success?
No. No. The things that I have found have made me the most successful. Or staying laser focused, staying in my lane, keeping my head down and doing the work and, and often it's doing the really simple things or the boring things that produce the best results. So not chasing shiny objects all the time, but just really putting your nose to work and getting into the work.
Not everything is an opportunity. I was recently on a networking call, an online networking event, and I shared that with a couple women I was in a breakout room with and I said, not everything's an opportunity. Often there are distractions. And they were like, what? Cuz they were both a bit newer in business and finding [00:11:00] that they were taking all the opportunities.
and yet it wasn't doing so well. So I see this a lot with business owners, especially solo entrepreneurs who have several different things on the go. Don't start a second business until your first business is making money. Don't start. dividing your focus among several things when when you're starting to get something off the ground to really get a business off the ground to make it successful and work.
And by successful, I mean it's making you money. You are profiting, you're making the money that you want to be making. Don't start five other things on the side because now your focus is so split. Nothing is going to work. Nothing will really take off when you start your business. You need to give it time to grow and.
And once it's up and running and you're making money, now is the time to think about, okay, what is the next project? Now you can start something new because the business is running. You have systems [00:12:00] in place. You know, it might not be completely self-sustaining. It still needs your attention, but now you can direct some of your focus into a new endeavor.
Now you can start creating other income streams, but at the very beginning, , you need to stay in your lane. You need to start one thing, make it profitable, then move on to the next thing. I see so many business owners who are dabbling in all these different pies, and I ask them, which one's profitable? And they don't even know.
They don't even know because none of them are profitable. So you need to stay laser focused. Not everything is an opportunity. Most things are distractions get used to saying. And often the people who are telling you it's an opportunity is because they're going to make money off you signing on for that opportunity.
It's not actually an opportunity. They're just selling you something. So be mindful of that, that the person telling you this is a great opportunity. It's probably an opportunity for them. It's not necessarily an opportunity for [00:13:00] you, but how do you tell, how do you know what is an opportunity or what's a distrac?
This is where it's important to be really clear on what your goals are. Where are you going in your business? What is the mission of your business? What is the purpose for the business? And once you know that, and you also know your, your business values and your personal values, Now you can assess every opportunity and you look at those values, you look at your goals, you look at your mission, the purpose for your business, and you evaluate based on that.
Is this in alignment with where I'm going? And if it's not, it is an instant automatic no, and it has to be immediately clear. So if you have to do mental gymnastics to try to connect the dots and say, well, in a roundabout way, it kind of helps me get to where I want, and it's not really direct, but it kind of will help me or it'll help.
N no, it's a no. If you can't look at it and say, yes, that is [00:14:00] absolutely directly in alignment with my mission, with my values, with my purpose. Yes. If you can't say that, it is a definite immediate. . Okay. Number three. This one always gets me in trouble with the branding people and the graphic designers. So before I really get into number three, let me just say I love branding.
I love what graphic designers can do. I think it's an important aspect of your business. So that said, in the first year of your business, what I wish I knew is not to spend a lot of money on branding and graphics and photography because. Who you are in business is going to transform a lot, especially in that first year.
When you're just starting, you might think you know who you are in business. You might think you know what the brand is and what kind of message you wanna get out there. You might think you know who your clientele is, but then as you get into it, it's going to change. You are going to change. You might change your target audiences, your [00:15:00] messaging is going to change.
In fact, when you're just starting, you're probably not even clear on what your messaging is yet. You might have some idea. But as you continue to develop in business, it's going to change. And a year into your business, you will not be the same person that you are when you started. And I mean this for personal brands.
So for the solopreneur, the online business owner, developing a personal brand, don't invest a lot in your branding upfront because you will change, the brand will change. I wish I knew this. I spent a lot of money on branding up front, and it looked fantastic. and I got photos done. I paid a lot of money for professional branding photography to be done upfront and a year later, I was no longer using the same colors that I got with my branding.
I wasn't using the same logo anymore. I'm not using those photos anymore because that was all targeted to who I thought I wanted to work with. And then I worked with a few of those clients and realized this is not who I wanna work. [00:16:00] and I changed. I got to know myself a lot better. I think entrepreneurship is one of the fastest tracks in personal development because you will really get to know yourself as an entrepreneur, so don't spend a lot upfront on branding.
