How To Start A Business

Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to this week's UCAM podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Dolly Drivers, and this week we're going to be talking around how to start a business.

Speaker 1 After Karen's podcast episode last week where we were talking around writing a book, it got me thinking around actually if I was to write a book, if I am crazy enough to go ahead and do another one, and what would I write it on?

Speaker 1 And how to start a business has to be the topic that I would look to focus on this is something that I share with people on a regular basis I have people on a number of different programs with me who are in the process of starting up their business it's something that I'm really passionate about I really enjoy helping people at this stage but it can be a really really tricky stage and to share kind of the highs and lows and a real-life example of that I have Amy Murray who will be joining me next week who is one of the ladies who's just completed my six-week startup program and she will share with you the experience that she's had and the journey that she's gone on in setting up her business and you know just to give you it an insight it has not been straightforwards there have been loads of twists and turns and everything else and that is the nature of getting your own business up off the ground and so she will be there here next week to share with you her journey but you know as i say i work with a lot of startups and there's so much to talk through when it comes to this stage and obviously it can be very specific to your individual scenarios and what it is you are looking at starting but some of the kind of top tips that i can give you i'm going to run through on this podcast right now so

Speaker 1 To kick off, you've really got to be clear on what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Speaker 1 Now, lots of people talk around, oh, you know, finding your why and finding that thing that, you know, it's alignment and your calling, etc, etc.

Speaker 1 But, you know, if you don't have that compelled compelling feeling of of kind of being drawn towards something then think about okay this idea keeps cropping up and and this is what i speak to people on a regular basis about is is they've had this idea and it's been mulling over and they just can't shake it it's not necessarily logical it's not necessarily that they're really unhappy in their current job but there's just something nagging away at them telling them getting them to think around and going back to and circling back to an opportunity to work for themselves and an idea that they may have If that is the case, and that's great because you've already got that sort of driving force and that niggling thing that's going on.

Speaker 1 If it is the case that, you know what, I really don't enjoy my day job, I don't enjoy working for somebody else, I want that freedom of working for myself.

Speaker 1 76% of women start their businesses for more freedom and flexibility. And then they start to look at, okay, what is it that I'm going to do?

Speaker 1 But their driving force is that freedom, is that flexibility. And that is absolutely okay because it's your business and it's your life.
And you can set up a business for whatever reason you want.

Speaker 1 What is kind of helpful though is to understand what you want out of it.

Speaker 1 So if you don't have a massive calling, if you don't have a major draw towards a certain thing that you just can't shake, if it is the fact that actually you're just wanting that lifestyle of running your own business, then think about, okay, what do I want from it?

Speaker 1 Because that can be a very, very good starting point when you start thinking about how you want your business to look.

Speaker 1 And what I mean by that is, for example, if you want your business so that that you can be there for pickups and drop-offs at school then you are looking at working between the hours of 9 30 and 3

Speaker 1 and that would be Monday to Friday beyond that you are probably not able to find the time or not willing to find the time you therefore don't want something that requires you to work in the evening or requires you to work at weekends you would don't want to have something necessary that you have to fulfill orders for for example unless of course your aim is to do short-term pain for that long-term gain of having somebody else come in and do those sorts of activities for you you may also then if you are you know really focused and keen on doing a product you may look at people doing drop shipping etc in order to meet those needs but straight away you're beginning to look at how you are going to structure your business to work around what you want out of it and that can be really really key and very helpful in that starting phase to get realistic with yourself and also have that that as a focus.

Speaker 1 It might not be the reality straight off, okay? I'm not going to tell you that you're going to walk into your ideal perfect setup to start with, but it's something that you're aiming at.

Speaker 1 And if you're aiming at it, then you can keep your kind of mind's eye on it of, am I heading towards that or is this current activity taking me further away from it?

Speaker 1 And being able to sense check those activities is a really, really helpful thing to be able to do.

