Three Things I wish I Knew Before Starting My Business

Six years ago I decided to start my own consulting agency. I did this for two reasons:

1. Because I believe there is no greater value in life than sharing what you know with people who can use that knowledge to create a better life for themselves.

2. There is no greater joy than helping someone discover their value and teaching them how to articulate it clearly and confidently to make a great living.

When I started my business, I made some mistakes. I tried to do it all by myself and I learned that wasn’t the best idea. Instead of learning from those who’d been where I was trying to go, I was stubborn. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did so here are a few tips to help you become successful in your business.

1. Know the importance of time management. When you’re first starting out in your business it’s important to separate the time you spend in certain areas. Create time blocks for things like marketing, researching and strategy to grow your business. I made a big mistake when I first started out by trying to do it all at once. I leaped out there and started sharing my business with everyone without being wise about how much of my time I was spending doing things that weren’t growing my business. I spent more time telling people what I was doing more than I spent researching the industry to make sure I was being wise in trying to get customers. When you create categories and time slots for growing your business, you are able to track your results for each situation. Controlling your time allows you to not feel overwhelmed with starting your business and it also allows you to remain consistent in your business. You will need that consistency to build a solid foundation of growth.

2. Create an effective marketing strategy that is measured. Marketing your business can be one of the greatest challenges, especially if you aren’t familiar with the various forms of marketing and how to write the copy you need to get results. Advertising your business everywhere is not marketing. Marketing is having a clear strategy about what avenues you will use to market and if those avenues will lead you toward the outcome you desire. Sharing the value of your business must be done in a way that it can be measured. If you don’t set up a way to measure your marketing you won’t be able to see if it is effective. You’ll end up wasting money and time on things that simply don’t work.

3. The value of establishing a good email list. For the first two years of my business, I didn’t have an email list! I went to tons of networking events, referred hundreds of people to my website and met many valuable contacts interested in my services. And while I did have sense enough to send my “great meeting you” emails after our initial interaction, I had ignorantly failed to create a way to keep those people in the loop about my business. I realized too late in the game that there was no way I could be effective in remembering whom I spoke with. This huge mistake prevented me from converting hundreds of leads into customers. Do yourself a favor and create an email marketing strategy before you go one step further in your business. It could be the difference between hundreds and thousands of sales.

Don’t do what I did. Set yourself up for success.

To get more great tips and access to my free business building webinars, get on my mailing list by clicking here.
Best,

Mary