333 The Best Advice for New Entrepreneurs (Learn from My Mistakes!)
Must-Know Strategies for New Online Business Owners
In today's solo episode, we dive deep into the world of entrepreneurship.
Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out this episode is packed with insights to help you navigate the roller coaster ride of business ownership.
We are chatting about:
Common struggles and misconceptions about starting an online business
The importance of SEO in website design
Concept of a CEO day for maintaining mental clarity and vision
Why not forcing work when you are stuck is crucial
Episode Time Stamps:
[05:44] Reflecting on advice for starting a business.
[07:02] Starting a business is extremely challenging.
[11:43] No keyword research leads to limited reach.
[14:35] Reconnecting with vision, prioritizing, and dreaming big.
[16:38] Balancing work and personal life for success.
[21:48] Athlete's mindset: push, focus, find flow state.
To connect with Kelsey:
Access the transcript for this episode:
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You're listening to the Visionary Life podcast. I'm your host, Kelsey Reidl.
Each week, I'll bring you conversations with the most visionary humans on this earth in hopes that you'll be able to absorb their wisdom, avoid their failures, and feel less alone on the roller coaster ride that is entrepreneurship. This season, I'll be chatting with creative thinkers, masterful marketers, brick and mortar shop owners, brand builders, and people just like you who have a story to share or a vision that inspires. If I can share one quick secret with you before we get into the episode, it's that we all have a little bit of visionary inside of us. You know, that spark that nudges us to pursue our full potential in this lifetime. But perhaps somewhere along the line, it got covered up. I'm here to tell you that it's never too late to explore that inner voice and access the brilliance deep down inside of you.
It's in you. It's in all of us. Let's dive in. Some of the messages that I've got from my private clients in the past two to three weeks are I just booked three discovery calls for tomorrow or another client said she earned 20,000 in revenue from one email sent using a template that I gave her, or that their website is now SEO optimized so it's ranking in search engines, finally. And one of my clients just saw a traffic jump. So number of people coming to her site from 4000 last month already at 19,000 impressions for this month. Another client just signed a new client of theirs using direct response marketing strategies that I teach. And this is the power of hiring a one to one marketing consultant, and that's me.I will take the time to review your business. I'll check on the foundation. So have you selected the right niche? Is your offer irresistible? How is the pricing strategy? Are you clear on your value proposition and ultimately what's going on with your marketing funnel? How are you attracting clients? How are you nurturing them and bringing them closer? And then are you inviting them or able to convert them into a paid client? So if you're struggling to grow your business, if you can't find consistent clients and you really want to become fully booked, then you may want to invest in marketing support. Marketing is the start of your sales funnel, and without an effective strategy, you're likely missing out on hundreds and thousands of dollars. That stops here. Working with me as your business and marketing coach will help you identify new income opportunities right away and to optimize your lead generation strategy. We will also cover your social media marketing strategy, how to rank on Google, how to activate strategic partnerships that get you in front of hundreds of new people, all so that you can two x or five x or ten x your business this year. Head to Kelseyreidl.com/privatecoaching for details.
Again, that's Kelseyreidl.com/privatecoaching for details. You can also see some past success stories from the hundreds and hundreds of clients that I've worked with. We've had Christina land a $100,000 consulting gig. Emily signed six new clients in a day. Again, if you want these kind of results. Kelsey Rydell.com privatecoaching I love chatting with you guys. I love being in the DM's with you guys. So let's chat and see if this is a good fit for you.
Kelseyreidl.com/privatecoaching hey, visionaries. Welcome back to the show. I am doing a quickie solo episode today, a little dose of visionary, if you will. I also send out dose of visionary emails once per week, and it's just really a roundup of all the best things that I've curated, that I'm watching, that I'm reading, that I'm listening to. You can go to kelseyreidl.com dose and we'll put that link in the show notes if you would like to listen. And honestly, I'm always going about my days, gathering inspiration and ruminating on things I've learned and areas in which I want to grow. And that's why I love recording these solo episodes, in addition to the fact that I'm a newborn mama. And so scheduling interviews has been a bit more complicated.So I do appreciate you guys sticking with me through these solo shows. And it is so funny because when I talk to my clients, they're like, oh, you said this one thing in your episode, and oh, I really resonated with your analogy around this. So I know you guys are listening. We've seen the downloads remain steady. And so sometimes I wonder, like, are you tuning in because you want to listen to a guest expert who you've never met before, or are you tuning in because you know me personally or professionally, and you want to get to know me better? And so that's where I think it's such an interesting point of debate around whether a podcast is really something you do at the top of your funnel to build awareness. Or perhaps in my case, it's middle of the funnel. It's where I nurture people. It's where people come into my world.
We go deep I tell you everything on this show. I hold nothing back. And, you know, that's the type of brand that I'm willing to build. Well, I do hold stuff back. You guys don't know everything, but I do lay a lot out on the line and I recap my life because I find that if someone's going to hire me as their marketing consultant, they kind of need to know me on a personal level. And that's why I record these solo episodes and bring you guys behind the scenes. So today's episode is advice that I would give myself if I were just starting out with my online business. So this was me, like eight years ago.
