Ep. 038: 9 Business Lessons from 2019
2019 was an amazing year for a lot of reasons, but it was also a year of growth on all fronts. And some of that growth was painful. There’s so much more to a year than what your final revenue is. When looking back it’s important to think about the larger lessons, especially mistakes, so we can be intentional about not repeating them.
In this episode I share 9 things I learned in 2019 so that you can have an easier path before you for 2020.
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Erika Tebbens: If you find that you're struggling with sales conversations, if they stress you out, or you find that you're always stumbling over your words, or you're not closing as many sales as you like, or you just are really petrified of coming across as that pushy sales person.
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Hey, welcome back to the podcast! Today, I'm going to be talking about nine business lessons I learned in 2019 and since there's nine of them, I'm going to go through them fairly quickly, but if you have any questions, you know, I'm always a click away over on Instagram @erikatebbensconsulting, come find me, pick my brain, ask me questions, I'm always happy to help.
So here we go, and none of these is necessarily like more important than the other. This is just the way I wrote them out. Number one, track your money. So it's not scary. It's empowering, truly. If I can do it, anyone can do that. And I, a hundred percent mean that. I know that's a phrase that gets tossed around a lot, but I'm completely serious.
Like money numbers, all of it used to scare the bejesus out of me. I would sit every like. I dunno February and go through all my tax stuff and be in like a cold sweat the whole time. I just, I hated it. So, uh, episode 23, I talk all about my Money Monday Practice doesn't matter if you do Money Monday, Financial Friday or, whatever. It just track your money. I cannot even begin to tell you how incredible it is and then for 2020, I'm going to be implementing the profit first system. So I'm reading the book right now and I'm going to be implementing that because I've heard great things from people and it's sort of taking what I was doing last year up a notch.
Uh, next up is that people can do hard work, they don't want to do boring work so we can do hard things. Right? We can physically labor, uh, a lot, like in a lot of ways, like every day, you know, we're tidying up our home, we're doing this, we're doing that. Whatever. And we can do things that are hard.
We actually have a harder time doing things that are boring, but we say that it's hard. Right? Cause it feels, it feels hard mentally because it's boring, but it's not actually physically hard work. Right? So, uh, I know like I've had jobs, like I used to be at work in farming, right? That is some hard ass physical labor.
Uh, and I'm sure many of you listening have had, even if it was just a high school job, a very physically demanding job you're on your feet all the time. Maybe fast food or retail or something like that, but doing stuff that is boring is, I, I swear. It's like even worse, right? So a lot of the backend stuff in your work in your business is going to be boring.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it right. Eventually, when you have the means, you can outsource a lot of it. Right? But there are still some things that you need to kind of sit down and do each day, right? So you need to plan, you need to create content, you need to work on your messaging. You need to, you know, maybe schedule social media staff. Like there are just things that are a little bit mundane, but, they need to get done. Right?
And this doesn't mean you have to do all of them and you, or you have to do all of them forever. But a lot of this stuff that I do in my business is just sitting my butt down at my desk and being focused and just getting back end stuff done, getting it handled.
Right? So there's. It's not inherently fun to spend one day a month recording a whole bunch of podcast episodes, but it frees that time every week in the subsequent weeks where I can work on other stuff. Right? So I could just batch it all in one go. And then I can, I don't have to think about it again for four weeks, which is really cool other than just promoting it.
But I don't have to think about recording it and editing and all of that stuff. So if you feel like, uh, God, like some of the stuff is just boring or not fun. Well, it doesn't all have to be fun. The fun is when you get to actually serve people. Right? But there's stuff that you have to do in order for people to know you exist so that they can hire you or buy from you and then you can serve them.
Right? So do the boring work. That is my tip. Um, consistency breeds momentum. So. I'm going to use an analogy that a lot of people understand. So a lot of people don't stick with exercise because they don't see an immediate payoff. It's exact same way in business. You can't go jogging for three days and then all of a sudden be like, Oh my God, look at like, I I'm just like so much stronger and I'm so much faster and I feel so much better, and my, my whole like brain and my body and everything is transformed. No, you are going to have to keep going. Now at the end of a week, you might start to notice changes at the end of two weeks, you know, month, or three months and everything. But as you go, you are going to build momentum as you stick with it, because then you will start to see results.
And when you start to see results, it's like a flywheel, because then you get motivated. You're like, Oh my God, it's working and then you're okay doing that boring work, like I just mentioned. Right? So, be consistent it's businesses are like a train, it takes a long time to get up to speed, right? It takes a lot of energy and push to get up to speed.
