10 Things We Learned In The First 2 Years Of Business

The following is a transcription of Episode 10 of The Peaceful Entrepreneur Podcast! Click here to listen on all platforms!

AMY: Welcome to the Peaceful Entrepreneur podcast, where together we are finding peace in the process of everyday business ownership by improving one step at a time, how we think and what we do. I'm your host, Amy Stout.

Welcome to the last episode of season one.

LUKE: Woo, we made it.

AMY: Yes, so we are doing 10 episode seasons. So the podcast is absolutely not over. It is very much continuing, But for us on a production and doing things in 10 episode increments is the system we've chosen to do. So today I'm here with Luke.

LUKE: Yo.

AMY: We figured it's only fitting to do our final episode of this season together and to make it a little a little more of like a reflection, honestly. And I've really just enjoyed every single conversation that I've been able to have this season. It's been amazing. And I am already dreaming up the different guests that I wanna have next season and the different topics that I wanna talk about. So we're going to continue having these incredible and prayerfully, hopefully helpful conversations.

LUKE: Definitely.

AMY: But for today, Luke and I are gonna be talking about the 10 things, not the 10 things, 'cause we've learned way more than that.

LUKE: Way more than that, yeah.

AMY: 10 big things that we've learned in the first two years of owning a business.

Okay, the first one, I'm calling myself out here.

This first one is, you don't have to immediately act on every idea you get. And I'm really speaking to people who are like me, 'Cause not everybody is like this. That's probably not your first instinct.

LUKE: No.

AMY: You get an idea and you like to sit on it for a while.

LUKE: I tend to, yeah. I tend to think about it more than just like a little while, I guess. I tend to take some time to just like process what I'm, an idea that's popped into my head.

AMY: Yeah.

LUKE: But where you’re a little more, oh, this is a great idea, let's do it. And there are pros and cons to both.

AMY: There really are.

LUKE: There really are and I think that's one way that we balance each other out in the business very well. Because I think on your end it might be like you come up with an idea and I can say, well let's, you know, we might talk about it. It's like I think we need to think about this a little bit more. You know, we need to consider this, this and this. Just  kind of let that simmer for a couple days and see where that goes or see how it changes maybe.

And then on the other hand, you might help push me to execute an idea sooner than I would naturally 'cause then it could just turn into, I just end up thinking about it and then nothing ever happens.

AMY: Yes, yeah, I think that having you as part of the business, that is a huge thing.

LUKE: Definitely.

AMY: So that's gonna help us to grow and me not spin my wheels going down a bunch of rabbit trails that I think are good ideas. And I mean, like you said, there's pros and cons.

So like me starting the business in the first place was kind of like a, I got the idea and I immediately started executing it. So that worked, but other ones, other ones, not so much.

And even with this podcast, I'm starting to practice, like I thought about this idea for a long time and we talked about it for a long time. And we talked about what the premise would be and we started talking to other people about it.

And there was a lot more like processing and preparing before we started executing, which it still probably wasn't that long of a period of time, but for me it was like a little bit longer.

So just as an encouragement to the people who are like me, if you slow down and you think about things more before you act on them, it will result in you having more peace in your decisions and in your actions.

LUKE: Yes.

AMY: Because you're not acting based off of an adrenaline rush of a good idea. You know, you're acting out of a grounded place of have the idea, confirm that it's a good idea, sit on it, and then move forward.

The second thing that we've learned is just put yourself out there. I found at the beginning of business that you gotta just shoot your shot.

You know, you gotta make sure people know about you. And even if you're doing amazing things, if you are not self-promoting, nobody's gonna know about the amazing things that you're doing.

So even though it might feel uncomfy to put yourself out there like that, you just got it.

LUKE: You have to.

And some people are wired differently when it comes to that. I feel like a lot, you know, you might think of an entrepreneur as somebody that is very willing to just put themselves out there, but that doesn't, that's not always the case I think.

And I think that's okay. And that's an area that you can grow in, right?

You don't have to be good at that to be a successful entrepreneur.

I think Amy is probably naturally better at putting herself out there 'cause she's more extroverted than I am. So that's something that I've had to work on.

And with being in sales in the past, you kinda have to learn how to do that and be comfortable with maybe putting yourself in what might feel like an uncomfortable situation. But that leads to a lot of positives, which I think we'll talk a little bit more about in a little bit, but I think that's, it's super beneficial.

AMY: Yeah, and I mean, I'm talking about posting yourself on social media. But another big thing is sending a cold email to a dream client.

