Ep. 076: My Top 3 Lessons from 3 Years in Business

On the heels of celebrating 3 years in my current business (since I've had other businesses in the past) I got nostalgic of what I've been able to achieve and wanted to share my top 3 lessons with you. While I could go on and on about all sorts of other best practices, these were the 3 that have felt the most vital to my continued success. I hope you enjoy them and they either affirm that you're on the right track or give you some "A-Ha's" about places you can make adjustments.

LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED TODAY:

• Your Next Big Thing Intensive: http://bit.ly/nbt-intensive

• Want to read a transcript of this episode? Click here!

  Hey, Hey, welcome to the, Sell It Sister Podcast. Today, I'm sharing with you three lessons from three years in business. And this was not one that I was planning on sharing, not for any reason other than I just hadn't thought of it. And then I knew that my business anniversary was coming up soon.

  I could never remember the exact day. I knew it was something time in September ish. I always just celebrate with my friend Kia Young, who's the guest on the podcast because she knows hers and it's September 24th.

  And so, we are celebrating together this week. So when this comes out, it will actually technically be the week after my business anniversary week but I knew because I knew that we had started around the same time, which is why I just always kind of borrow her anniversary.

  I was watching my Facebook, the memories posts to see. Cause I thought, you know, maybe it'll come up and then I'll know for sure. And turns out it did.

  It was the 21st. Um, so yesterday, as of when I'm recording this now and what really threw me for a loop though. So it's know Monday morning, and I'm just kinda scrolling on my phone a little bit before diving into my money Monday and my CEO day. And I realize there are two columns on the post from my friend, Ashley, who passed away suddenly and tragically almost two years ago.

  And that was understandably a gut punch. And I ended up doing an impomptu live, uh, on Instagram, just kind of talking about. What I've learned in three years, my biggest takeaways and all that. And I thought, you know what I should say, probably record this into a podcast, uh, so that I could live longer than that Instagram live.

  I will say, so this is three years of Erica Tebbens consulting. I've been running businesses much, much longer than that, but this is, uh, so I have now completed three full years in this business, which in some ways it feels like I just started. And in other ways it feels like it's already been longer than then three years, but you know, there's nothing quite like looking death in the face to really get reflective and think about, you know, what, what would I tell somebody else if they were just starting out or if they're feeling frustrated in their business, what would be the biggest lessons that I could impart on them? To enable them to have a more thriving and enjoyable business.

  So now I'm going to share those with you. This should be a relatively quick episode, but I hope you love it. And if you have any questions or anything, I hang out mostly on Instagram. So find me over there. Say hi, uh, take a screenshot of this post to inner stories and tag me because I love, love, love. To see who's listening and to connect with connect with you and say hi.

  So without further ado, lesson number one, which is, I feel like you know, kind of, kind of the most, a crucial thing of all is to do the damn thing and do it big. So this was the first thing that came to mind because of thinking about the passing of my friend and what often really gets in people's way.

  And, you know, to be honest has gotten in my own way over the last three years in, in little ways here and there. And that is playing small. So if you'll remember, I had Tara Moore on about her book playing big, highly recommend, checking out the episode. So, and reading that book, but we tend to play really small for a lot of reasons.

  Some are. Uh, you know, cultural, societal, uh, you know, white supremacists, like patriarchal capitalistic things that tell, um, women and gender expansive people to hide away to not take up space, uh, to not be super visible. Right. And we like that is just kind of an across the board thing. And then we have personal stuff from our own lives that can encourage us to not really like show up, excuse me, in the way, way that we can and should, um, for ourselves and our, and our businesses. And I, the reason why this felt the most kind of crucial is it's sort of that thing of, you know, when you think of death and regret and all of that, it's like, You know, what would you have done if you weren't worried about judgment, what would you have been able to do or at least tried to do?

  If you weren't worried what people would think or say, or assume or criticized? Like what would you do? Because I think it, when you navigate from a place of, well, I'm going to do it anyways and I'm just going to see what happens and if other people don't like it, well, then that's, that's. Their business and their problem.

