Plenty of people start their small business simply to make money. Maybe they hope if it's successful enough, they can quit their day job. Maybe it's about finding joy with being creative. Knowing your why becomes really important when you get to rough spots. Finding meaning & motivation in your business from the beginning sets the tone for your success.
When you first start your business, you're full of hope & optimism but also lots of questions with some really big learning curves ahead. If you haven't taken the time to create a business plan with some sound strategies to know that there is a market for your products, you will start to struggle.
I started my business to give me new purpose as my kids didn't need me as much and I've always been creative and found joy when people loved my designs enough to purchase them. But I didn't know what I didn't know. I learned one lesson after another, with growing pains I wasn't prepared for. I found myself wasting so much time redoing things I should have done differently in the beginning.
I now teach this inside our membership, but I wanted to give some advice to people just starting out to help guide you to a better plan. The first thing you need to do is to brainstorm your business ideas. Sure, you can simply create a design & place it on a print-on-demand (POD) product. But then what? You need some ideas about where you'd like to see your business go. You can do some product research & see what's out there that you love. But you need more than one idea. Have you thought through how to add additional revenue streams? I wish I had caught on to this idea earlier in my planning- because the most successful entrepreneurs most often have more than one source of income.
After mapping out some income streams & product ideas, I like to encourage people to dream. What will your life look like when your business is super successful? What will your days be filled with? I knew that I didn't want to become a CEO and have a large staff. I want a simple laidback business where I can have freedom of my days to work on what's inspiring me. I knew I didn't want to spend half of my time packaging & shipping products. I knew that I wanted a way to connect with people, cause we are all better with a supportive community.
But the important thing about dreaming is to dream beyond your current limits. You'd think we would all be amazing at creating some inspirational dreams. But we subconsciously add limits to what we think is safe to dream about. Your brain is trying to protect you. If I just dream that I'll make enough money to cover groceries, then I won't be disappointed if it doesn't come true.
“You have to dream before your dreams can come true.” -Unknown
So once you've dreamed bigger than your current limits, then you need to look back at your business plan and see if your life will look like what you envision if your business plan works out. I talk about this in the membership, where in my first business, I spent so much time packaging & preparing orders that I rarely got to do what I love, which is designing. So this second time around, I accounted for that & focused on POD & digital download products. And it made all the difference. So be sure to ask yourself if there are any tasks that you wouldn't love doing if you did a lot more of it.
The next part is really my favorite. Finding your niche. A lot of people get stuck at this point; they aren't sure how to find their place in overcrowded markets and just choose a simple product and hope for the best. I did this in the beginning too....no judgement. I'd encourage you to do a second brainstorm session. This time is to list everything that you love, are passionate about, talents you have, skills you've acquired, knowledge you could share....etc. You can list little things, like you love coffee, or cats, or drawing stick figures.
Because the things that make you special, also make your products special.
All those quirky little things about you make you special & unique. I have a chart where I walk people through finding a sweet spot where the things you love & are passionate about overlap with your talents, skills, & knowledge, something the market is missing, & something that people need or are looking for.
Which introduces the next step, oftentimes the most overlooked piece....market research. Sure you can create a product & list it just to see how it does. But a better way is to know that there is a market for it that isn't oversaturated and that you'll be able to make a profit from.
Those are the simplest steps to creating a vision & a roadmap for your business. You can walk yourself through them & come up with a plan for your unique business. I also offer a detailed version with video lessons & pdf worksheets to guide you, free, in a 6 Day Dream Business Plan Challenge where each day a new lesson & pdf is sent to your email giving you time to complete each step.
Just like with most things in life, the things that you love & are passionate about are the things you work hard for~ so you want to design a business that has meaning & motivates you even when things go wrong.
You got this!
Warmest Regards,
P.S. If you want the lessons to walk you through these steps, click here & I'll send them to your email.
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