You know how everyone says teens and millenials think nothing ever applies to them? "That will never happen to me."
I hate to say it but that was definitely me as I listened to podcasts about starting a business.
I want to keep a journal of all the things I've learned while starting my own business & share it with you, so you can see that it's not all sunshine & rainbows, despite what our social media displays.
So here's what happened...
Every weekday I nanny from 8:45-4:30 about 50 minutes away from where I live in Chicago. AKA I get to binge listen to podcasts every morning and on my way home from work. I love this time becuase it's honestly when all of my ideas start flowing. I wish I had someone in the car with me just to write everything down so I don't forget. Sometimes I come into my apartment and hold my hand out to my husband to say 'don't talk to me' while I write all of my ideas on post it notes so that I don't forget. Sorry not sorry Ben, I love you but I'm going to lose everything in my brain once we start talking.
My favorite podcasts have been the GoalDigger, BossBabes, & the Because I Can podacst.
Below I'll list some things I learned, as well as the things I just assumed would never happen to me, one of which was burnout. Honestly I don't know why I assumed it wouldn't happen. I am NOTORIOUS for jumping head strong into things without giving myself a break. I mean I just graduated from PA school (28 months of constant studying), took my boards, and immediately deep cleaned my entire house then started this business. My husband had to forcefully tell me that it was okay to sit down for an hour. If it helps you visualize this any better, I just binge watched my first series on netflix for the first time ever in my life when he forced me to take a break after Christmas.
Okay, back to the point. When I started this business I heard all these podcasts saying 'I wish I would have had more balance', 'I wish I would have realized that my audience was going to be there no matter how much time passed between instagram posts', 'no one truly cares when I launch as long as it eventually launches', etc. I just kept working on my business all day while nannying, building orders at night after dinner when I got home, sleep & repeat. For 3-4 weeks. Then the meltdown happened. I broke my sewing machine on purpose to get out of finishing an order, then it broke itself when I started up again and I had a full on toddler temper tantrum.
What I learned:
- Probably best for me to have inventory built up before I list products. I started listing products way too fast and couldn't keep up, which created even more stress.
- Starting a business is like a roller coaster. One day I feel so accomplished and excited by sales, the next I want to quit & repeat.
- My expectations that everyone is just going to buy when I say 'I'm Launching' is not accurate... I've had almost 90% of my sales occur only Friday-Saturday. I can't let myself get disappointed when I don't get purchases every single day.
So Week 1
So I pretty much created ideas and threw them at the world immediately. No launch process, no build up, no marketing, no build up of inventory, nothing. I was rushing to get products finished and photographed, then quickly found out how hard it is to get good pictures that make others want to buy your product. I learned to create my own light box with white poster board, take my pictures during times full of natural daylight, how to edit pictures, etc. The best part is, once I'd spent all this time editing pictures of shirts, trying to make them look just like pinterest pictures I'd seen, I realized there were shirt templates on etsy that I could buy which made the whole process SO much faster. *Insert V8 style slap to the forehead* I did learn that pinterest has a lot of good ideas for posing of products/models to try as long as I keep in mind that I'll never be able to make things look the same and nor do I want to. I also took ideas of product photography from my competitor's sites to get ideas of how to frame my shots.
Week 2:
I had so many ideas that I wanted to start making as soon as possible, but I was getting frustrated that my items weren't selling. I'd put so much work into these shirts and only 1 person bought one. WHY?!
I started to research SEO terms, my husband added google analytics to get a better idea of where I should be focusing my marketing, and I started researching listings already on etsy to see how they were formatted. I read blogs that mentioned using general and specific tags, making sure your keywords are in your title, your description, and your tags, and that everything matches. So I spent oodles more time updating all of my listings and looking at the stats to see which search terms were getting my listings the most views. All of this was extra time that I never anticipated. Time that I wanted to be spending on all of my new ideas.
Week 3:
As I was listening to podcasts, I was learning all about how marketing was projected to change in 2021. I knew that Tik Tok and Reels were big, I've seen my friends and other influencers switching to them. But I had no idea that Tik Tok had small business hashtags, videos, how to's and more. I tried to create a Tik Tok for fun, related to teaching or working with kids since I'd just release my teacher appreciation shirts. It seemed like an okay process, but I just really had NO IDEA what I was doing. I started watching small business Tik Tok videos to come up with ideas of how I could get my business and products out there. One thing I thought of was creating videos that reflected on my weeks/months as a new entrepreneur to help others learn and for me to learn from myself. Hence this blog since I don't know how to make that into a Tik Tok yet (maybe I'll figure it out this weekend).
Week 4 & 5:
Well we already talked about my burnout. It really stemmed from me not having enough inventory and stressing myself out trying to make everything in real time for my orders. Then all of a sudden I got 8 scrub cap orders in one day - one scrub cap takes an hour to put that in context for you. The next day I got 4 more orders and I still hadn't finished the orders from the day before. I was also stressing out about still getting rejections from my job applications as a physician assistant, so it felt like everything toppled on top of me.
Big Take Away:
Take your time when you create a new business. It is perfectly fine to take time building up followers on social media, without feeling the need to release everything you make as you make it. It takes on average 7 views for an audience member to get interested in a product. So I am going to take a step back, build up all of my inventory, build up a stock of photos to use while building up suspence. This will also give me time to create a schedule of everything that I need to get done & publish, so that I don't feel so rushed or disorganized. Then once I feel ready I'll launch my new products.