And again, just put yourself out there, 'cause I did that and I emailed about 10 different dream clients, and I ended up getting one of them, which is actually a pretty good percentage. You know, and, and so I always encourage people to just do it. Cause you never know what's going to happen.

And these people had, they were approaching a hundred thousand followers when I first connected with them. And so you might think like little old me, like I would never, they would never give me the time of day, But my story says, you know, they did.

And so it's important to kind of circle back to what you were saying, Luke, that those situations can be uncomfortable. And like with the premise of this podcast being a peaceful entrepreneur, it's important to note here that not every single step of the entire process of being an entrepreneur is going to be perfectly peaceful and stress-free.

LUKE: Right, yeah.

AMY: But if what you're, if the uncomfortable step is going to get you to a more peaceful place, it's worth it.

LUKE: It is so worth it.

AMY: The next one kind of goes along with that, which is there's power in a followup because with those 10 dream clients that I contacted, I did not hear back from any until after I sent a followup.

LUKE: It's true.

AMY: And then I heard back from three. And then I landed one. So it's like, it's all part of the process.

We're in coaching and our coach talks a lot about multi touches, like reminding people that you're a thing, you know, reminding them that you're there, that you're interested. And that is so important.

You can't just put something out there one time and expect results.

LUKE: Right.

AMY: Okay, this is a big one that I kind of have as a life motto, which is stick to your word. That is so valuable to your clients that you do what you say you're gonna do.

And I have had clients say to me, like we felt good hiring you because we saw that you did that and we knew that you would continue to do that. It kind of goes into like that under promise over deliver.

Like don't ever say you can do more than you realistically can because you're never gonna win. But if you shoot low and are able to deliver more than you promised, then you're always going to, your clients are always going to have a positive experience with you. So that's a big one for me.

LUKE: Yeah, and that's not to say to sell yourself short.

AMY: No.

LUKE: Right, that's not what you're saying.

AMY: Right, but I think that doing what you say you're gonna do if not doing more than you say you're gonna do, one or both, is going to not only land you clients, but also retain clients.

LUKE: Right, yes.

AMY: And it's just like a good business practice in general.

LUKE: Definitely.

AMY: Definitely, yeah. And that's not to say like sell yourself short, you know, not, we're not saying that, but just to know your, know your limits and then present yourself that way, you know, and understanding what you have the capability and the capacity to do.

All right. Number five is connections are everything in business. As much as I wanted to believe that this wasn't true, the first two years of business really proved to me that it is.

I've gotten my best clients through my other clients and or through my friends who know me and authentically can vouch for me and recommend me.

This is kind of what I was alluding to when we talked with number two, which was just put yourself out there, right? You have to put yourself out there to make those connections. And that means going to networking events or being intentional with your current clients. I mean your work, in a lot of ways your work, you can let your work speak for itself and people will just share about you.

That can turn into new clients for you. But those connections and maintaining good relationships with your clients, I think we've seen proves to be immensely helpful with growing.

But I think that's just, you know, anyone in business, small or big, I'm sure would say something similar.

And I think it's important when you meet someone, if they don't seem like an ideal client for your business, not to immediately write them off.

Because you don't know who they know.

And our coach always says, and this has really stuck out to me about referrals being the gold standard. Like that's always going to be the best way to get business.

And this is the huge thing that he said that I will always come back to, which is with a referral, you're getting an immediate endorsement from that person who's referring you.

Tthat is going to impact the potential new clients so much more than just them coming across a social media post or a cold email. You're so much more likely to get another client if you have a word of approval from a current client.

So the best thing we can recommend from our experience and from our coaching is set up a referral program of some sort.

Or just like ask a favor of your clients. Like you don't have to set up a program. You could just ask a favor of them to, you know, our coach says, you know, Hey, would you mind just scrolling in your phone for a moment and seeing if there's someone, there's one or two people in there who might be interested in my services?

You know, simple and easy. Easy way to do that. So just remember, you never know who people know and anybody you meet could be a connection to your next client.

Number six is try all the things. And what I mean by that is when you're starting out in business, definitely try a few different types of services and a few different types of clients to figure out who you click with because it's like trying on a wedding dress like you can have the picture on Pinterest that you like but when you put it on your body you're not gonna feel the same way about it probably sometimes you do but usually you put it on you're like oh that doesn't actually look like I thought it would or that doesn't have I'm going for with my wedding you know so you have to try it on you right you really do having tried on many wedding dresses I can concur.

