Do you relate to our late start-up client?
I have already survived the tedious parts of starting my business venture. I have my business name, developed my business plan, secured funding, have a preliminary website, and have already enjoyed some success delivering my products and services in exchange for money.
My business is still young and I find I'm overwhelmed with questions!
My list of things to do seems endless, but I procrastinate because I'm stuck with deciding what to do first. I find myself jumping from task to task and I need slow down. It would help me to have processes to follow so I can get out of my own way, get in action, make money now, and feel less harried and confused!
I need help clarifying what to do first to fill my pipeline, create ongoin revenue and nail my branding and marketing. Additionally, I need help with systems to manage my time, avoid procrastination, and focus on tasks that deliver high-value results.
Do you
- struggle with too many tasks to complete and no one to delegate to?
- feel stuck or overwhelmed trying to find more clients?
- need to clarify your business model so you can produce repeatable results?
- have endless questions about social media, marketing, websites, newsletters, pricing & how to run your business?
- feel unsure about how to get yourself out there?
If you answered yes to several questions above, coaching may be a good fit for you now. Coaching provides support and clarity so you can find more clients, make more money and find life balance.
Entrepreneurs In Business Startup/Ramp Up
You’re an entrepreneur in the stage of the late business ramp-up. It's clear you’re smart, excited about your new venture, and want to serve more clients profitably. You've done what's necessary to legalize and launch your business. You are likely working out accounting, office space, policies, and procedures around how you deliver your products and services. But, you need to figure out more of how to market and advertise.
Sometimes A Great Business IDEA is Not A Sustainable Business
Although many people launch businesses, few businesses survive the first three years successfully.
The early honeymoon phase of your business launch energized you to power through. You likely bounced through days checking endless tasks off your list. From the start, your internal drive for success helped you figure everything out: your offer(s)/product(s)/service(s), who you'd work with, what you'd charge, your budget, and even how you'd deliver your services.
Many make it through the first year of start-up, but few move onto success past year five. After launch comes the hard part. Although being your own boss and making more money is motivating, creating a profitable business model and repeatable business is tough.
Creating Income
To create a reliable income you likely need to learn more about your ideal client, what they really need, and how you can serve that need in exchange for money. You may have invested so far in low-cost marketing solutions. Maybe you've even hired friends, or your neighbor's kid to help build your website to save cash... (after all, most young people know about the internet...).
You can't work 24 hours a day so branding and marketing need to work while you sleep to help you find business opportunities repeatedly.
To make your marketing work, your offer/product/service must solve a problem that a client is willing to pay for.
You've done whatever it took to get this far. So, you've likely relied on advice from friends and family who may never have launched a business. You may be confused, overwhelmed and stressed - which all lead to poor decisions. You're running in every direction and if you're honest with yourself, you have very little idea of what to do first, next, or where to turn for real guidance. In your heart, you want to succeed, and you know you're not going to quit, but you do go to bed at night wondering if it's all worth it... hoping for the universe to shed light on the one key thing that will help you realize your million dollar idea.
What You Need Most Right Now
To succeed, you need to primarily focus on finding new business. You need to focus on the things that bring in quick sales and generate ongoing income. In addition, you need to develop strategic pricing, serve clients excellently, and get referrals to fill your pipeline. Your sole focus should be on opportunities that will turn prospects into paying clients so you can make enough money to get past the start-up phase and stay in business.
Coaching can help you prioritize what is most important, focus on high-value tasks and prioritize the essential actions that will result in more clients and more profit.
*Important Note*
Timing matters when you're looking for a coach. Coaching is NOT for everyone. To be most effective, you need to be coachable. (Take the Coachability Quiz here.) In fact, sometimes coaching too early in the launch process can do more harm. There are so many steps you need to take to try out your idea. So, if you are in the pre-startup stage, your best bet is to work with your local Small Business Development Center or find a SCORE Mentor to provide guidance and support.
You Need The Business Startup Success System™
The Startup Success System™ for early-stage entrepreneurs
If you're in the startup phase of your business, there are many things that you need to focus on to establish your voice in a sea of noise. To do that, we'll follow these steps to Startup Success!
1. Identify Ideal Day & Schedule
This is the first step of the startup coaching process. In this step, you work from the inside, out. You'll figure out just how much time you have by tracking daily activities and evaluating whether your actions are setting you up for success. Coaching exercises will guide you to declare your personal values and create a vision of your dream business. This will happen by getting clear on what your IDEAL days, weeks and months look like.
With this clarity, you seamlessly get in control of your schedule and get started on creating the lifestyle business of your dreams. Of course, your ideal business wouldn't be complete without clearly defined boundaries to protect your private time. After you've accomplished this, you'll move onto Step Two.
2. Self-Assess & Align
Once you have an idea of how you want to be spending your time, step 2 of the coaching process will guide you through a self-assessment of your current strengths and gaps. During this assessment, you'll discover your natural style preferences are for time and space, as well as understand your strengths and interests. You'll begin plugging your 'holes' in time and getting yourself organized to become more productive with the time you have. Then, you'll create more alignment and institute time strategies and solutions that help you reduce overwhelm, stay productive, feel more in control, and sure up a values-based lifestyle.
3. Nail Your Niche: Define Ideal Clients and Clarify Your Marketing Message
With your time and space in alignment with your vision, you're ready to get clarity around your ideal client. Did you know that one of the biggest points of failure for a start-up entrepreneur is trying to serve everyone equally? Coaching will help you quantify your time and understand you're working with limited resources (budget, time, skills, and sanity...). Identifying your niche helps you hone in on the characteristics of the people you really want to work with.
With your niche in mind, you'll need to match your unique skills to the work you want to do. Here you'll figure out your 'Sweet Spot' where you can meet your ideal client's needs and deliver your products and services within the time you want to devote to work. This step helps you create crystal clear goals and helps you streamline your business activities to make the most of your time.
Coaching will help you identify and pinpoint your core marketing message. This core will be in your area of mastery and is comprised of the things you talk about and work with all the time. This is the step that begins crystallize your brand voice. When you have clarity in your core message, you can set yourself up as an expert, claim your keywords, and take yourself out there in a bigger way. By defining your core content you begin to create an information pipeline.
4. Create Pricing and Valuable Packaging
Additionally, you'll want to accelerate your content through the power of your online presence. Social media is an incredibly powerful tool as long as you have clarity with your approach so you can cut through the noise and really establish your expertise with your content. When you engage a social media strategy you gain several things. Not only do you begin to establish expertise but you socialize your core content and ideas, draw your ideal clients who most need you (almost instantly), and do this all relatively inexpensively. You will also analyze and define your fees and rates so you can right-price for your ideal clients. Once you create profitable rates, you'll create packages that retain and reward your most ideal clients.
5. Streamline & Document
In this nuts-and-bolts phase of business building, you brainstorm all the business tasks and procedures and document your process workflows. When you begin to document, not only will you be able to fix the breakdowns and ease up the log jams, you'll be much more likely to take the next step to delegate more effectively to others.
6. Align Support & Delegate
After you've documented your business workflows, we help you clearly articulate what should be delegated to others and what should remain with you. We'll then help you find superior support for your most important tasks at which you are not an expert. We'll also look at ways to automate any task that is often repeated. This will help you save so much time, and feel the ease of what happens when you're able to put tasks in others' hands!
7. Implement
Success is built on routines and systems because they free up your time. Systems are the key to solo entrepreneur sanity. Without them, we struggle. You'll create ongoing accountability that will help you stay focused and continue to implement the best solutions.
YOUR VERY NEXT STEP
Are you ready to get help with your startup business? Schedule your complimentary Discovery Session right now!