No one cares about your logo like you do until you're ready, until you're a big enough brand that that logo is even going to be recognized anywhere. It doesn't. all you need when you're starting. Pick some nice colors you like. You could get a logo made, but I would get it done very cheaply at first.
Again, branding people don't come at me for this. You wanna have something that you can show and something that makes you look professional when you're starting. But don't invest a lot of money. I would go on Fiver or Upwork, hire a freelancer online to create something that you can use for the time being.
Treat it as a place. But that is just your, your logo for now, to give you something to use on your website and on your [00:17:00] designs. That's it. Then as the business starts to develop and breathe and grow a little bit, and you start to understand who you are and who you really wanna work with. That's when you go and you hire someone to do a phenomenal job and knock it outta the park with your branding, that's when you get the really good logo.
That's where you get, you nailed your messaging. You get the right colors. You get the right images to represent your business, and it will make working with a branding coach or a branding designer so much easier because now you know what you're bringing to the table. It's gonna be much easier for them to design something that's congruent with who you are.
And how you wanna represent yourself in business. See, it's the fun part, right? So a lot of business owners, we start, we want the logo right away because it makes us feel like, like it's a real business. And now I'm a professional. I have a logo and I have look at the colors I'm using and, and no one really cares like you do.
No one [00:18:00] does. That's more about the business owner's ego, and it's the fun stuff. Where should you invest your money when you're just starting your business? I would invest it in training, in coaching, in getting your mindset right, in getting your sales process down, setting up systems in your business, getting your marketing strategy nailed down.
That's where I would invest. And then once you have everything in place and you have clear systems and strategies, and you know who you are, then that's where you hire the really great branding experts and it's gonna make their jobs so much easier because they're not gonna have to be pulling teeth to get out of you who you are.
You're going to be able to communicate that to them and know that in a different way. A really great branding expert is going to ask you questions to help elicit the brand and get it out of you. And often when you're brand new in business, you're not even going to be able to answer those questions, so save your money on branding [00:19:00] upfront.
Just get something done cheaply, something you can use that looks good for. Now, wait a year or so when you really know who you are, then you hire the branding expert, invest some dollars into it, and then you'll get a brand you can really use for a. Okay. Number four. The fourth thing that I wish I knew when I was starting my business before I ever started the business, and this one was probably the toughest lesson to learn and the hardest one to learn.
And that is that your friends are not gonna support you. Your friends and your family are not going to support you the way you might think they will. And I've had to learn this the hard way. , I've realized that my closest friends, they don't watch my Instagram content. They don't pay attention to what I post in stories.
I know this because they'll ask me questions about something and I'll say, well, I talked about that in my story. [00:20:00] Oh, I didn't see that. And I'm like, oh, right. Yeah, you don't. You don't watch my stuff. and these are, you know, and I, I get it for the friends who are not in business, cause my content is all geared towards entrepreneurs, but these are friends who are also entrepreneurs.
One of my coaches said, you can't be a prophet in your own town. So I really took that to heart because the people who are closest to you, who you think will have the. respect for you and really see you as the expert that you are and how you're positioning yourself in your business. They are the furthest from it.
They're not gonna see you that way, and they're not gonna wanna listen to you. Um, and they're not gonna support you the way you might think They'll support you. Now, if they're really good friends and they really care about you, they'll probably support you at the beginning because they think that they need.
but then once you're up and running and they see that other people are supporting you, they will drop off [00:21:00] it. This was a hard lesson for me to learn and it was a really hurtful lesson. In fact, one of my closest friends right now, I, I know she doesn't watch any of my content. I know she doesn't pay attention to anything that I'm doing.
It is very evident when I talk to her and she has no clue what's going on in my business. I have another really close friend who said to me one day, oh, you know what? I've never listened to your podcast. And I'm like, what? You've never, in all the years we've been friends, you've never once hit the play.
Nah, I'm just not interested. It hurts that hurt and it's happened so many times now that I've just kind of accepted that's the way it is. I actually asked on Instagram one day, my stories like, do you expect your friends and family. to engage with your content online. And it was pretty split between people who felt like they did expect that of their friends and family, and then people who said, nah, I don't really expect that.
I [00:22:00] know that they're not interested. And then I had some people reach out and say, I used to expect it, but I've learned not to because they just don't care. I think that's kind of sad and I don't know how. Sit with that. I don't know if that's just how it is, and we should just accept that the people closest to us aren't going to support our stuff.
