Sometimes our struggles are the best thing that happen to us.
It doesn’t feel like it at the time, of course.
At the time it feels on par with having your toenails ripped out one by one, but in the end…
In the end, our mistakes help us realize what we will no longer tolerate.
And then we get to start again, as many times as we need.
Eighteen months ago I decided to start a coaching business.
I made a plan, I built a website, I started promoting, and in a short while I got a few clients and I loved it.
Then I had a new idea. And I kind of started working on that. While kind of doing the other stuff. And traveling full-time and living out of a suitcase…
And I stopped doing the things that were working before, without realizing it.
The clients that had been hiring me stopped showing up with regularity, and I started attracting clients that LOVED what I did, but NO, there was no way they felt they should pay for it…
Creativity is a b!tch.
As ‘artists,’ we always assume we don’t make money because we’re not good at our craft, when the reality is that we’re simply selling to the wrong people, or we’re so unfocused no one knows what the f*ck we’re actually offering.
Because when you’re full of ideas, and capable of executing so many of them, it’s hard to pick just one!
So we try to do them all… but we don’t do any of them well, never finish anything & forget we have to promote to be known. (Pro-tip: one post is not enough!)
Before you know it, you’re a starving artist working 100 hours a week just to make rent, feel like you’re running a charity, or you wake up in a panic at 1am to look for jobs on LinkedIn because you clearly can.not.hack.it as a business owner.
Not that I’ve experienced any of that (this week…) but, at some point we all face a turning point.
It’s time to either pull a Tim Gunn and make it work, or give up and go back to life in a cube.
Personally, I did NOT come this far just to come this far so, it’s time to rethink & rebuild.
Business success comes from persistence, not perfection.
Ya’ gotta get up & back into the arena when you’re knocked down, and adjust your tactics until you win.
That often means finding the intersection of what you do best & what you WANT to do most, and rebooting your business for the client that lives there.
That doesn’t mean you turn away paying clients if you enjoy working with them.
It means no longer building a business around clients that aren’t willing to pay for your expertise.
Stop running your business with your heart or your creative chakra, and find the clients you can help who also want to pay you for what you do.
Learn from my mistakes & get focused on the best clients for you.
And if you’re a creative person who wants to make a lot of money doing what you love, maybe impacting the world & feeling pretty happy while you do it, let’s talk about how I might be able to help you make the same mistakes I have.
XOXO,
Learn more about starting or scaling your own business here.