But once that train is moving on the track, it takes a lot of force to get it, to break and slow all the way back down. So if you're trying to, you know, stop a train that was all seen in the movies, it takes a really long time for that train to get to a full stop. It's the same in your business. You will not see results for a while.
Just like with exercise or anything else that's transformational, just keep going. Um, next step is that less is more, so this is something I still struggle with all the time. It is so tempting to want to give and give and give and wow the hell out of people, but there is a fine line between over-delivering for like a good customer service purpose and overwhelming someone. Right?
Especially with information. I really like, I am a teacher by nature. I am a like, I don't know, fixer or helper. I don't know what the right word is there, but, I love to empower people with knowledge. So a lot of times I just want to give and give and give so that somebody has all of the pieces of the puzzle.
But as humans, we cannot absorb, absorb, absorb. So you can actually serve people better by scaling back what you are, teaching them or helping them with or anything like that. So, uh, but damn, it's so hard. I, I really have to coach myself on this all the time. Um, next step is seek out community. So find a community of people who understand and support you.
Its, this is going to be crucial in your business. It really is. Uh, you will have many times where you're like, I'm lonely, this is hard, this is confusing, I'm super frustrated and all of that. So it's good to have those people around to bolster you. Sometimes you have to buy your way in that's okay, too, whether it's a mastermind, whether it's a monthly membership, whether you go to a conference it's okay.
A lot of high, like six and seven figure earners have bought their way into it community along the way and still continue to, and you can buy your way into community at any level, because there are monthly memberships for things like my friend, Becky runs one that's as low as $5 a month, right? So Becky Mollenkamp, she was a guest on the podcast.
Uh, but you need community. Uh, there's, uh, the next, my next tip is, and it's a sort of a common phrase, but be slow to hire and quick to fire. So this was a big lesson I learned this year. Um, I used to do hiring and training professionally, but, uh, but man, when it is your own business, it is like a whole other level than doing it for somebody else's business.
So if someone is repeatedly disappointing, you, like, let's say you have hire someone and it was going fine, and then it's just not right. So make sure that you're communicating effectively. Uh, if things are still rocky, it's time to have the come to Jesus talk, which is really hard to do, I've had to do it even in my professional, like retail career, um, and be prepared to find a replacement if they don't turn it around, sometimes one come to Jesus talk and somebody will shape up and it's fine. But if not be prepared to find a replacement. On the flip side, it's okay to interview a bunch of people, it's okay to go through a whole process. You don't have to hire the first person that, that comes your way.
Right? You can also hire for short-term projects to test someone out. And then, you know, before you go for you go all in. I had an incredibly disappointing year in terms of hiring people that I thought were going to be amazing. And then they turned out not to be, so learn from me. Uh, All right. So next step is invest in your own growth.
So every day in America, at least people make payments on costly student loans from college, and many people are not using their degrees at all for their job, right? So we spend tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on college, but for some reason, in the online business space, we view a $2,000 course as high ticket.
Even if that course will help us with something that we desperately need help on to grow our business. Right? So I'm not saying you have to invest all of your money. I'm not saying you should invest in a million different things, but I am saying that if you were running a brick and mortar business, you sure as shit would have a bank loan or use your savings or something, or a credit card to get supplies and maybe hire people and get, uh, an accountant or a bookkeeper like you would do these things because you had a physical business. Now the beauty of an online business is you don't need all that overhead that you would if you ran a brick and mortar business. Right? So instead, you can funnel some of that money into learning how to be a better business owner.
So there's all sorts of things you can invest in out there. You can invest in mindset stuff you could invest in. Uh, marketing stuff you can invest in. I mean, God, the sky is the limit, right? But if you are not improving your skills and your ability to run a strong business, you will not have that business for the long term or you will keep.
Just kicking that can, that can down the road and be just come up constantly disappointed with your results. So always evolving your skills and knowledge. It will serve you well, I am a lifelong learner ,that is one of the greatest, uh, assets I feel in my success is that I am constantly trying to improve, and on that note, my next tip is that mindset is key.
You have to work on yourself. The sad thing about this is mindset never goes away. You can, uh, improve certain aspects. You can come a long way, but especially if you go back again and listen to the Imposter Syndrome episode with Becky Mollenkamp, you will, uh, you will know that like, Our egos and that chatter in our brains and stuff, it's never a hundred percent going to go away at all.
