In this episode:

tips for people at the start of their business journey
why you should get comfortable with changing your mind
the balance between inspiration and finding your own style
why obsessing over followers is detrimental to your creativity
why comparison is never helpful

1. Your business will change and grow with you

At the beginning of your business journey, one of the most exciting things is all of the branding and packaging decisions. Seeing your vision and all of your ideas come to life in something tangible is definitely a wonderful feeling.

They are important decisions, but the key here is to remember that what you decide, in this moment, is not set in stone. Your decisions are likely not final, and don’t have to be. Your business will change and grow over time, with you, and you will likely change your mind on certain decisions as a result.

This should take some of the pressure off. But it should also remind you not to fret about your decisions, and waste more time than necessary on them. Just start with what you like, and what you think best represents your business. Don’t agonise over finding the ‘perfect’ shade of red or the perfect packaging, because you may change your mind eventually anyway.

Your time is probably better spent on other things that have a bigger impact on your business.

2. Find your own style

When you’re starting out, it’s natural to find inspiration from other people and businesses that are already established. It can be a good way to guide your business processes - taking notes from how they run their own business efficiently or the type of content they produce.

But it’s important to strike a balance between being inspired and finding your own unique voice and style. If you want to stand out amongst the crowd, then following someone else’s blueprint won’t help you, and you’ll only be one step behind them, in their shadow.

You might not know what your style is yet, but only when you take active steps towards discovering it and figuring out what is true to you and your voice, do you get clearer on it.

Take notes and learn from those ahead of you, but be confident in developing your own style and voice, in order to establish yourself as a unique and individual brand.

3. Don’t obsess over the vanity metrics

Of course, the numbers do matter to an extent. The number of Instagram followers or YouTube subscribers you have could lead to more opportunities and even more sales.

But the key is to not overvalue them. You want to have a healthy and sustainable relationship with your numbers - especially if you're a creative in any sort of way. When it comes to your art and your creativity, the numbers shouldn’t dictate how you feel about it, or whether or not you should post it. You need to love what you create independent of those numbers.

Obsessing over numbers that aren’t the only measure of success will affect the way you show up. Your creative process will be affected by how you anticipate it will be received, rather than from creating from a place of authenticity.

Your creativity and your value is not determined by the number of followers or likes you get.

Instead of obsessing over numbers growth, a healthier approach is to focus on meaningful connection and genuine engagement. The beautiful thing is that it can happen regardless of the amount of followers or subscribers that you have.

There are creators with a large following and little engagement, and then there are creators with a small but dedicated and loyal following.

4. Manage your finances as early as you can

It might not be the most exciting part of business, but inevitable and unavoidable nonetheless, and the earlier you can start tracking your expenses, shipping, figuring out fees and profit margins, taxes etc, the better.

Even though it might be something that you’d be tempted to put off as much as possible (I know I did), it doesn’t get easier. In fact, the longer you avoid it, the harder your job will be trying to figure it all out eventually when all of the incomings and outgoings pile up. Start on a simple system to start tracking as soon as you can and your future self will thank you for it.

5. Everyone’s journey is different

Comparison is a trap and will only serve to you feel bad about your own progress. This is not a competition, and we are all on our own different journeys. Avoid the scarcity mindset that will keep you resentful, competitive and unhappy. (Community over numbers, remember?)

You can never really tell the amount of work that has gone into someone’s achievements. You might see an ‘overnight success’ when the truth is that they’ve been honing their craft for years. Comparing your journey with someone else who could be at a completely different stage is unhelpful, detrimental and also unfair - to yourself and to the person you’re comparing yourself to.

Measure yourself against yourself, only. Celebrate your progress over the past month or year. This journey is yours and yours alone.

Focus on your own growth, or you’ll be too busy comparing to go anywhere.

In summary

There is no secret rulebook, one-size-fits-all single path to success.

You don't have to follow in someone else's footsteps. You don't have to be afraid to carve out your own path and do things differently.

Everybody's journey looks different because everybody is different. There’s a lot of long hours and a lot of work ahead of you, so you might as well have some fun and enjoy the process.

