10 Things We Learned Starting a Business- Part 2
Starting a business isn't something we could capture in just one blog post, so we've extended it to two! Here are the last 5 things we learned starting our new business:
Let Your People Support You: If you have friends, family, or other members of your support system that want to support you, let them help. If your friends and family want to share your information, repost your social media, donate, or help create your product, that’s a great resource to tap into. It can feel awkward to talk about yourself or your business if you’re anything like us. Letting people know that there’s no pressure may be important for you as well in order to maintain a friendship.
Commit the Time: Starting a business is more time consuming than you might think. You have to consider getting your paperwork together, how much time it takes to create your project, advertising, contacting clients, shipping, etc. All of that takes a chunk of time and you have to make sure that you can move your schedule around for that.
Make Your Brand Representative of You: We put a lot of care in all of the outward facing representations of us and our business. Some of the things we did to make sure that were well represented included working with a graphic designer who gave our website the feel of what our business accomplishes. We spend time creating blog posts on subjects that are personally important. We design posts for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram that represent our desire to share about behavioral health, highlight our services, and allow us to connect with others. Don’t skimp on parts of your business that may end up being the first introduction people have to your business. Likewise, stay true to your values. It could be easy to start making decisions that bring you away from your core values as you get things in motion, but that will result in big problems down the line if left unchecked. Have a conversation with your partner(s) about your values and define them so you know if you’re starting to stray. This can even be part of your business plan!
The First Bit Will Be Slow: If your business starts out and there doesn’t seem to be any immediate movement, that’s pretty normal. We expected to hit the ground running, but the beginning of this process has been mainly developing working relationships, creating our products, and letting people know that our services exist. A little slowness in the beginning is just fine. Keep putting in the work and you’ll start to see progress.
Don’t Give Up!: We’re glad you’re giving some thought to, or already starting, to build your business. There have definitely been some difficult times throughout this process but we want to encourage not to give up. Every barrier is an opportunity to learn and do differently. You can have a great, successful business!
Hopefully in 6 more months we’ll have even more insights for you!
B+R
Here are some resources to help you get started: