27: Reality Bites: 5 things I wish I knew before starting my business as a Gen Xer
Thinking about starting a business of your own?
In this episode of ill communication, I’m sharing the five things I wish I knew before starting a business. I’m sharing the good, the bad, and the fugly!
What you’re going to hear is how I built a super chill multi-six-figure business as a Gen-Xer. I’m currently celebrating five years as a business owner, which, if you look at the stats, is a pretty big deal!
I’m also celebrating a financial milestone. After reviewing my profit and loss statement, I’m generating over a quarter of a million dollars a year in my business. It's just incredible to me that I've created this business, and it's largely been pretty easy.
That's why today I want to share the things I wish I knew before becoming an entrepreneur. I also want to share a little bit about what I think is underpinning the kind of success that I've had, because there may be some insights you can take from your own life and business, too.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
Why starting a business isn’t actually that complicated
Why I embrace constraints in my business
The mindset you need as a business owner
What you need to know about outsourcing and hiring experts
Why you have to write a lot as an entrepreneur
So there you have it! Those are the five things I wish I knew before becoming an entrepreneur. If you struggle with the writing aspect, keep listening to the podcast because that’s what I’m here for.
I have tons more that I could share about becoming an entrepreneur, and if that is something you’re interested in hearing more about, make sure to let me know!
If you’re ready to create your dream business and learn more about B-School, join the boot camp! You can register here.
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Welcome to Ill Communication. Copywriting Tips and Sales Strategies for Small Business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and changemakers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soul mate clients. Let's get started. Hey there and welcome to episode 27 of the Yale Communication Podcast. Today I'm sharing the five things I wish I knew before starting a business. I'm sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly. But what you're really going to hear in this episode is how I built a super chill, multi six figure business as a Gen Xer. And as I'm recording this, I'm honestly having a bit of a moment. I'm celebrating five years in business right now, which is a pretty big feat, especially if you look at the stats on small business. About 20% of small businesses won't survive the first year in business. 50% of small businesses don't make it to year five. So the fact that I've managed to create this fun and lucrative business for myself that's just chugging along and that I still enjoy after five years is totally worth celebrating.
And I'm also celebrating a pretty significant financial milestone. Earlier today, I looked at my profit and loss statement and I was gobsmacked to see that I am officially generating more than a quarter of $1,000,000 in revenue in my business. In fact, my little solo operation generated 271,000 in gross revenue in 2022. Now, keep in mind that is gross revenue. My take home pay was probably around half of that. But why am I sharing these numbers? Because the average revenues of the women in business are not that great. 88% of women led businesses make less than $100,000 per year in gross revenue, 2.4% generate between 250 and 500,000. And just under 2% of women led businesses hit the million dollar mark. What is so bizarre for me is that when I started out as a copywriter five years ago, I saw other copywriters ahead of me at the time who were making $250,000 per year, and I thought, Man, I'd be so happy if I could just make half that. And now here I am making around the same amount. It's just incredible to me that I've created this business, and it's largely been pretty easy. And that's why today I want to share the things I wish I knew before becoming an entrepreneur. And I want to share a little bit about what I think is underpinning the kind of success that I've had, because there may be some insights you can take from your own life and business, too.
So thing number one, starting a business isn't actually that complicated, and in fact, it has been way easier than I expected. Now, when you're first starting out as an entrepreneur, it can feel so overwhelming, especially if you're like me and you haven't taken any business courses or have an MBA. A lot of new entrepreneurs get caught up in all the details, thinking you need to incorporate, you need a business name, you need to have a super professional logo, fancy branding, you need a beautifully designed full website. And then there's all kinds of business models to choose from, from network marketing to brick and mortar to consulting to having a micro-business or a solo entrepreneurship or running an agency. But I'm here to tell you, you don't need to get swept up in all of that. It took me a while to stop getting caught up in all that overwhelm and find my footing, but I finally did by creating an intentionally simple business with very simple marketing. When I first started out, I chose a website software that I could DIY myself. And it's Squarespace, by the way. My husband and I went out one afternoon and he snapped photos of me from my website using his Samsung phone. They were pretty terrible, but they did the job. I didn't know what kind of a copywriter I wanted to be, so I just kind of wimped out and called myself a wordsmith. My bestie is a graphic designer and she helped me create a temporary logo.