Speaker 1 Once you've got clear on what you want from your business, how you want it to look, then the next thing that I would encourage you to look at is not to start with what you want to sell, but who you want to help with the thing that you are wanting to sell.

Speaker 1 And what I mean by that is lots of people come to me having created a course or a resource and they're like, I have this thing, but I don't know where to find the people for this thing.

Speaker 1 And if you can, you want to start it the other way around. You may have a set of skills that you're like, you know what, I want to sell these skills.
I think these skills would be in demand.

Speaker 1 And that is brilliant. Okay, but park those skills.
Okay, start thinking about who and the creation of all the weird and wonderful courses you've probably already got going on in your head.

Speaker 1 Park those and start thinking about who would be the recipient of those skills, who often, who is most switched on by what is provided by that skill set.

Speaker 1 And then go out and start looking at them. Find out as much information as you can about these people that we call ideal customers.

Speaker 1 Okay, these are the people who value what what you do who have an understanding already or you're able to educate to a standard and of understanding how you can help them okay but by researching them and better understanding them you can find out so much information and for example understanding your ideal customer you know their social media preferences indicates to you where to hang out and where not to if you're going onto social media you can

Speaker 1 you can be promoting yourself for example on Instagram rather than spending time on LinkedIn. And it's understanding where are these people? Where are my people? Where are they going to be?

Speaker 1 So that you can better use the time resource that you have. Because what I'm going to encourage you to do as far as time resource is concerned is to run this alongside your day job.
Okay.

Speaker 1 As much as you may like the idea of just down tooling, toolsing and being like, yeah, I'm done here. I'm going to set up my business.
That can put an awful lot of pressure on you.

Speaker 1 And for the vast majority of people, that is not the best move. Now, I'm not saying that isn't good for everybody because I did say vast majority of people.

Speaker 1 So, there is a minority of people who work well with that kind of pressure. And if you do, then you know that's an option for you.
But for the vast majority of people,

Speaker 1 I always encourage clients to continue in a job, having that financial stability, and do the setup of the business, the side hustle on the side. Now, that is not easy, okay? That comes with its own

Speaker 1 drawbacks in that you are obviously setting up your business in your own personal time.

Speaker 1 If you are setting up your business in order to have more freedom and flexibility and time, then you're actually eating into that valuable resource straight away with the setting up of it.

Speaker 1 So, what I encourage clients to do is to make that period of time as short as possible. That is why I've created a course where I can help you get your first paying client in

Speaker 1 six weeks, because then that way it's nice and quick, depending on what sort of buffer you're looking for depending on what revenue level you're looking at and that can get you well on the way to getting your business set up and running and with that helping you to move away from your day job either reducing it or or moving away entirely so that is a good thing to to think around and to and to aim at is to first of all stick in your current job don't don't do anything crazy but secondly have that short period of time and my approach to most tricky things in life is to treat them a little bit like removing a band-aid or sticky plaster um whatever you wherever you come from however you refer to it and that is to um remove it to pull it off as quickly as possible to get through that painful process so if that painful process is eating into your personal time by setting up your business on the side and then make that period of time as short as possible and have very very clear milestones that's one of the first things i get clients to do is create those milestones so they know when they are going to commit to handing in the notice, et cetera.

Speaker 1 So they can be aiming at those things from the beginning. Okay.

Speaker 1 As well as researching your ideal customers, you also want to be looking at your competition and your market to get clear on what is available to your ideal customer, what your market looks like, where your market is at,

Speaker 1 as far as product life cycles, as far as technology is concerned, where people's needs are being met, where they're not.

Speaker 1 As far as competition is concerned, you want to get clear on how you are different to your competition. And I've met like two people ever who I've been like, you know what?

Speaker 1 We probably need to do a little bit of upskilling here or changing tack in order to get ourselves in a competitive position.

