027 Lessons From My First 12 Months in Business
Here are the four lessons I have learned in my first 12 months of being in business.
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So let's get started with today's episode. We are talking about the lessons that I've learned from being in business for the past 12 months. So you probably know if you've been listening that I just celebrated my one year business anniversary May 1st 2022 was when I officially launched all easy accounting and I'm gonna milk the one year anniversary for all that it's worth to be quite honest. But I do want to share with you what I've learned. Because I hope that it will be helpful or I. Mean it's funny, it's. Weird to like say that I want to. Inspire people, but I feel. Like sharing my experience somehow will help you to make better decisions in your. To start a business, if that's. Something that you want to you've wanted. To do for a long time, but you just can't convince. Yourself to go ahead and do it. I hope that I can be maybe an inspiration to you if you want. If you don't want to be inspired by. Then that's totally fine too. So let's go ahead and get started. The first lesson that I want to share is kind of a personal philosophy. Mine as well, but it's to take yourself seriously, but not too seriously. Your clients that pay you money or your customers that pay you money, they take you seriously, they take the work that you do serious. Otherwise they wouldn't pay you. Their hard earned dollars, everybody is, you know, always concerned about what they're paying other people where they're spending their money. Most of us are concerned about that and want to make sure that we're. Paying money to people who are, you know. Licensed or certified or have a lot of experience in. What they do? Because then we feel like our money is being spent in a good way, that is. Going to have a good. Return on our investment.
So the people that are paying you money take you seriously and hopefully that means that you will go ahead and take yourself seriously too. As a business owner, whether you are a service based business or you sell some sort of product or you do, you know a combination of those things and you can take your work seriously without being too serious. About your work. So what I mean by this is that it's good to have expectations of yourself. It's good that your clients have expectations of you and you can choose whether or not you want. Except those expectations that your clients have. You know there's a back and forth that happens when someone hires you and they are like, I want this to happen and here's what I expect in terms of like when I want you to deliver. And then you. Can be like. That's cool. That's not what I'm able to deliver you, or that's not within my purview. Or you can say yes, like absolutely I can do that for you. So you can have mutual expectations of each other. And both of you, if it's two parties, can choose to accept the others expectations, but also if you don't meet someone's expectations, if you don't meet your own expectations, it's not the end. All be all moral failure that we often make it out to be, right. It doesn't mean that we're a bad. Person because we couldn't meet a. Deadline for a client. You know, it doesn't even mean that we're, you know, if you're. Professional a bad whatever. A bad doctor, a bad accountant, a bad lawyer, whatever. So humor is one of my values personally and in business, I like to have fun. I like to have a silly goofy time. I love to laugh. I can do that at the same time that I am body. How important my work is to my clients. I can absolutely find ways to make accounting fun I can. Have fun while. I work, I can have fun doing my work. I get to decide that. I want to have humor be a part of my life. Even when I make a mistake on something. Or maybe there's an issue that needs to be resolved with someones bookkeeping or payroll or something. I can still find a way to make a joke and to kind of lighten the mood and to me that has value because that. Allows me to not take things too seriously. The work that. I do is not life or death. Totally understand if you are an ER doctor and your job literally is life or death situation for other people and maybe you don't want to crack a joke at an inappropriate time, but when. It comes to accounting and bookkeeping like. Nobody's dying over. Here, so like things might go wrong, but it's not a moral issue. It is not a mortal issue. So in that way I can make a silly goofy joke about it. Kind of lighten the. Mood and then go and. Resolve the issue right? It doesn't have to be so serious.