LUKE: You can do tests?

AMY: Yeah.

LUKE: I'm so glad. (laughs)

AMY: So yeah, you have to kind of do that with your business as you're figuring out what you want to do, unless you start out with a very clear vision. That's amazing.

But if you don't, try the things for a little while. And my caveat here is don't try all the things for too long.

Try to make your decision fairly quickly because only when you, and this is going back to our conversation with Courtney about finding your niche, only when you find your niche are you actually going to experience starting to grow in depth as well as grow in clients.

So number seven is you don't have to work with everyone forever.

This is for the people pleasers. Sometimes a client's going to come into your life for a season and you're meant to be, you're meant to work together for that season and that's it.

Other times you're going to have clients that you're with for years and it continues to work and be the right fit. And neither of those situations is wrong.

So if a client starts to not be a right fit, it's okay to back out. It is. It's okay to step away. And you shouldn't feel bad about that. And there are ways to part ways amicably.

Thankfully. It doesn't always happen like that.

LUKE: Right, unfortunately.

AMY: Yeah. But there are ways to go about it. That it can be amicable and you can still even, like I did that with a client a couple weeks ago and she was saying, I would still love to refer you to people and all this stuff. So there's a way to kind of back out gracefully.

LUKE: Definitely. Number eight is you can't rush the process or don't rush the process. You can't rush building a business, I don't think.

It is not gonna happen overnight. You hear success stories and you see the cool things on Twitter or on the news or something or on TikTok.

And it's like, oh, well, I made a million dollars in my second month of starting my own business. That's amazing. There are people out there that do that and they do it well, we are not some of those people.

Most people's entrepreneurial experience is not gonna be that, and that's okay. So I think part of that, part of my point is don't compare yourself to other entrepreneurs. Don't expect your experience to be exactly the same as somebody else's.

AMY: That's good.

LUKE: Right, but also just going back to the idea of not rushing the process. it is you have to put in some dirty work. You know, you have to do the meaningless stuff at the beginning.

You have to spend a lot of extra time and energy and brain power on the very beginning, the very early stages.

Like Amy said, like previously, like reaching out to people, just putting yourself out there, you gotta do that. You know, things like that.

So, understanding that it's not gonna, again, it's just, it's not gonna happen overnight. You're not gonna arrive super quick and that's okay. Like it takes, it takes time.

So if you're diligent and you're hardworking and you're committed,

AMY: You will see growth.

LUKE: You're gonna see, you're gonna see growth at some point.

AMY: Yeah, definitely. We've experienced that where I feel like for the first six or seven or eight months of last year, we were cruising at a similar level as far as the income was the indicator.

You know, like it was very consistent and then it started jumping at the end of the year and I got excited. And now I'm having to catch myself because I want it to just keep jumping but it just doesn't always work like that. It's like, okay, we had a jump.

That was a great advancement, but we just have to keep being faithful, doing the right things, and trust that God's going to grow it at the rate that he wants it to.

LUKE: Yeah, that's good. Number nine is be intentional to put in the work. This kind of goes hand in hand with what I was just saying, but be intentional to put in the work, but also be intentional to put in the rest.

I thought that was a good reminder to myself and I'm sure Amy would agree but just for anybody that like I was just saying on that last point, you have to put in the work. You have to grind it out some days and do the the dirty work.

Do the things that you don't really love to do. If you're an introvert going out and meeting people at networking events or things like that; putting yourself out there just as an example.

But I think it's it's good to remember that while you do have to put in all that work you still have to take time for yourself to let yourself recharge and to rest and recuperate that can look like a lot of different things for different people for Amy it might look like reading reading a book or going on a walk with a friend or making coffee.

For me it might be working out or playing music, listening to music, whatever that might look like. But I think it's just important to know your boundaries mentally and physically because all that hard work can take a toll mentally and it can take a toll physically like lack of sleep or anything. But this stress can manifest itself in different ways. I think that's just a good reminder to to make sure that you leave time to rest but also from a mental perspective to tell yourself it's okay to rest.

I think that's a huge part of it. Because you can hear what I'm saying and be like okay yeah I'll make some time to do that and then you end up taking maybe an afternoon to  go read or go spend some time outside somewhere and then you feel guilty during or after like I'm wasting time. That's not healthy.

That is not a healthy place to be. So let yourself rest, let yourself relax and decompress, do something you enjoy or do nothing at all.

You know, just let yourself recuperate after that when you jump back in. Hopefully you feel refreshed and ready to kind of hit the ground running again.

