Coffee with a Rebel Podcast 

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Show Notes 

In this episode, you'll learn:

• My thoughts on starting a business  
• Questions to consider when starting a business

Links 

The Rebels Den 

Goal Setting Tool Kit

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Full Episode Transcript

I want to talk about your business idea and share a little bit of my own journey. Aside from what you probably already know, if you have been listening to this podcast, I started my handmade business in 2005. I also had a desktop publishing company, and along my journey even had a brick-and-mortar store before I stepped into coaching and consulting. I want to share this because I believe that Entrepreneurship is a process, and sometimes we start with one business idea just to change it and pivot later to make some changes and I believe it's all part of our personal growth. I started with art, and I got away from it for just a little bit and am now back to it, but I'm also able to balance my coaching and consulting along the way, and again, it's about experimenting learning, and figuring out how all of the pieces fit into your own life.

And coming up with a business idea can be a bit of a challenge. Some of us have a ton of ideas. The so so many, right there is an unlimited well of ideas that we have, and it can be really challenging to just come up with narrowing down to one of them. Maybe you're somebody who wants to start a business by can't come up with a single idea at all on what to do in business and I'm a big fan of Start where you are. Because again as I've mentioned, it will evolve over time.

Your target market may evolve over time and it's all about the growth you're going through in your personal life as well as your business, so. The problem is that when you have too many ideas, obviously, you may never get to the stage of taking action, because you're stuck with that idea overwhelm and when you don't have any ideas, and you still want to be an entrepreneur, you'll also get stuck in the not taking action stage. And maybe you already have a business and you might want to develop a second one or develop another stream of income. All these questions I'm getting ready to share with you to explore can help you get clear on some of them.

So the first question I want to pose is this entrepreneur life, something that you really want to pursue, and you want absolutely 100% yes, because it will challenge you in ways, you have never been challenged before your entire life.

I promise you that you will face fear, doubt, the stories you're telling yourself and so many other things that are trying to get in the way. You will face people that are already in your life, saying, "Oh, just stay safe and stick with a job", I promise you that. There will be people who do not believe in you or your business idea, not because they don't love you, but because they just can't see that being a thing.

And I will say this, because when I started my business and I said well, I want to write books, too, and to help people I was told, "I can't have the cake and eat it, too", and a kind of took a step back and thought in my head, watch me. And I am now at a point where I am looking at the cake, enjoying what it looks like, but I'm also eating that cake. I am, I'm doing all of that, so you will face many many obstacles a lot of them self-imposed, some of them from the outside world with some pushback.

Another thing to ask yourself. Are you psychologically prepared for your business start-up process? Again, It comes back to mindset and a lot of the things that you will be facing because you are now going to be responsible for your own income. You are no longer depending on that paycheck from another person's company, etc. It is going to be all on you and here's the thing, I'm not telling you to give up your job, as you can have a job and start your business That doesn't make you any less and you can grow your business to the point so that you can leave that job behind because you are now officially replacing your income. There's been plenty of times when I still held a part-time job while building my business like it's a thing. I freelanced my virtual assistant work, I consult on projects to make money, like coaching and consulting and art may not be the only thing I'm doing to create income. You're not limited at all!

And then think about what your goals are for the future right, and have an episode about how I do the goal-setting process, and I have a tool kit that you can get access to through my website at the Rebels Den Dot Com.

What are your goals for the next year and three years? Maybe five years. I don't do long-term necessarily because, to be honest goals change. Things are always subject to change and doing long-term goals can really hinder some cause you be like "Oh, I have to stick with it because I said that's what I was going to do". No no. You can make new goals and change your mind anytime you like and so. I don't do long-term and my long-term is a year. Those are timeframes for goal setting is a year. For some of them, I might push a year and a half but a lot of times. It's just a year. That's what I work with because I work in ninety-day increments, and then I go to a year, being the sort of ultimate deadline. And can set goals any time, you're not stuck in "Oh God, I said I was going to do this but it no longer feels good, so let's take a step back in and stop, I can't do anything else".  And you can change your mind and make new decisions. Any time you want to your goals.

Something that you want to ask yourself is how much you want to earn in about three to five years. And I see this a lot and the communities that I hang out in online that they're not making money fast enough. They're not reaching their goals fast enough. Struggling to get business whether this is a service or product-oriented, or like there's this struggle in. They're trying to make ends meet. That's why I say hang on to your job as long as you can or get a part-time job to supplement. Like there's nothing wrong with that.

But have a clear goal of what you would like to earn in a few years from now and then know this takes time. Something that I've learned in my time being a bookkeeper and studying for my accounting degree is that businesses don't necessarily make money in the first two to three years. There might be you know in the red a little bit, and that's okay. In some ways from the business house perspective, not necessarily from your own personal paycheck. And there are things that I think that you need to do you, you know how to set up a business and different processes as far as calculating for your money in seeing how well you're doing. Now there are some businesses that do really really well from the get-go and you're not even worried about being in the red and that's awesome, but that may not be the norm and it's totally okay to piecemeal yourself until your business does the amount of money makes that you want to make.

So and the next question is going to be, how will you start your business? Are you going to be a solo entrepreneur? Work by yourself or are you going to build a team or get some partners, and that's of course very personal. I am slowly building a team. I am at a point now where a team is needed, and so I will be focusing on that, but I'm still gonna be, you know the CEO person of my company.

And then, do you have enough money that you can spend in the setup process, again this is going to be subjective depending on the kind of business that you're starting. I shoestring my business for a very long time. I had a website and I had an email marketing tool. That's it, and obviously social media, and then a started building on that. I now have a place to host my programs and my courses. I piecemealed for a long time on a shoestring making it work.

Website hosting isn't all that incredibly expensive. You can pay upfront for a year and get a discount that way. You can build your own website or hire somebody that may be reasonable. Sometimes websites can be pretty pricey, but you can totally build a website yourself if you're on a shoestring, and have an email marketing tool, there are some free versions and some paid versions. Some are better than others. So you can totally just start with a website, email marketing tool, and social media.

If you're selling art, you can choose a marketplace that will help you and you don't even need a website. I still encourage you to have a marketing tool life for emails and stuff, so there's that. It just kind of decide how much it is you need and if you're solo job, may start setting set aside some money. Do some savings to build your business. And something that I didn't do is have savings before a dived 100% into my business.

Not the smartest idea. I was unfiltered at my job, and so my jobs like yeah, we can't have that, and so I was let go. I'm okay with that because it forced me to go all in to my business. like I  no longer I had a safety net. I no longer had the option to fall back and just not be serious about it. It really forced me to like, d I really want this. And really faced tough questions.

Do I apply for another job or do I draw and write? And so I went all in and I didn't look back. And I said I've taken a part-time job periodically here and there, I've done consulting, and I've moonlighted as virtual assistance to make ends meet. And I still have projects going on to this day that helped me fund my life. And I sell my art, and I do coaching and consulting, so all of those things.

So think about how long you can survive before the business starts to generate money again. Stick to your job, if you have one. If you don't have a job, you can just go with it.

Go with it.

It's gonna be a process To get that started and sort out your idea and I will cover that in our next episode.