So here's what I think we should not be too serious about whether or not you're already successful, so if you are already successful and that would be by your own measurements, that would be you've decided on the criteria for what? Success looks like for you, and then you're like, I like that criteria and I'm going to go try. To be successful. In that way, and meet that criteria, and then you do meet the criteria. You're like, great, I'm successful and that's great. And it should be celebrated no matter what. You should celebrate. It's us, but just be aware of how much you use that success to stroke your own ego. And is that going to get you to the next goal that you want to set or the next level of criteria of success that you want to create for yourself and accept is stroking your ego gonna get you to the next place? Or is it a celebration thing? To where we can say, yeah, I did it. I was successful in that endeavor and now I want to go on to the next thing. And I know I can be successful with that because I am a person who does achieve success rather than like I'm so ******* awesome. And I'm for sure going to. Meet all my targets and meet all my successful criteria, because I'm so. Amazing and people should worship me and I should be famous and blah blah. Like how much of it is established in your ego and. You need to like have that stroke session like you know I'm successful. Everybody look at me. Or is it gonna be like, yeah, I know I can do this because I have achieved success in other areas of my life that I've decided on, but we don't need to be too serious about it either. Like, just because you were successful in meeting some sort of expectation or meeting some sort of criteria. That you set for yourself. Not something to be too serious about either, right? Because it's still something that you made-up. It's still something that you decided you were going to accept. As far as what success means for you, so it's still coming from, you know, your brain, which is a looney tune sometimes. And is not all the way evolved. From like a lizard. So we don't have to be too serious about when we are actually successful based on our own criteria, because we made it up to begin with that you don't have to be too serious about if you're not successful. So again, if you've decided on measurements, if you've decided on criteria that you're like. I want to meet this goal or I. Want to do these things and then? I will be. And then you don't meet those criteria. You don't. Get to the goal. We don't you. Quote UN quote lack of success as a blunt object to inflict shame and blame on ourselves. We don't get to use that as a tool as a curmudgeon to, like, beat ourselves up for not being good enough or for not doing enough. Or, you know, not doing anything at all or. You know, we're not successful and that means that we're stupid or we're bad business and we're bad at doing business. Like we don't get to use. Our quote UN quote lack of success. To be serious about how much we suck, that's just not a thing that we're going to do. So that's lesson #1 is, you know, be serious about your work, but don't take it too seriously and don't take yourself too seriously. All of this is made-up. Everything is a construct, and that means that we do get to decide what we accept. What we want to be serious about,
so the next lesson that I've learned and that I'm honestly still learning because it's not something that you 100% fix for the rest. Of your life. It's it's literally built into our DNA, is that you won't get anywhere until you're willing to go. So what I mean by it literally being baked into our DNA, if you know anything about, like, brains and how they evolved, you know, that fear is a natural response. Because we evolved from other animals that if something was a threat to your survival or to your life, that you would be afraid of it and probably run away if it was like gonna harm you in some way, right? So fear is just always going to come and go. That's literally a fact of life. Besides death and taxes, we're going to be afraid at some point. We're biologically designed to have a fear response when something may be a threat to our lives, and it's kind of. An important emotion to. Have at your nervous system disposal, so let's look at an example. If you know that a stove when it's turned on is hot. And you're afraid of getting. You can avoid pain and suffering and injury by being afraid to touch the hot. Stove so fear is. A useful emotion when it comes to preventing ourselves from being. Injured or killed or whatever. But fear also comes up when we're just trying something new that we've never done before. And so it's an uncertain thing and we don't know if it's going to work and we don't know if, you know, we're going to spend money on that. Saying we're going to get a return on our investment and so a lot of fear comes up because we've made it mean something about, like, our survival. So if we can reason with ourselves and. Use our evolved brains, that prefrontal cortex, that kind of sets us apart from every other animal that allows for, like, critical thinking. We can use that. Part of our brains to determine that even though something you know is causing a fear response in us, it's still something worth doing anyways. And that's when we can level up and take the next step. To reach our goals. So anytime we have fear come up, it's useful and it's worth looking at. I think when we're afraid of something and evaluating it with a clear head right, like not giving in to this is something. And therefore it's a threat to my survival. So I'm just not going to do it. It's worth looking at whatever we're afraid of and like logically thinking through it and applying some critical thought. So fear doesn't actually mean that something will be harmful to us, so we know that's true, right? Like if I were to use the. Example, if you swim at all. I know some people don't know how to swim or