Um, and that's okay. But you have to work on dealing with the things that are holding you back mentally and also, you know, start small if you are new to this. Um, get help if you need it. I talk more about mindset and episode six. Um, but it's something you should work on daily, even if all your daily practices is when you start to have negative chatter in your mind, you just pause and you say, "Okay, you know, ego or whatever you want to name it mean, girl, I hear you. I know you're trying to protect me. Thank you, but I'm going to do this anyways." Right? You will literally only ever go as far as you think you can. Uh, this has been one of my biggest lessons of this year.
There are some things where I've done a complete one 80. There are some things I thought I was over, but they keep coming back up.
So I know I need to work on them more. Right. But mindset work is crucial. I cannot beat this dead horse enough. Um, and lastly, Don't try to control the, how so much be open to happy surprises. This is my Achilles heel. This is the hardest one for me. I would love if there were a crystal ball that said, if I do X, then I will just get Y, right?
If I just, uh, post on Instagram five days a week, then I'll get, uh, one client every week, right? But that's not a thing, right. That doesn't exist. So. You have to be open to the possibility that unexpected things will come your way. Right? So instead, try to stay focused on your goals can be consistent with your work and then just be open to unexpected blessings.
And I will end this with the example of just the other day I had somebody messaged me, uh, if, you know, if you're on Instagram and you're not like connected with somebody, it sends it to that other folder. So I looked and it was a woman and she said, "Oh, like, you're doing this training. Is it really 30 minutes?"
And I said, "Yeah, it's 30 minutes," and then we were chit chatting and she signed up for the training and then we kept chatting in DMS and then she was on the training. And, uh, we talked about possibly working together and I sent her a link to him, a podcast episode to check out that I thought would be helpful.
And then right after that training, she was like, okay, I want to join your Success Squad. I had just met her and not even in real life, like virtually. Right? So. It was very quick. It was a very quick turnaround. Um, and I've had that happen other times, too. Right? So you absolutely never know. Certainly there are ways you can track things and you can kind of get a gist of like, "Hey, where are my clients coming from? Where are my people coming from?" If you're a creative and you sell face-to-face at like maker fairs and craft shows and stuff like that, like which ones are, uh, doing better for you revenue revenue wise than others, right there. There's always going to be things for each of us that we can optimize or let go of that work better or work worse for us.
But it doesn't change the fact that like you might be at a show selling your stuff and somebody could come along who is a buyer for a different larger company or boutique and absolutely fall in love and say, "Okay, well we want to put in a thousand dollars order." Right? Sometimes things that feel like miracles or blessings or whatever you want to call them, they just happen.
But they happen if you are consistently showing up and doing the work and staying focused on your goals and doing that mindset work and growing and all of that stuff, right? That is the natural outcome. Because at the end of the day, if there was one fool-proof thing, right. That it was, if you do ax, then you will certainly get why.
Like, if somebody had cracked that code, people would be paying a billion dollars for it. Right.? So even when you're using like Facebook ads or something, and you have an ad that's converting like crazy, all of a sudden it could just stop working for you. Right. So even if you feel like you've landed on something, things can always change.
Right. So, don't try to strangle hold, how is this going to happen? How is this going to work? When is it going to happen? Just try to show up and then be open to receive what is going to come track your stuff. So you could figure out if you need to pivot or tweak or whatever. Uh, but this, I mean, My God, I can, I cannot even tell you how I have to remind myself of this just constantly.
It's so frustrating. Um, I've gotten better, but, uh, I really am going to do more of that in 2020, for sure. Because it's just, Oh, it's, it's so hard. It is so, so, so hard to wrap your, to wrap your brain around. So I'm just, you just have to trust and trust can be. Uh, really challenging. So those are my nine. I actually thought of a few more after the fact, and then I was like, no, no, no. I said less is more. So next year I'll recap.
I'll do 10 for 2020, but I would love to know to something that you learned, your biggest AHA, your biggest lesson from 2020, find me tag me on Insta. Uh, let me know DM me, however you see fit. I would really love to know and, um, also don't forget if you have not yet downloaded.
My Knowsley Sales Method Guide, you can get that at bit dot L-Y sets the Bit.ly, the short link bit dot L-Y forward slash sell it sister podcast. So it's all one word, everything in there's lower lowercase. Um, but you can get that. It's a freebie. You can learn my method that I use and that I teach, and I hope you enjoyed this.
And I'm really excited to see what happens for all of us this year. And as always happy selling!