0:09
Hi guys, welcome back to episode 5. This week we have a question from Kiran and she asks:
"What are 3 tips you would give someone who is at the start of their business journey?"
So it was really hard for me to only pick 3. I know the question was for me to pick 3 tips for those starting out on their business journey but I decided to pick 3 plus 2 bonus tips. So stay tuned for the bonus ones at the end.
But tip #1, I would have to say is to accept and to acknowledge and to understand that your business will change and grow and adapt over time.
Not only do you not have to have it all figured and planned out from the very beginning but I think it's healthy to have some level of expectation that things will change as you grow.
And where I think this can be really valuable is when you're making decisions at the beginning of your business journey when you're figuring out things like packaging, your logo, your business name even, the colours of your brand.
1:13
All those little tiny decisions can feel like a really big deal in the beginning and they are. They do mean a lot and they do have a big impact on your business but also don't forget that you can change at any time.
There's no rule that says you cannot change your mind at a later date. And I always say this but just remember, when I first started out, my brand was not called Planned By Jysla, my business was actually called something else.
I had a different logo, my logo has gone through maybe 3 or 4 iterations, the colours have changed, they're still changing.
My backing sheets for my stickers are always changing and I think there is some stigma around changing your branding, especially your visual branding a little bit.
Because somehow it implies that you haven't committed to a decision and that you're unsure about your brand but I think it's very healthy and natural and normal to change your brand over time to let it evolve over time and change with you.
2:15
Because you're not going to be the same person a year from now. And I'm saying all this in the context of personal brands. Usually when you're the only person in your business and when that happens, who knows who you're going to be a year from now and in the same vein, who knows where your business will be a year from now.
So if you're at the beginning of your business journey, don't feel like all the decisions that you make now are final, that you can't change them at a later date. And to not put so much pressure on that because you'll come to find that a lot of the decisions will change over time.
So don't put so much pressure on finding the perfect packaging, or the perfect colours for your brand. You can just start where you are, start with what you like right now and figure things out as you go.
3:01
Tip #2 is to stay true to your own style and your own voice. So I know when you're starting out, it's hard not to take inspiration from other artists or other businesses that you admire and I think that's perfectly normal but there needs to be a good balance between taking inspiration and also trusting in your own style.
When you're starting out, using other people as inspiration might be a great place to start but I want you to get into the habit of trying to find your own style and carve out your own path as well because when you're at the beginning of your business journey, you don't want to look like someone else. You're trying to stand out in the market, in the industry as your own person, it's detrimental to both artists - the person that you're copying and yourself - if you're just living in their shadow.
You don't want to look too similar because then you'll never really be able to show and prove to other people that you are your own artist and you can stand on your own feet and you have your own unique style.
4:05
That being said, don't freak out if you don't know what your style is yet, again you'll figure it out as you go.
But this tip is just about making sure that you're pushing yourself to find your own style and not to follow in someone else's footsteps or path because then you'll always be in their shadow. You'll always be one step behind the person that you're trying to copy.
When you really put your own heart and your own story into your products, that's where you'll shine and you'll really show a unique side of yourself.
4:35
Tip #3 is to not obsess over the numbers.
Okay so hear me out, I feel like I need to explain myself a little bit for this one but I feel like this one is really, really, really important and I just want to remind you guys of this every single day.
Whether it's the number of sales, the number of likes, the number of followers or subscribers that you might have, I want you to not put so much emphasis on those numbers.
So of course in order to grow and be successful, the numbers do matter. I'm not saying that they don't matter, I just don't want you to obsess over them and disproportionately value them.
Because you need to have a healthy relationship, a healthy and authentic relationship with those numbers and you need to find a balance that works for you.
Growing your audience at the beginning of your business journey can be really, really tough but you need to remember that that doesn't really go away.
I'm sure there's a lot of big creators with thousands and thousands of followers that still really struggle with social media and find themselves placing too much value on followers and likes and superficial engagement analytics.
So what I'm trying to say is that the worst thing that you can do to yourself and your creativity and your content is to let those numbers dictate what you create.
If you love your work, then you should share it. You shouldn't be deliberating, and I'm saying this from personal experience, you shouldn't be deliberating over whether this will be well received or not.
6:00
When it comes to your art, the most important thing is how you feel about it. It's not sustainable to be worrying about what other people think about your art or what you're trying to sell.
You need to love what you do and your creativity should be independent of those numbers.