But doing that consistently, I think is important. If you need to schedule it out, like say Thursday afternoons, I'm not working, I'm going to this coffee shop to read or to journal or whatever, or I'm going to go take a hike somewhere.

You can plan that out or it can be spontaneous if it needs to be, but just be intentional with that.

AMY: Yeah, I think an important truth there that you are covering with everything you're saying is that rest is productive.

LUKE: Yes.

AMY: I think people struggle to believe that, but it is actually true. Like you can only be, your business can only be as healthy as you are mentally, because you're the one running it.

And so if you're not taking care of yourself, you're actually not taking the best care of your business that you can.

So next time you feel guilty for resting, remind yourself of that, that like you got to fill your cup first. You got to take care of yourself first, like the cliche airplane metaphor of like, put your mask on first and then help people around you.

Like, and that doesn't always apply to every single situation in life, but it it applies here to take care of yourself, make sure your brain, your mental space, your body is healthy.

And you, I promise you will see so much more business growth and feel so much more peace and fulfillment in your business when you do that.

LUKE: That's good.

AMY: It's a great reminder for me.

LUKE: Number 10 is have people in your corner. One of the big things I think that's important is having people in your corner both that are connected to the business or in the same kind of business world, but also people that are not, that are maybe just a friend, a good friend or something, or a parent or a sibling or a spouse, in our case for a long period of time before I came on.

So I think it's good to have people that you can lean on, you can share things with, that you can get advice from, that you can get help from, that are, again, that are not involved.

So Amy has good friends that she can go to with things about work and those people can help her process it from an outside looking in perspective, which I think is important because now that I'm involved in the business, my perspective has changed a little bit.

Obviously we're still a married couple so there's a little bit of that that is kind of separate but having people that are that are outside of the business that you can go to I think is very important and very helpful.

A fresh set of eyes sometimes is all you really need and whether that's problem solving or just need help thinking through something. Or you just need to get something work related off your chest and taking that to someone that's not involved they can kind of maybe help you see things differently. If you're upset help you see things in a different light and be beneficial for you.

But I think that's huge and that could also look like again having somebody in your corner. It could be somebody that you met at a networking event that you strike up a working relationship with that is maybe in a similar field or just a good encouragement for you.

So it doesn't have to be like a friend or a family member or a significant other or anything like that, but just having those people that that you can go to I think is crucial for anyone in in small business especially.

AMY: Mm-hmm absolutely and and if you haven't listened to the episode why you can't do entrepreneurship by yourself. Jess and I have an entire conversation about this concept and I think it's so amazing that you're bringing it up right now because it is such a huge concept.

And I see such a stark difference from when I was trying to do all of it by myself to when I started bringing people in not only to help me and carry out some of the tasks to the business, but also to be community of other business owners and bounce ideas off of each other.

Because like you're saying, it's important to have the people who are not related to have that outside perspective, but it's also important to have the people who are in the entrepreneurial world and understand what you're going through.

Understand the struggles, maybe a little more. Like someone that you're not working with directly maybe so that there's not like a “should we be talking about this?” kind of you know perspective but like having someone who is truly a peer and in a similar space as you who can speak into certain situations.

Oh my goodness. I just can't tell you how valuable that's been since I started doing that.

Well our last little bonus point is I mean it's more of an encouragement than anything But I just wanted to say like you can do anything you put your mind to.

LUKE: You can do the dang thing.

AMY: You can do it. And I just want that to be an encouragement to whoever is hearing this, whether you want to be an entrepreneur or you want to start a business, but you feel fear or you're holding back for some reason or another, or whether you're already an entrepreneur and you feel like a tugging to make a change or an addition or you know whatever it is: you can do it.

You can do absolutely anything. You are the one deciding what your life looks like you don't have to build it off of anything or do anything just because somebody else does it or because society says you should like blaze your own path.

You can do it and we'll be here to encourage you as you do.

So thank you so much to all of you who have been with us for this entire season. If you haven't listened to every episode, of course, we would encourage you to go back and catch up.

And we can't wait to continue having these conversations that are getting each of us one step closer to being more peaceful entrepreneurs in our every day. So we're so appreciative and grateful for each of you, and we'll see you in season two.

LUKE: Woo!

AMY: Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We look forward to connecting with you more, whether that's on Instagram, TikTok, or our email list. We'd love to hear what you thought of today's episode and if you have any additional tips to add.

We will see you next week with more tips and tools to becoming a peaceful entrepreneur. Bye for now!