Speaker 1 The vast majority of people can straight away compete with their competition on their own merits and if they have already got experience within that market offering those

Speaker 1 skills as a service, for example.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, don't be frightened by the information that you obtain through your competition but it is really really important to understand who is out there and how you compare another thing is to bear in mind that what people say that they want and then what they're willing to pay for are two different things and time and time again i have worked with people who've come to me and they've said you know i've done my research i had one lady and she did an amazing job she had gone out she'd done market research she'd interviewed these people these people had said yeah if this thing existed then i would definitely buy it and they even shared how much they would pay for it etc etc she had the promises and everything she went away she created this thing she came back and out of the 11 people who said that they wanted it not a single person bought it and as you can imagine that is very very painful very soul-destroying and for that poor lady we were able to get her in a position where she was bringing on people and she was able to create a thing.

Speaker 1 It was by no means the same offer that they had pointed her towards that her market research had led her towards and so be very mindful when you are doing market research of the leading questions of understanding where things fit in people's priorities people saying yeah I would pay for that is a theory and when it comes to great okay well can you give me a deposit for it now that can be a totally different story that leads me on to don't create anything until somebody has said that they are wanting to buy it or to get involved with it so i work very much with beta testers with clients so those first beta testers may well be people who do things for free if you can't get people to sign up for free to something then you're unlikely to get people to um to pay the money so testing that and getting people to say yes i want this thing um do that before you get anything created before you start working on anything because you can find time and time again that you are led down that golden path of yes if i if i existed i'd have it um only for people to to then not um not commit when you've gone away and put hours and hours into creating it.

Speaker 1 And so, what I mean by that then is that you'd get people to commit. Yes, you know, this structure is going to take place over, for example, I'm going to deliver this over a

Speaker 1 four-week period

Speaker 1 and we're going to meet once a week. Would you like to do that? You'll get this outcome.
Yes, absolutely. You can then go away and work on the detail.
You know, you can deliver it in that time scale.

Speaker 1 You know, what that is going to be involved with that, but you haven't got the format done, you haven't haven't got the slides done you haven't done any recording of courses etc I have clients who I'm working with right at this moment in time who have worked with other people who have created courses which have taken them a year to create a year 12 months they have worked not full-time but part-time on the side on these things only to not get anybody taking up the opportunity

Speaker 1 so please do learn from those other people's mistakes and avoid doing that

Speaker 1 the journey as Amy will share with you next week, around getting your business off the ground is not a simple, straightforward one, and it can feel very, very lonely at times.

Speaker 1 If you don't have people in your world already, if you don't have friends, if you don't have family who have set up their own business, and so you don't have those people to bounce ideas off or those points of reference to look at, then please, please do surround yourself and get people around you who are doing the same thing as you and have businesses or in the process of setting them up.

Speaker 1 How you can do that is by

Speaker 1 getting onto as in tuning into podcasts. So podcasts where people are sharing their business journeys.

Speaker 1 I have a podcast. There are so many business podcasts out there.
Find podcasts that resonate with you.

Speaker 1 And then from there, you know, you can begin to feel part of a community and have that sense that you are not alone. The other thing is social media.

Speaker 1 There are social, there are communities dedicated to people setting up their businesses.

Speaker 1 and there are people on social media within those groups who are willing and happy to be sharing and openly are already sharing their journey with other people there's also books and audio resources there are so many opportunities to immerse yourself into the business world and surround yourself with people who are sharing their journeys and their stories you've got autobiographies from people who have already made it and as i say podcasts audiobooks they're very achievable to access on the go It's not like you have to have your head in a book and have that time where you're committed solely to that activity.

Speaker 1 There are things that you can be listening to and whilst getting on with, for example, mundane tasks around the house.

Speaker 1 So do use those opportunities to really tune in and get to hear more and get exposed to other individuals on a similar path to yourself so that you feel less alone. I am going to say to you, get help.

Speaker 1 Get help because that's what I did.