  It's not my problem. I think everything else after the fact honestly becomes easier. And this is a practice like this. Isn't something you can just wake up and, and do and be like, Oh my gosh, guess what? I don't care about what people think. Or like, HAZOP, that's not realistic either. But I think, you know, if, if you were sitting there thinking like, well, I want to talk about my business on like Instagram or on my Facebook, or, um, you know, wherever.

  And you're like, well, what are my, what are my parents gonna think? Cause I, you know, I went to college for this degree and now I'm not using it or whatever. What's my ex going to think. You still like follows me on social media or. That like those friends from high school that we're still connected on Facebook, but we've kind of like fallen out of touch and are they going to be super judgemental?

  Right. We, we have these things, like we don't like to kind of openly talk about them. Cause it feels really embarrassing. Right. But we, we all have these things where we're like, well, I don't want to be visible because what if right? What if somebody criticizes me? What if they don't understand what I'm doing?

  What if they think I'm dumb, what if it doesn't work? And then I fail publicly right there. There's all of this different stuff that comes up. Am I right? We'll say if it's any solace for you. Okay. I swear. I don't think my parents fully, fully understand what I do. And like, I wouldn't two really good. Like I went to a private high school.

  I went to private college. My parents made lots of sacrifices for me. Like they had other ideas about the path I would go down and yet here I am and I love what I do. And I feel tons of gratitude that I get to do it. Yeah. But I don't think that they fully understand what it is I do. And even if they kind of understand it, I think that they don't understand that I actually like make money doing it.

  I don't know. It's just, it's interesting. But at the end of the day, they aren't my clients. Right. They're not the people who. I'm doing this work for, I'm doing it for myself. I'm doing it for the people that I serve with my work. And that is okay. Like I make my peace with that. And the longer I do this, the more confidence I have, the more I'm able to be more visible.

  And, uh, I plan on doing an episode about self-trust next week, which we'll kind of talk more about this, but the more comfortable I am just. Being sort of loud and proud that this is what I do, and this is why I do it. And that it's not for everyone, but. I love doing it and it's okay if you don't understand, or if you, you don't like it, but I'm going to keep doing it.

  Right. So do the damn thing and do it big and just know that it's a practice. You, you could only get more confident through the doing. Sitting around and thinking about it and trying to overthink about it, to prepare for every possible scenario and to, you know, feel like you're protecting yourself. Like there's just, it's, it's a waste.

  I, as somebody who loves to overthink about things, I promise you it's a waste. There will be good and bad things that come up along the way that you could never predict, but you will only know through the doing so that would be the biggest, because I. I really just think like, if Ashley was still alive, what would she.

  Uh, you know, what would she have been able to do? And, um, and not even just like in a productive, like what would she be have been able to accomplish sort of way, but like, how would she have been able to keep impacting the world? And I think also I'm recording this on the heels of, uh, Ruth Bader, Ginsburg's passing and, you know, she lived a long life and she impacted a lot of people in various ways.

  And. You know, it, it may, it just like her passing made me think that, you know, what if she had been afraid, like truly afraid of the judgment of becoming a lawyer as a woman in a time when that didn't happen and being criticized along the way? Like, what if she had let criticism or the fear of criticism or judgment get in the way, like, we, we wouldn't have had her as a Supreme court justice, right?

  So I think sometimes it's just, you know, we can all use the reminder, uh, that we can, we can put our egos aside and our fears and our worries aside and know that we are doing the thing that we want to do for something larger than just ourselves, a lot of the time. And that we, we are worthy of doing it.

  And. That there's no way to stave off all judgment and all criticism. It's just impossible. So that should never be the goal. The goal should be, you know, do we feel proud of ourselves? Do we feel like we, we are going after what we want to go after and, and being who we want to be in this world. Uh, the next one is invest in yourself.

  So whatever that looks like for you, I can't make that judgment call for you. I don't want to, you know, priests any of your money or any of your time. Uh it's. That is really none of my business, how you choose to do that. But I think about how far I've come in three years, and I know that I wouldn't be where I am if it weren't for investments, I made, um, both right at the beginning. It with hiring my first coach and also with investing in different things along the way, over the last three years. So I kind of view it as like a, if you remember, you know, those super Mario brothers games, there's those, the green like tubes, uh, those like warp tubes or whatever the heck they're called.