Or like if that's just how it is. And if you wanna have friends in your life, you just have to accept they're not going to like any of your stuff. Or if that's an indication that we need to find better friends. I'm not sure. It's something I've actually been giving a lot of thought to because I think if, if my friends don't wanna see what I'm doing online, then why are they my friends?
I don't know. I don't know. I'm curious what you guys think. So again, feel free, come follow me on Instagram and send me a message. Let me know. What do you think of this? Do you expect your friends to engage with your content? [00:23:00] I don't know what it is, and I'm, I'm the kind of person who I have, well, I have several accounts, but I don't have one that I would say is a personal account and then a business account.
I have. On Instagram, which is where I spend the most time on social media. I have at the Teri Holland, which is my main account. That's where I promote my business, and that's where I talk about all things entrepreneurship, mindset, success strategies. That's where I share my podcast. In my stories. I give a little glimpse into my life.
It's more behind the scenes content. And then I have another account that's just for the podcast that I'm. likely gonna get rid of because I don't engage in it enough. And then I have an account for my dogs, which is at Fiona and Dutch, and it's just dog stuff. So I don't have like a, this is my personal life account and this is my business life account.
And maybe that would make a difference, but I'm just not interested in doing that. [00:24:00] So what are your thoughts on that? But I, it's something I wish I knew beforehand. I wish someone had said to. Don't expect your friends and family to care about what you're doing because they, they really won't. And when it comes to my family, I don't even think they know what I do to be, to be totally honest, I don't think they get it at all.
Now, I know I said I was going to share with you the four things I wish I knew before I started my business, but I just thought of number five. And so consider this a bonus round. And number five is get your system set up first. So often when we're starting a business, we think, oh, I'll do that later. I'll do that later.
And when later comes, it's too late. So get your bookkeeping organized when you start. Get your systems in the back end of your business. Set up your email systems. Get your onboarding system, your standard operating procedures. Get all of that sorted out at the beginning. You can always change the system later, but at least you have a.[00:25:00]
instead of just flying by the seat of your pants. And then when it's time when you realize, oh, I need a system. It's often because it's too late and you needed that system in place a long time before now it's gonna cost you a lot more time, energy, and money to get it caught up later on. So get all your systems set up.
As entrepreneurs, we're often very creative types and we wanna do the fun stuff in business. and we neglect the systems and the strategies that are going to help sustain the business, get it set up upfront, do the boring things. The boring things in business are where I have made the most money and seen the most success and growth.
My business. It's not all fun in games. It can't be all fun in games. It's business. So stop saying, I'll set that up later. I'll figure out my, my email system later. I'll figure out my bookkeeping systems later. Do it now. Get it sorted out now. And if you can outsource what you [00:26:00] can outsource at the beginning, you cannot grow your business successfully without support in it.
And you can grow to a point. To really grow a business, you're going to need support. So think of that long-term view. Where am I going in a bus as a business owner? Where do I want to see this business in five years, in 10 years? And start thinking strategically now about what you need in place to get there.
So if you need a systems person, .
I know a really great operations person. She's one of my favorite people to refer to. Amanda Pruden of Amanda Pruden, co. And she's been on this show actually before I'll tag her episode in the show notes and also all her contact information as well. She's a great friend of mine. She's absolutely masterful when it comes to operations.
And business, and she has the unique perspective of really seeing your business from that 30,000 foot view in the air. So I highly highly recommend her. [00:27:00] I'll tag all her contact info and her Instagram, all the stuff in the show notes.
[00:27:03] Teri Holland: And that's the other part of it.
This is five. B is outsourcing. You need to outsource before you need to outsource. So outsource before you are so overwhelmed that now you need to do it. Set things up in your business to make you successful from day one. outsource delegate tasks that you can delegate out to somebody else that you can focus on working within your brilliance and what you do exceptionally well.
Alright, so that is five things, not just four, but five things that I wish I knew in my business before I started my business. I think it would've made a difference for me back then. I hope it makes a difference for you now. So if you like this episode and you got value out of it, leave me a five star review.
And if you know someone who would benefit from listening to this episode, please by all means, share it with them. Thanks for spending [00:28:00] time with me today, and I will see you again next week. Bye for now. Bye.