And aside from taking an introductory online business course, I probably spent well under $1,000 to get things going. And it wasn't until after I got my first few clients and figured out who I was as a business owner and had more clarity on the kind of work I wanted to do and the kind of people I wanted to work with. That's when I invested more into my branding. I hired a designer to create all the beautiful things, including a professional photographer, but I still just created a very simple but elegant one page website. And that one page website took me to past my first six figures in my second full year in business. In fact, I 100% believe the secret to my success has been in keeping things super simple. Super chill. Low tech. Small teams, simple marketing and sales channels. I am not constantly posting on social media. I have not once danced or lip synched on her reel and I have yet to create a tik tok. Now, none of those are bad. They are very, very effective for some businesses, but for me it's not a good fit. And I love how simple and easy my business and my business growth has been. So the second thing I wish I knew before I became an entrepreneur is how to embrace the constraints and how important it is to do so. Now, look, as a mum with young kids starting a business, I had a lot of constraints on my time and most Gen-Xers do.
And by the way, if you haven't listened to me getting on my soapbox about Gen X women, then please listen to episode 26 after you're done with this one. But anyway, when I became a freelancer, I primarily wanted to work when my kids were at school, which meant I had limited hours to work on my business and deliver client work. But that constraint was actually a gift because constraint leads to innovation. It forced me to create my own systems and processes that would work for me and my life and my family. It forced me to focus and find my own simple path. And that meant keeping things very, very simple because I just don't have the time or the bandwidth to create complicated marketing and sales funnels to record and launch a course or create endless amounts of tiktoks and reels. And in fact, for the majority of the five years, I've primarily worked one on one with my clients, there's low overhead and high profitability by keeping my business model very simple. As a copywriter, I discovered the beauty of constraint through copywriting, formulas and frameworks. I love them because they take the overthinking and overwhelm out of the creative writing process. Now I share a lot more about my love of copywriting formulas and actually the story behind Why I became Self. Way back in episode one. So I'll link to that in the show notes. And if you want to go and listen to it, go ahead.
But just a heads up. I do a couple of really bad impressions of Beastie Boys songs in it, so consider yourself warned. All of which is to say, I wish I'd known sooner that constraints can actually help with creativity, and I would have embraced and welcomed them instead of fighting them for so long. Now, the third thing I wish I knew is that the most important asset for an entrepreneur is your mindset. Now, I've always been a pretty confident, independent person. I can put myself out there and take some calculated risks, like singing and performing on stage or running for something like school council. But I had no idea how much I'd have to manage my mind and my mindset to become a business owner. There is so much overthinking and second guessing and fear. There are all kinds of gurus out there telling you to do very different things to grow your business. I discovered that if I worried too much about something or procrastinated making a decision, I wouldn't take any action. And if I didn't take action, I didn't see success. So as I got more used to and more comfortable with taking small micro steps, I discovered success is possible. I've worked on developing a mindset where I assume the best of people and I assume that people want what I have to offer. But that positive growth mindset didn't happen on its own. I've invested a lot of time and money to work with some of the best mindset and success coaches in the biz to help me maintain a high vibe and to approach business ownership with that positive mindset.
But I'm going to be super transparent. I am not perfect at it. I question my self worth. I still second guess myself and I don't put myself out there as much as I could. It's just that I move through it a little faster. It's a work in progress each day and every day. I also have to admit that some of the biggest mindset gremlins I've had to get over are around being an older, middle aged entrepreneur. There's a lot to learn, there's a lot to juggle, and I don't always respond as my best self. In fact, I kind of go into a little bit of a spiral when I see successful copywriters and entrepreneurs celebrating their 28th or 35th birthdays. And I'm over here pushing 50, just chugging along. I'm in awe of these young women who are so self-assured and seeing success so young in life. It's super inspiring and it's very triggering for me, especially when I think about where would I be if I'd started my business when I was in my early thirties. I really have to talk myself through that and remind myself that actually I have a lot of advantages as a mature entrepreneur and I honestly wouldn't change anything about. My journey. The fourth thing I wish I knew before starting out as a small business owner is that outsourcing and hiring experts is important, but only to a point now in life and business, There's a very famous adage You got to spend money to make money.
And I do believe that a lot of my success has been in investing in the right things at the right time, but I don't always get it right. Last year, I found myself in three different high ticket coaching programs, plus a couple of ongoing courses. Not only was it a huge time suck to show up for the calls and events and go through the material. It was a huge financial suck, like $70,000 or something. Toward the end of 2022, I was so burnt out on coaching and I've left all but one of my coaching communities. And as I'm going into 2023, I'm being really mindful about my mental and financial bandwidth before I invest in anything new. I think part of my problem, quote unquote, is that I probably just don't trust myself enough, and I have a belief that I need to learn more. I need more coaching to run this business. But over the last several months, I've really worked on learning how to trust myself and leverage the education and experience I've received over the last five years. But just as there's been some stinkers, there have been some very good investments. One of my favorite investments is working with my financial team. I have a bookkeeper, an accountant and a financial coach, and I brought in that expertise and outsource the bookkeeping pretty early into my business because that is definitely not my zone of genius.