Speaker 1 That's what I do is I help people and I see day in day out the difference that makes the way that it can fast track people through that process of getting set up I've had people who on my six-week program have achieved their first paying client in two weeks so two weeks in and they have their first paying client and that individual who achieved that and they'd actually started with a set of skills and we'd identified those set of skills that they were going to be using and then we sort of modeled together how they were going to utilize and package that together and who they were going to package it together for and that individual was able to work on that business full-time so do bear that one in mind but it is very very achievable I've had people who they've come the clients have come off beta testing where they've done it for free and then they've gone on to paid packages with that individual it is very usual and about 95% of people within my program they get their first paying client from one of their beta testers I had one of my clients on one of my more of intensive programs and they secured their first paying client and that was after again that was four weeks having done some beta testers and getting those conversations and getting out there and communicating with people.

Speaker 1 They were working part-time. It is all very, very doable.
It's about having that understanding of the right actions to take, having the accountability, having that process available to you, right?

Speaker 1 You need to do this, followed by this, followed by this. And then, you know, you've got that advice, you've got that guidance, you're not doing it alone anymore.

Speaker 1 You're not second-guessing what it is you need to be doing. There is so much conflicting information out there.

Speaker 1 One of my clients recently, again, she had secured her first paying client right at the end of the course, so week six.

Speaker 1 And she came to me very, very overwhelmed with all these things that she was supposed to be doing.

Speaker 1 She'd already got a Facebook group, she'd got trying to do an email list, but she wasn't actually that clear yet on her ideal client.

Speaker 1 We worked on her ideal client and she actually put out an offer to her ideal client and then revised her ideal client based on the experience she had working with that cohort of individuals to look at a younger demographic who had more time available to them and who were able to prioritize themselves more.

Speaker 1 That learning comes time and time again guys from getting out there and taking the action, spending time around your ideal customer and starting to serve them.

Speaker 1 So understanding what that looks like and what that experience is like, and where that meets with what your expectations were.

Speaker 1 Now, I don't think it would be fair to go through this kind of process and talk around setting up your own business without looking at the potential things which are going to stand in your way.

Speaker 1 Okay, now let's get realistic here. The likelihood is that time pressures and that need for finding the right time

Speaker 1 are going to be overwhelming kind of

Speaker 1 things in your life and barriers to getting set up and getting moving with your business. Now, what I would say around that is that time pressures, time is always tight.

Speaker 1 Like, tell me a time when you were sat there thinking, twiddling your thumbs, going, oh, you know what, I could take up a new hobby right now. Sometimes we have to carve that time out.

Speaker 1 Sometimes we just have to take teeny, weeny, weeny steps on a consistent basis. It may be that you can't dedicate, you know, all the time to this right now.

Speaker 1 It might be the fact that you can do an hour or two a week I had a client who was working with me on one of my higher ticket offers and they were working with me one-on-one intensively for a year and they were only for the first six months they were only able to commit four hours a week to setting up their business but they knew that those four hours a week had had to count they had to be making progress and therefore they needed that advice and that support to be making the right moves within that time and making the most of those hours so the time pressures are always going to be there.

Speaker 1 If you think about all the decisions you've made in your life, have you waited until the time is right, or have you just gone for it and made the most of it?

Speaker 1 And that's what I would encourage you to do with setting up your business:

Speaker 1 use the time that you do have, be realistic with the time that you do have.

Speaker 1 If it's an hour a week, it's an hour a week, but progress is still progress, it is still worth making because in a year's time, you will have spent 52 hours on your business that you otherwise won't have done.

Speaker 1 So, don't disregard disregard starting right now, even if it is a small amount of time that you can dedicate. The other thing is lack of support.

Speaker 1 And this is something that I come across on a regular basis: is people who don't feel supported. So they don't have that support network around them.
Maybe their other halves aren't that supportive.

Speaker 1 Maybe it's their wider friends and family, but they don't feel like they've got the backing. You know, people are going, oh, how are you getting on with your little business idea, etc., etc.