  I don't even remember where you can go in and then you suddenly jump ahead like four levels, right? It's not cheating. There's nothing wrong with doing it in the game. It's just being savvy. It's, it's a way to get to the castle and, you know, uh, defeat King Koopa and stuff faster and, you know, rescue the princess and all, all of that stuff. Princess peach.

  It's a way to get to that angle a lot faster. And so there is nothing wrong with being smart and being savvy and wanting to get to your end goal faster and without as much frustration and struggle. So whether that is, you know, you're investing in some level of coaching, you're investing in, um, paid support, like VA's, uh, whether, you know, you're doing like masterminds, anything like that, I would really, really, really encourage you.

  Not that you constantly have to be investing, but if you are just trying to cobble together all of the answers from a million different people's freebies, it. Is going to pull you in a million different directions with a million different methodologies, and you're going to waste a lot of time and you're going to get super frustrated.

  So I have a lot more, I could say on the investing topic, but I will just leave it at that. There's nothing wrong with getting help. There is nothing wrong with, you know, investing in yourself before you even have. Clients, I would say, like, that's what I did. I just, I, I was switching industries. I didn't even have clients yet.

  And I was like, I know how to do business, but I don't know how to do an online business where I sell services instead of products. So I'm going to hire somebody who does so that I can get the shortcut. And I did, and I'm, I'm better off for it and I'm further along for it. And if you want to have more conversations about investing, um, like truly no pressure conversations, I'm always, I'm always happy to help people with it because I just, I, I think that it is, it is so vital.

  Uh, and the third one is have the mindset of I'm gonna make this work. Not, let's see if this works. So. A huge difference. I see between people who really have longevity and larger success. Uh, and this also, honestly, this loops back to with investing too, like I going, going into this business. My success was non-negotiable like, I just decided there was no plan B.

  There was no, Oh, I'm going to go back to my other business that I had before. If this doesn't work, there was none of that. It was I'm going to make this work. So it honestly became very easy to invest in my first coach, right out the gate, because I was like, this is it. Like, I, I'm not going to see if I can do this, I'm going to figure out the best way that I can do this and that I can reach my goals. And so spending money when I was terrified and unsure of how everything was going to look, and I didn't have any clients yet, like. It was more of a, I trust myself that this will be an investment and not a cost.

  This is going to get me where I want to be and not just deplete me because ultimately I am going to take whatever my coach says, I'm going to run with it. I'm going to put it into action. I'm going to be coachable. I'm going to be flexible. Like the whole thing, because I was, I was. Not going to see if it would work.

  I was going to make it work. So the people who have longevity, I feel like are the, the people who really have that mindset of like, we're gonna figure this out there. There will be obstacles. There will be wins, but no matter what, along the way, like. You know, we're going to stay flexible to change. We're going to be open to opportunity.

  We're going to do all that, but I'm not quitting on myself. I'm a hundred percent gonna make this happen. And I think that far too often people go, well, I'm going to see if this works. You know, I, I think I w I think I want to do this. Like, I think I want to do a copywriting. I think I want to be like, a VA.

  I, you know, I think I want to do be like a social media strategist and hopefully this works and if it doesn't, then I'll figure something else out. And I feel like the, a problem with that is, is that energetically, you are sort of always waiting for that catch for that loophole that is going to. Let you off the hook that is going to prove to you, like, see you, you weren't meant to do this.

  You there's no way you can ever succeed at this. Like, and you know, all the other mind trash that we tell ourselves, I feel like it just makes it too easy for that to happen. And we start to look for those outs. We start to look for the proof that supports our belief rather than coming in it and being like, nope. I don't, I don't know exactly how this is going to work. I don't know exactly what I need to do, but I know that I will figure it out. And I think in that, in, you know, in that realm too, is if you have that belief, it also loops kind of loops back to that first one, right. If you're like, I'm just going to go for it and I'm going to make it happen.

