When it comes to starting a business, I’ve got that piece of entrepreneurship down. I’ve started so many businesses I can’t even count and pivoted enough times to make myself dizzy.
But through all the struggles, failures and successes, I’ve learned many things that are helping me to thrive and become the person I have always aspired to be. My hope is that they will help you in your journey as well.
Personal Development
Over the years I have learned that working on myself is a key factor in moving the needle for my brands. The more I know myself, the more I can grow into the role that I need to fill for the audience I serve as well as my family and friends.
The best way I have found to do this is to commit myself to learning constantly. I do this through excellent business books, podcasts, online training courses and good conversations with people in person.
When you commit yourself to learning, you also start to discover the person you want to become. This leads to my next point that has revolutionized the way I handle myself in business and all aspects of my life.
Mindset
Until recently, mindset was something I just didn’t really grasp or understand how it could actually make a difference in my success. But some recent unfortunate events in my businesses have made me grow in a way I’ve never been able to before and look at my business landscape differently.
Previously, my mindset was focused on creating income right now so I could get the bills paid and make it to the next month. That led to just exactly that and nothing more. I’ve scraped by for many years always hoping for the next big thing that would make me the big bucks but it never really came.
The facts are the truth though and I can’t deny that I’ve been living a dream world for most of my life where just doing the next interesting thing has gotten me nowhere. Now that my mindset has expanded to understand the capabilities and possibilities that exist for my business, I am starting to see the necessity of things like positive thinking, surrounding yourself with the right people, setting and tracking goals daily and more.
I have to say that while many things have contributed to my recent level of success and forward thinking, I know that mindset has been near or at the top of that list.
If you haven’t focused on your mindset through books and other learning, do it now. Don’t wait another day.
Delegation
As a solopreneur and freelancer for most of my life, delegation has come hard for me. Sure I wanted to give things up to someone else to handle, but it always seemed easier to handle it myself and cheaper too. However, in changing my mindset away from operating IN my business to working ON my business, I’ve found freedom in delegation in a couple of areas on my way to becoming a content entrepreneur.
I hired a VA to do some research for me on potential clients. She put together a spreadsheet of the best email and phone numbers she could find as well as the web address.
I then hired my sister on a commission basis to make sales calls simply by going through the list that was created. The result so far has been amazing. We’ve been able to make contact with several excellent leads and are making strides in being able to do something with the leg of that particular business that I’ve never been able to do before.
This is just the beginning of my delegation plan though. I’ve already started digging into how to set up a proper VA team to run several aspects of my business, including this one. Time will tell how it will work but I’m confident that delegation of things you either aren’t good at or simply don’t want to do will result in you being able to grow in a way you’ve never done.
Consistency
It turns out that the root of most of my failures, or learning opportunities as I like to call them, is lack of consistency.
As a 7 on the enneagram, I’m prone to chasing shiny things and getting obsessed with the next new thing in my life. And so once I realized that consistency was hindering my ability to really make progress on any of the many businesses I started, I began to look for ways to fix that.
The first came in the form of one of the most life changing books I’ve ever read, Atomic Habits. This book breaks down how to start with tiny changes in your life to create a much larger impact later down the road. As someone that always looks at the big picture, it’s work for me to fall in love with the journey, but here I am, looking to learn how to do that.
Apart from the book, I realized the need to apply various other consistent things in my life such as tracking my goals and tasks on a daily basis. I actually started doing this before I read the habit book but it fit in nicely with my plan. I researched several of the people I love to follow and deem successful and found that ALL of them track their goals, their day and are very intentional with their time.
So, I figure I better do that. I picked up the Full Focus Planner and I’ve been obsessed with keeping track of my work days and home tasks on the daily. It’s been a game changer and I know I’m just barely tipping the iceberg on this one because as I expand my business and get more consistent with my habits, I can see the amazing possibilities that will come in the future.
Utilizing Available Tools
I would be wrong to leave out one the reasons I’m working on this blog in the first place and that would be to talk about tools
We all have many resources at our fingertips and it’s important that we utilize them in strategic ways to help us at every step. If you’re not aware of project management tools like Basecamp or Monday, you need to look into them. Any project based business, or your own content business for that matter, can benefit from having everything in one place, scheduled with tasks lists and more.
As a web designer for over 25 years I have seen lots of tools pop up around the web. The two I use for any web project is WordPress for informational, branding or blog style sites and Shopify for anything eCommerce related. These platforms are amazingly simple to use and expandable to nearly any small business venture. With a variety of plugins available, you can connect or integrate anything you need to run your business from the technical side.
The last thing I’ll mention in this article is AI since we do intend to write a lot about that on here and help you use this technology to grow like never before. While AI can’t do the work for you, it can make your life a lot easier.
You can use AI for many things in your content entrepreneur journey such as creating blog post titles, generating ideas for certain topics, finding the SEO keywords from an article you are researching and even generating images for your posts.
The possibilities are endless and the technology is just getting going to where you will be able to hyper focus on the audience you wish you to serve. I do believe we will be able to niche down in a ways we’ve never seen before. And as they say, “The riches are in the niches.”
Wrapping It Up
If you want to go from struggling content entrepreneur to a thriving business, you’ve got to make changes. Keep doing the same old thing and you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting. Honestly, just getting brutally honest with yourself will be half of the battle and then you will see what really needs to change to get where you want to go.
Do the things that matter.
Do the hard things.
Fall in love with the process and always keep focused on the goal.
That’s how progress is made.