And remember, numbers don't equal success. It doesn't equate to success. I've seen a lot of creators with very big numbers have very little engagement and on the other hand, I've seen a lot of smaller creators have really small numbers with a lot of engagement.
So what you should be focusing on is how you are connecting with your audience and with your potential customers.
Do you really want more followers or do you want more people to resonate and connect with you and your work?
Also, remember that everyone starts somewhere and there is no shame in having a small amount of followers. The number of followers that you have shouldn't change the way that you show up to the world.
So don't put so much emphasis on superficial numbers, don't obsess over the numbers and focus more on meaningful and authentic connections with your audience and your customers, rather than just trying to get new customers.
7:10
Customers is a whole other topic that I really want to delve deeper into but for now, my tip for starting out is to focus on the audience that you do have right now and what you put out, rather than just trying to grow your followers.
Okay and now for the bonus tips, #4 is to be smart with your finances. The earlier you can get started with learning about how to manage money, how taxes work in your country or your state, the better off you will be.
I know it's not the most exciting part of business but the earlier you can start tracking your expenses properly, the better of you'll be in the long term.
Also remember it might take a while for you to make a return on your investments when you're starting out but you do not want to be losing money.
If you are running a proper business or you're aiming to have a proper business, profit is important to figure out. You need to work out how to price your products properly. You need to take into account the cost of materials, your own time when you're making things and also packaging and shipping.
It is super tedious, I know, but the earlier you can get everything set up, use Google Sheets, there's plenty of free software out there, the earlier you can get everything written down and organised, the better off you will be.
Your future self will thank you for doing all this work at the very beginning. I know money is a bit of a weird topic amongst artists and it can be a little bit taboo and it has a stigma, but there's no getting around it if you want to make a living doing what you do. If you're trying to run a business, money is inevitable.
8:43
Tip #5, the final tip, is that everyone's journey looks different. You know this, you've heard this before, but it's so easy to forget it. It is pointless to compare your journey with someone else's.
Just because you've seen some artists explode and look like they're doing really well and getting a lot of sales and they have a lot of subscribers and followers, it doesn't mean that you're a failure for not being where they are because they're just at a different part of their journey.
This is not a competition, you don't have to complete a certain amount of steps and reach a certain number of milestones in order to be successful.
You need to define success on your own terms and you need to measure yourself against yourself, not anyone else. Holding yourself up to someone else's standard isn't sustainable and it's just going to make you feel worse about yourself because you're going to fall into the comparison trap.
Don't compare yourself to someone else, compare yourself to where you were a month ago, a year ago. It's impossible to know what someone has gone through and the amount of work that they've put in to get where they are.
And sometimes things take longer on your journey because it's just an opportunity for you to learn and to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.
I personally feel like my journey was really, really slow. I think some of you might think my journey was really fast. It took years to get to where I'm today and yes, I still have so much more room to grow.
And if I compare myself to other big creators out there, I might feel discouraged because I'm not making as much, I'm not shipping out as many orders. But if I compare myself to where I was a year ago, I'm extremely happy with my progress and my journey because I know this is my journey, this is my story.
10:22
So I just want to end by giving you some words of encouragement. There is no rulebook, there is no secret rulebook/guidebook that successful creators know about and that you just need to discover.
There is no single path to success, I think that's really important to remember. Just because one particular set of steps or a path worked for one person, doesn't mean that following that same exact set of steps will work for you.
Because you are your own person. You don't have to follow in someone else's footsteps, you don't have to be afraid to carve out your own path and do things differently.
There is no one path to success and there is no one size fits all for business owners.
Everybody's journey looks different because everybody is different. And while starting up a business, while running a business, is extremely difficult with a lot of long hours and a lot of work, it should be fun, you should enjoy the process.
Don't get so caught up in the end goal that you forget to have a little fun along the way and to enjoy the process. And if you're in this for the long run, it's going to be a long journey, so you might as well enjoy it.
11:28
So let go of trying to make everything perfect.
Of course, do your planning, I'm a big planner, I'm a big organiser, but let it be flexible as well and don't hold onto expectations so strictly that you get disappointed when the outcome is not what you thought it would be.
There are so many resources out there, I want to be one of them, I want to help you on your journey so that you're a little bit less scared to take that next big step.
So thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.
Kiran, I hope that answers your question and I will see you next week. Bye!