  And I'm determined to. Be a successful entrepreneur. Even if my business morphs over time, I'm determined to do that. Then I feel like just all of the rest, like clicks into place. Yeah. You don't lose it much sleep thinking about that one person from high school that might be watching your Instastories and judging you.

  You don't worry about, you know, I don't know, getting the help that you. Wants, like joining that, that mastermind or, you know, that group program that you see is, is launching and you, you like the person running it. And you're like, I don't know, it feels like a stretch, but it also feels really exciting.

  Like, you're just kind of like, okay, like you're not waiting for somebody, the Elsa come along and save you because you know that you can save yourself and that, you know, you're going to have that resiliency along, along the way. So I hope that you found all of this helpful. Again, if you have any questions, like I could, there's so many more lessons.

  I could probably give you 30 lessons, but I feel like those were the key, most crucial things over the past three years. Um, and I'm excited to see what the next three years holds. I really am, uh, in who knows. I mean, I, now that I've been doing it for three years, I can unequivocally say it will not look exactly like this three years from now, because three years ago, I couldn't have imagined it looking like this now. Um, but I will say that it's beyond, it's beyond my wildest dreams. And at the end three years ago, when I closed a successful business, And I started to do this. Um, and that, that was one other thing, sorry. In 0.1 that I, I forgot to say is that because my previous, um, one of the previous businesses I ran was indirect.

  I had like a team. I had actual people who were like, looking up to me, who are relying on me, you know, all of this stuff. And I had colleagues who. Also had a lot of respect for me and everything. And I was really, I was nervous about that judgment and I really just, I had to let it go. I had to just surrender to the fact that some people might be pissed and some people might not understand.

  And some people might talk crap, but I couldn't live my life for. Those people. Right. I don't live my life for myself. And. I think back now fearful. I was and confused. I was, and I was, there was this part of me that was like, you are so stupid. You are a sure bet behind, right. You're leaving ms. Sherbet behind you, you know, exactly like how to make money in this business.

  Like. You know, you know, like the whole thing I could go on and on, I won't bore you, but I had all of these really heavy burdensome thoughts that were like, you're going to give this up. You're going to burn this bridge. You're gonna destroy your business. You're going to try this new thing. And if it doesn't work, then like, Like, think of how you're going to feel, think of how crappy you're going to feel when you totally fail.

  Like this is that mean like mean girl, right? You're totally going to fail. You're going to screw this all up. You're going to be the laughingstock of everyone who, who knew you in the previous business and. You're a fool, like you're an absolute fool and why can't you just be normal and like have a nine to five, like other people, like, why do you have to be so stubborn?

  And this was like, this was like on and on and on. But there was this like pole in my heart that was like, you know, just try this. You're you're being called to try this thing. And. Just try it. Like what, like ultimately, what is the worst that's gonna happen? The worst that's going to happen is you will never figure out how to get clients.

  You'll never figure out how to make money and then link. You could always pivot back to selling products, right? Like what I was more familiar with, I knew I could always do that. And, but I was, I was unwilling to. Not at least try and I feel like 2020 has I don't ask, like even in the last few weeks, so many people I know have just had really upsetting, like losses, like losing their home to fire, uh, losing loved ones, just there's all of this stuff.

  And so I feel like it's just, you know, pandemic and, and everything that has been happening this year. Is really proof that if we don't just go for it, if we don't, so just kind of say like, what the hell? Like, I'm just going to try, I'm going to go all in. I'm going to go all in on myself and on my dreams and I'm just going to go for it.

  And, and I refuse to not at least try to show up for myself and try to show up for the people I want to serve. Like. I would think and would hope that we're sort of entering a period where we can really clearly see like, if not now, then when, and if not me then who, right. So it's actually went a little longer than I thought.

  It's all good. It's still not a super long episode or anything. Um, but yeah, I hope that you found this really, really valuable. I'm so excited to see who I get to work with in the next three years. And I know that if this podcast still exists, this, then I will do another one of these episodes then. All right.

  Have a beautiful week and as always happy selling.