We talk a lot about fitness here but I wanted to switch things up for my fellow boss babes out there and share some entrepreneurship tips I’ve learned throughout my journey as a business owner.
If you listen to the Healthy But Human podcast then you’ve probably heard a few of these tips, but I wanted to emphasize how starting your own business is such a great lesson in having faith, overcoming fears, and learning to trust in yourself. So let’s dive in!
Tip #1 - Work to overcome your fears
If you’re just starting out then you may experience a lot of imposter syndrome. I’ve noticed that a lot of the fears I experienced were actually completely false. Sometimes the feelings that come up for us are lies and do nothing but keep us from really showing our full potential.
To add to these negative thoughts, the discomfort of what others might think of us can also contribute to those fears and hold us back from putting ourselves out there.
When I first started posting consistently on social media, I stressed a lot about what people who knew me might think. It can be really tough to work through these feelings but one thing that helped me was to narrow down who my target audience was and focus solely on those people - instead of trying really hard to make everyone who followed me and everyone I knew happy.
I just focused on creating content and messaging geared toward the people I was primarily trying to reach and I kept my mind fixated on that.
Your fears won’t go away overnight but the more you focus on your primary goal and continue to push through those feelings of discomfort or awkwardness, the easier it will get with time to keep working towards your goals.
Tip #2 - Determine your why
There's a book I read by Simon Sinek called "Start With Why" that absolutely changed my life and the direction of my business in its early stages.
It's easy to be motivated when you're in your routine, getting enough sleep, and eating balanced nourishing meals everyday. But establishing your "why" will help you stay motivated when things get hard, when you're tired, or when you're feeling like quitting.
Being able to bring your mind back to why you’re doing what you're doing, the greater purpose and vision, and your overarching goal can really help you work through those moments when things get really hard and you want to give up.
With everything you do in life you’ll be motivated when you have a clear understanding of your purpose, and running a business is no different. It’s so important to sit down and think through why you do what you’re doing. This is especially important for when things get tough, confusing, or overwhelming.
My advice would be to sit down and really think about, or even write out, what you’re passionate about. Once you have a list of things you really care about you can begin to build that into your overarching business mission and niche, and this will give you a clear sense of direction and lay the foundation for the work you’ll be doing.
Tip #3 - Consider whether there are unique needs you can address
A lot of business-oriented content will mention something about problem-solving but problem-solving can be as simple as identifying an unmet need within your niche. So once you’ve really taken the time to get a clear idea of the key focus for your business you can begin doing market research.
This doesn’t have to be as fancy as it sounds. It could be as simple as looking at what others in this niche are doing and determining whether there are gaps in what is currently being provided and what your audience might need.
For me, I saw that there were a lot of click bait-y online workouts being offered that were hyper-focused on offering seemingly unrealistic results in a short amount of time. A lot of it was purely focused on the physical.
So I thought, hmm, maybe not everyone wants to focus just on how they look. Maybe that can be a little anxiety-inducing for some. So instead I created options that were focused on how they will feel.
This is how I created something that is not only beneficial but also unique to my brand. I encourage you to explore how you can bring something different and unique to the table and go from there.
So ladies, I hope you liked these tips so far, and if so I encourage you to listen to my entrepreneurship podcast episode for more! Let me know if you’d like to see more content like this in the future. I love helping you all in any way that I can!
xx, Cal
P.S. Check out the business I started here!
