Five important lessons I learnt in my first year of business.
Well, let me just preface this post by saying, Holy Moly and the Crackers (they’re a band, check them out!), it’s been a year since I started Third Ginger Studio! Excuse me while I do a little happy dance and crack open a bottle of champagne!
I honestly totally forgot it was Third Ginger’s 1st birthday until a few days before. I was sitting on the train, thinking the 7th July is so familiar, why is that? Then it clicked. It was on that day, 1 year ago, I sat on my couch watching TV registering my business name and deciding this is it. I’m going to do this. I know I don’t have gold foil balloons and didn’t do a cute boomerang, but that’s just not me.
What I already knew prior to this year, is you do you, baby. I thought I knew a lot about business and how to do things. Ha! I was so wrong. Nothing like a humble moment when you’ve bitten off more than you can chew and all of a sudden, you’re in the deep end of the swimming pool and have no choice but to swim. So, let’s get into it – the 5 most important lessons I learnt in my first year of business.
THE LEARNING CURVE
There is always something I don’t know/don’t know how to do/need to learn. And there always will be (how cool is that?!) There were so many things that I had absolutely no idea about. It took a lot of research, googling, competitor analysis’, spreadsheets, talking to other people and good old trial and error. But I got to a point of knowing enough to get me by, but there is still so much I need to learn.
Here’s a (short) list of things I had no idea about. Finances, taxes, invoicing correctly, what the hell is GST, writing catchy captions, CSS and coding, Pinterest for business, creating interesting and engaging content, managing an entire branding process, juggling multiple clients, admin (so much admin), and so much more.
THE PROCESS
I’m an extremely impatient person. It’s definitely my fatal flaw and one that causes me a lot (a lot) of (unnecessary) stress (workin’ on it). Don’t get me wrong, I love the entire branding process from the initial conversations with a new client, right up to the very end when I handover their new brand. I love it all. But I do get frustrated when things don’t work properly, or they take too long. Third Ginger Studio is currently my side hustle (even though I hate calling it that), and I just want to be there already. You know the there that I’m talking about. With the great clients, the working from anywhere in the world, the engaged community, working full time in my own business, working from home. It's everything I want but I know that I need to trust this process and that it’ll happen in its own time, I just need to be consistently sharing great stuff content, learning about better serving my clients and growing my audience. Consistent work pays off and I need to trust in that and its process.
PERFECTION IS NOT A THING
Done is better than perfect. It obviously needs to look good and well-designed and of a high quality, but it is never going to be absolutely perfect. It will have flaws (that only I can see, most likely). Before I launched my business, I thought I needed to have everything sorted. My strategy, a full brand, printed collateral, website, business plan, marketing plan, finances – everything! But that just wasn’t the case. Also not realistic at all. As I’ve learnt, business (and life and the world) is constantly evolving and I need to be adapting, so my plan should always be somewhat flexible, to account for things like COVID. And always have a half-baked idea up your sleeve so you can whip out when needed.
HARD WORK
Business are hard work. Harder than I thought. I’ve never been afraid of hard work but having you’re my own business and having big plans for it, means my brain is constantly on, thinking up new ideas, how to do this, how can I do that. It’s constant work. Going home from my 9-5, eating dinner then working till late just to meet a deadline. Or sitting in bed typing up a blog post because the inspiration struck (exactly what I’m doing right now). Having a constant note on my phone filled with ideas or concepts. Carrying my laptop around all the time so I can fit in a quick half hour or so. Or even something like managing clients and their workloads and setting expectations and remembering to invoice. And working on the weekends because I genuinely love what I do. It’s that old saying, “love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life”.
THE PLAN
Not everything is going to go to plan. This year has been one spanner in the works after another, and my plans have shifted, been obliterated, backflipped and come full circle. It’s exhausting, yes. But at a time when I was potentially about to lose my full-time job for good, I was kind of excited at the prospect of trying to make this business work and giving it my all. In a way, I’ve still done that and have changed my offerings, updated my services, revisited my content – done everything possible to give this business a fighting chance for when the plans change or the goalpost moves. One thing I’ll take away from this hodgepodge of a year, is that the plan cannot be set in stone. Everything must be flexible and easily adaptable. If you don’t swim, you’ll sink.
BONUS LESSON
If you’re not enjoying it, it’s not worth it. If you’re not passionate about it, it’s not worth it. Lucky for me, this is something I’m extremely passionate about and have been for a long time, so for me, I’m in this for the long haul and that not only scares the absolutely shit out of me, but also makes me giddy with excitement to see where this journey takes me.
There it is, my 5 most important lessons I learnt in my first year of business, plus a bonus! It’s definitely not the kind of year I was expecting, but it’s made me more resilient and determined.
As a newbie business owner, if you’ve got any tips or lessons for me, let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear them and learn from them!