The money I spend on my financial team is the best money I spend in my business because it gives me so much peace of mind. I also have a virtual slash in person assistant, and I say she's both because we're actually friends. We met ten years ago when our eldest kids were in kindergarten together. She started her virtual assistant business shortly after I started my copywriting business. So not only does she help me with administrative tasks like invoicing and contracts, but we also get to go for coffee and hang out too, which is kind of the best of both worlds. I've mentioned earlier that I've invested in some killer mindset coaching and I've also invested in a lot of copywriting, training and education. But I know hands down that I would not be where I am if it wasn't for one investment I made at the very beginning of my business in February of 2018, I invested in B-school. B-school is an online business and marketing training program created by Marie Folio. It gives you the foundations and basics of running a modern online business. Now, when I started my business, I didn't have any kind of business background. It had been like 20 years since I graduated university. I wanted someone to walk me through the foundations of setting up a small entrepreneurial business.
And B-school delivered. Marie covered how to start the right business, which helped me zero in on what kind of business model was best for me. She taught me everything I needed to know about setting up marketing, zeroing in on my ideal clients, pricing and packaging my offers. And what B-school also gave me was an introduction to this entire online world of business. Without B-school, I wouldn't know about this whole ecosystem and network where people find each other and connect virtually through the Internet. It's because of this program that I've worked with clients across Canada throughout the US, in the UK, in Central America and in Europe. I love having a global business that works with all kinds of different businesses in different parts of the world. B-school gave me the foundations, the community and the confidence to start a business as a 42 year old Gen-X woman. And if you're listening to this in real time, B-school will be opening up for registrations in early February. I'm honored to be an affiliate and cross-promote this program because it truly changed my life. Marie has a couple of fabulous free events coming up, including a Dream Business Bootcamp on February 7th tonight. If you're curious about starting your own business or if your current business is a little math, the Dream Business Bootcamp will give you insights and actions to help you build an aligned and profitable business that lights you up. I'm going to participate in it myself and if you'd like to join me, you can sign up for free at Kim Qualcomm's dream.
Now, the fifth thing I wish I knew before I started my business is how much writing you have to do as an entrepreneur. Seriously, when you start out as a business owner, it should come with a warning label. If you become an entrepreneur, you may experience any or all of the following. Negative side effects overwhelm second guessing questioning your self worth. Stress over eating chips, cheese and chocolate and writing copious amounts of copy. Even though I was starting a business as a freelance copywriter, I had no clue how much copy I would need to write for my own business, let alone write for my clients. Small business owners need copy for your website, your LinkedIn profile, Instagram and Facebook. Bio confirmation emails, welcome emails, sales emails, sales pages and brochures, product descriptions, social media posts, video script sales scripts, articles and contact contracts, course and educational trainings, a speaker bio and the list goes on. It's a lot. And here's something else I wish I knew sooner. And what I want you to know, too, is that it is so hard to write for and about yourself. So please show yourself a little patience and grace with that. This is where working on your mindset and using the constraints of copywriting formulas can help. So, my friend, those are the five things I wish I knew before I started my business. Number one, starting a business doesn't have to be complicated.
In fact, it's a little bit easier than you might expect. Number two, it is so important to embrace your constraints. Number three, the most important asset for entrepreneurship is your mindset. Number four, outsourcing and hiring experts is important, but only to a point. A number five is how much writing you have to do as an entrepreneur. Obviously, if you're struggling with number five, that's what I'm here for. And please keep on listening and subscribing to the podcast or following me on social media because that's where I can help you with the writing you have to do as an entrepreneur. And hey, listen, as I was prepping for this episode, I have like oodles and oodles of more content and random things that I know helped me be successful when I was starting my business. But this podcast episode is already long enough, so I'll just have to save that for another time. And if it's something you're interested in hearing more about, definitely let me know. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Communication. I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Ill Communication. Hey, if you enjoy these snack sized strategies and tips, you'll want to join my VIP Copy and Cocktails club. It's my email newsletter where I share more coffee tips, sales strategies, and the occasional recipe for my favorite beverage or appetizer du jour. To subscribe, visit Kim Qualcomm slash newsletter. Thanks for tuning in.
Resources Mentioned
Find out why I started my business & why I love constraints in episode 1
Hear my rally cry about Gen X women in episode 26
Sign up for the Dream Business Bootcamp
Additional Resources
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