don't like to swim, but at some point, maybe as a child you were jumping into a pool for the first time. So your parent or another grown up was probably in the pool waiting to catch you with their arms out. You've developed some level of trust with them. You know they're not going to not catch you and you're not actually in any danger of drowning in the pool. But you're still afraid to jump for the first time, even though you know logically. That the danger of you drowning was infinitesimally. Small you at some point decided to overcome that fear because you knew it actually wasn't going to be harmful, even though all the alarm bells were going off. And you're like, what if I drown? What if something? You know, as a child and children don't even have fully developed brains, but they're still able to make those critical. Decisions because they see somebody who's a grown up, who they have developed some sort of trust and safety with. And so they still decide to jump. In the pool because. That ground, it's there to catch them. They're not going to drown. And so even though fear is there, it's not an assurance. It's not 100% that it's actually going to be something that's harmful to us and we can use that and apply that to any time we want to do something in our business or even start a business, because starting a business is scary as ****. There's no two ways about it, especially if that's going to be your primary source of income. If you've decided that, that's going to be the only way that you have income to support your livelihood, starting a business is scary. But just because that is scary doesn't mean that that's actually going to come true, that you're not going to make any money and then, you know, all sorts of dominoes. Will fall and you'll end up dying. So here's what we do when we notice that we're afraid to do something or afraid to say something or afraid to bite into something and we want to. Make a rational. About the risks that are involved with making that choice and then decide what to do, we don't want to just rely on the fear response stopping us from doing something we actually do want to sit down and think critically and logically about something. And here's the thing. You can totally be afraid to do something, and it's not even a threat. Do you physically or emotionally or financially, and then you can still decide not to do it after you've sat down and done that risk evaluation after you've sat down and critically and logically thought out the steps of what you would be doing, that you're so afraid of. You can still think through it logically and then decide not to do it. Nobody is saying that you have to be afraid of something and then do it anyways. I'm certainly not going to tell you to do that. You still get to decide, but at least take. The time to have a. Critical thinking session. Step through it logically. Explore the various. Risks the pros and cons. Whatever you want to do, at least give yourself the benefit of going through that first before you decide not to do something, but knowing that you have the option to do something that you're afraid of, like starting a business. Or maybe you want to. Your employees or you want to rent a bigger space to open up a shop and then deciding to do it. Once you've ascertained what risks are involved in that, that's where the growth becomes a probability, not just a possibility, but a probable likely outcome. So before we move on to the next two lessons. Of what I've learned in the past 12 months of. Being in business for myself, we're. Going to take a quick break.
Now we're back. Let's move on to the third lesson that I've learned in the past 12 months of owning my own business. We want to find community and put down roots in that community, so if you are a sole proprietor, if you are a single Member LLC owner, if you consider yourself a solo preneur. If it's just. You and only you. Or maybe it's. You, but you've hired employees or you have a virtual assistant or. Do you still consider yourself like it's just me? I'm in business for myself. There's not anybody else with any sort of stake in this business. I'm alone. I'm all by myself. The name solo Preneur sole proprietor, single Member LLC. However, your business is set up however you identify as a business owner, it's literally baked into the. You're the only one single member. It's just you. There's this implication that you have to do this alone or that you have, you know, no other. You're doing this alone, so you need to just. Figure it out for yourself. I'll lean on anyone or anything else. There are small business groups that exist that are the space to turn to when you need support. So what does support look like for you? It can. Be different for every. Everybody but support could look like you needing a space to vent. You just got to get it. Out there to. Other people who know what? The heck you're going through. When you come. To the point where you want to hire employees. That is where I see a lot of business owners start to vent because they're just like, yeah, not only do I have to manage my business, I have to manage the. Work that I do for my clients. I have to communicate with my clients and now I'm throwing another human into the mix and I have to manage them. It creates a lot of mental and emotional drama for a lot of people. You may need a space to vent. I'm an accountant, but sometimes people vent to me too. And that's perfectly fine. You may need a space to look for support in asking for advice. You might want to be surrounded by people that have been through what you're going through right now, just so that you have that, you know misery loves company. But just like somebody to ask for advice. Hey, when you ran into this thing in your business. When you were first starting. Out what did you? Do how did you solve this? What were you thinking? Did you go to anybody and ask for help? Like I just need? Some freaking advice. Asking for recommendations, so can you recommend somebody who can do my taxes? Can you recommend somebody that does business insurance asking for recommendations to people who are on the same entrepreneurial? Journey as you can kind of weed out. A lot of. The folks that aren't going to be as helpful and you get a referral, you get a recommendation from from somebody that's used that person services or products and you can they can tell you like yeah, there's absolute. Really, you know, changed the game for me, this really helped me out, so it'll probably help you too. This looks like support in a networking group, so if networking if leveraging your network is really important for you to grow your business, you might want to consider being in a group where that is the sole purpose is developing a network of other entrepreneurs and professionals. And having people to turn to. So you want to be able to try new systems as you're implementing them in a space where you can get feedback and coaching about what you're implementing. I think that this is very important because there are things that I forget sometimes. I'm currently developing systems and processes for my business, for all of the things that I do, and I have a space that I can go and I can ask for feedback or simply to just say. Did I miss anything? Because sometimes I can't just think of everything. You know, here's. The kinds of spaces that you can. Find this in. It could be like a mastermind group, it could be a business coaching group, it could be networking or referral organizations. Or maybe you can create your own space you know, set up a group chat with some other business owners that you know, and be intentional about what the space is for. You know, everybody decide like this is what we want this space. To be we want to have a sounding. Board, we want to be. Able to ask for advice or recommendations. You can totally set it up yourself. Here's the thing. I personally think that it's better to have leadership and someone who is guiding that work and who can support you, who. Is on a different stage of their entrepreneurial journey than you just because if you're all in one group and you're all on the same level, you are taking advice from other people who are on the same level as you. And if you're trying to get to a different level, whether that's a revenue goal, that's a client goal. That's an audience engagement reach. Well, whatever you want it to be, having other people who are the same spot as you, it's like, well, do they really know what it takes? Can they really give you advice and support and getting you to the next level if they're not there yet? So having somebody who is a leader in that space? And who can help guide that work for you, and who can provide support and you know, help you think of the things that you can't think of because you haven't been there yet. So that is the third lesson is finding community and putting down roots in it.
The 4th and final lesson from the past 12 months of owning my own business that I want to share with you. Is to be honest about what you're doing, thinking and feeling. There were a lot of times in the past 12 months that I could not face my own ******** and I wasn't able to move on from that ******** until I faced it. So, for instance, I have shared some of my prior work experience. On this podcast with you. All and it took me a. Long time to be honest with myself about my experience and then an even longer time to open it up and to be public about those experiences. I think it's. Beneficial to share my experience so that other. People can relate. And maybe benefit from that shared experience and that camaraderie. But I could not even admit to myself what kind of experience I had had for a long time. Because I felt shy. About how long I had chosen to stay in that experience, I was making my past choices or somehow culpable in my own treatment, which is just not the truth. And once I was able to admit that. I had that choosing to stay in that thing in that experience and something for so long. Then could I let the shame go and forgive myself and accept my past self for making those choices? And here's the other thing that we need to be honest about. Being honest with your clients is paramount. This is so, so important. If you're in any way trying to hide information or your intentions from. Folks, then you have taken away their agency to make a good decision for themselves to make good decisions for their business. And I don't like the idea of taking away someone else's consent and agency, which is why we don't do that here. So being honest with your clients, it's a huge thing for me. I try to be as upfront and honest with my clients. Possible just so that everybody is clear. About what the expectations are about what my role is in their business, so those. Are the four. Lessons that I wanted to share with you that I've learned over the past 12 months of being in business for myself.
I'm so glad you're here. Listening to this podcast and. I hope you'll join me over on my e-mail list and social media. Those links will be in the show notes, so make sure you get subscribed. And follow me if you're in the 1st 12 months of running your own business or if you haven't even started a business yet, but you want to. I want to talk to you ioffer, a complimentary consultation, that is one-on-one with me virtually, yes. If you have not started your business yet, I want to talk to you. Because it's the best time to make sure that your accounting and bookkeeping are. Right is before. You even start collecting money from people. So thanks for listening. And as always, please rate and leave a review of this podcast wherever you are listening. I really appreciate it. It helps boost it to other folks who need to hear these messages, turn on new episode. Vacations so that you never miss an episode when it drops. I hope you have a great rest of your week, and we'll talk later.