Speaker 1 They want to be taken seriously and they want that support.

Speaker 1 If you are lacking support then i would encourage you to do that surrounding yourself with people who can support you and i would encourage you if you can to make that investment in getting support and further support to to get you moving forwards it doesn't have to cost the earth i will come on to that in a few moments but that does not have to be something which costs thousands okay there's also the fear of finding out now i couldn't leave this one out as much as this can be quite a harsh reality to face up to but there is that element of I like having this idea, this concept, I like the idea of feeling like I have an out one day, that things are going to turn around and that I'm going to be kind of saved from my current reality, or my current reality is going to change beyond recognition because I'm going to have this business and it's going to take off.

Speaker 1 And there is that fear of finding out that that isn't the case. And if that is the case with you, if this is

Speaker 1 making you feel a little bit prickly, is making you feel a bit close to the bone with this conversation, then then please do tune in to next week's episode where Amy's going to be talking around her experiences because you know she was very comfortable with getting ready and she wasn't comfortable at all with getting out there and testing things but as she found out you know finding out that you're not to ruin the story that she's going to be sharing next week but if you

Speaker 1 do find out that actually your current business idea isn't a goer and it's not the right thing for you then that doesn't mean that you are straight back to nothing and you're gonna have to stick in your day job or you're gonna have to stick with your current reality you can straight away be re-looking at okay so what is it that does that does make my um

Speaker 1 it does does brighten my day does excite me does make me want to get out of bed for and then from there you know you can you can start to build towards a different reality and and a different business option so that is something that i do that i did with her and that does happen on a regular basis with people.

Speaker 1 So, you know, don't be afraid of finding out that something isn't going to work because actually that just saves you a load of time, a load of hassle, a load of brain space, and you can get on with an idea that does work.

Speaker 1 And that is the thing is this finding out that something isn't a go-out isn't the end. It is just the

Speaker 1 further brick on that foundation of your personal development and your understanding of what you're going to do within your business. So next week, as I say, Amy's going to be in.

Speaker 1 She's going to be talking around that six-week startup program. Now, what is that six-week startup program?

Speaker 1 Well, it is a program that I put together called the Six-Week Startup, designed to help you to set up your business in six weeks.

Speaker 1 There are trainings which are available, you can do them quicker, but the idea is that you would do the trainings once a week, and then you would come to one of the check-ins, which is a check-in with me in a group setting that you have access to for three months from the purchase purchase date of your course.

Speaker 1 That means that then you are able to tap in to my feedback on your business and what you're doing and you can consolidate the learnings to make sure that you are on track.

Speaker 1 That is me providing you with the most cost-effective option that I can.

Speaker 1 Please do check out the show notes for a link to that program because you know for less than $500 and you are able to get your business off the ground and be able to to get access to expert advice which is going to help you to navigate that very tricky startup stage uh saving you time saving you money saving you effort so and please do check that one out and that is the best thing that i've been able to put together for startups which makes it accessible obviously if you want further help than that then you can absolutely get that with one of my more intensive programs but it is a great starting point if you don't have the funds to be committing lots into your new business venture so that's it for me guys for this week next week as I say I'm going to be joined by Amy and we're going to be talking through her experiences her startup experiences and

Speaker 1 you know it is by no means textbook and it just gets you thinking about how you aren't alone how messy this startup phase can be and how you know there is no hard and fast rule on on how to do it it's your journey it's your business it's your life and so it's finding out the best way to do it for you.

Speaker 1 So, that's it for me, guys, this week.

Speaker 1 If you have enjoyed this episode, then please do leave us a review, please do subscribe and follow so that you can keep getting updates on when the new podcast is released, which is every Thursday.

Speaker 1 The reviews also help, so please do keep those coming in and please do share it with anybody you think it may be this podcast may be relevant to. So, that's it for me, guys, this week.

Speaker 1 I hope you have a great rest of your week, and as I say, I'll be joining you next week with Amy. Bye for now.