The advice that I wish that I knew the reason why I feel inspired to talk about this topic today is kind of funny, actually. We're hosting a retreat tomorrow in Puss Lynch Lake, Ontario, and we have 14 of our amazing mastermind members and community members coming for a day of connection business growth conversation. We have a breath work session with Sydney Vaughn, who was recently shouted out by the Birds papaya, which is super, super cool. We have such nourishing meals and snacks, and we're doing like a full sit down lunch with conversations. So it's going to be super cool. And as we were preparing some of the question cards, so just the cards that we're going to be passing around and asking people to answer one of them is advice that you would give your younger self. And more specifically, what's the advice that you would give yourself if you were just starting your business or starting your business over? And let me tell you, I had a million things come to mind if I could go back in time to when I started my online business. There are so many things that I would tell myself, but I guess I really wanted to boil it down for this episode into things that are just top of mind for me right now.
So, of course, there are like so many things that I could share here, but I'm just going to talk about what's on my mind, what's fresh, what's been spinning inside of my brain. And I guess before I even get into the advice, I also just want to share that starting a business is so hard. Like, I don't know if there's this opposite narrative on social media telling people that it's so easy and you're just going to find clients and that you're going to win right away, but I was actually on a bike ride with a friend last night and somehow I got asking him, do you have any family members who are entrepreneurs? And he was telling me about the struggles of one of his brothers, who's an entrepreneur, and just, like, the realness behind what his brother has actually gone through in having a retail store over the last 30 years. And then we just kind of went down this rabbit hole about the fact that, like, it's very unlikely that business will be profitable right away. It's very unlikely that even in the first two or three years, you're finding success. You're lucky, and you've made it to a very small percentage, like the 5% if you make it beyond year five. And I think I heard Layla Hormozi say that less than 1% of businesses survive past a decade. And so it's like this reminder that if business feels hard right now, if you're kicking yourself for things you should have done or opportunities that you wish you pursued or things you wish you started earlier, or whatever it is, this is your reminder that it is hard.
Like, yes, we can sugarcoat it. Yes, there. Like, I flipped open instagram the other day, and there's someone saying, I hit 20k months within my first month of business. And I wanted to say, that's awesome, celebrating that, but that's not necessarily normal. And as much as I'd like to normalize that, I also know the real statistics, and I think it's inconsiderate to share otherwise. And so that's why I want to share my lessons, but also to be very transparent that it's a roller coaster. There are ups and downs. We all go through it.
I'm at year eight of my consulting business, and I'm still learning, I'm still evolving. I'm still listening to the market, still trying to find product, market fit. And so it is. It's a constant, right? And much as I would love to sit here and say everybody should start a business, because I do believe everyone can, it may not be the right path for everyone. And again, there's a lot of people who are selling you maybe, on this idea that within 30 days, you can be off to the races and becoming a millionaire. So instead, I really operate under the mentality, like, you have to plant seeds every day. You have to prioritize relationship building, something else that nobody talks about. You have to get out there, be meeting people, be networking, join masterminds, because your connections and people are your secret to business growth.
Not Instagram, not an algorithm, not a pretty graphic. That is not the secret. Your network and those who you surround yourself with. So now that we have all of that out of the way, let's move on. Again, this is advice that I would give myself if I were just starting my online business. Okay, piece of advice number one. I would say when you're building a website, because I know that's like thing number one that people do, they buy a URL or a domain name and then they start building their website, which is awesome because your website is like your digital house on the Internet. You want to have a website because truly it forces you to get clear on your offer, the pricing, the funnel, because you have to have like a buy now button or an apply today or book a call.
So you have to know a bit of your funnel. You have to write in about me, you have to get some headshots, you have to finalize your branding. So the website is like the pinnacle of you've got your shit together as a business owner. However, the advice that I would give myself is do not hire a website designer who doesn't have any SEO experience or who's not talking about SEO. I have worked with almost, I would say 100 clients at this point who have shown me their website that they had built from a professional. And there is no search engine optimization built into the site. That means the site title is not there, the site description. That means the blog is not optimized.
That means there was no keyword research done when the web designer and the developer were actually building the site. So yes, is it is an aesthetically pleasing site, but people are only finding it through direct traffic. And if you're going to launch a site, it is so advantageous to know what are your keywords so that you can stockpile your website with them and stockpile your SEO, your site title and your description so that Google knows when to serve up your site. Right. If you're a personal trainer in Toronto and you don't have your keywords optimized, you have not populated your SEO. You're missing out on hundreds or even thousands of monthly searches from people who are looking for a personal trainer in Toronto. That sucks, right? I was just chatting with a client of mine who's had her website for two years and it has collected dust. Yes, it has worked.
When she says, hey, nice to meet you, potential client, go to my website, that's awesome. But what about search engines? How many people turn to search engines when they need to find a solution? A lot. There are something like 3.5 billion searches on Google every day and I want you to be taking advantage and capitalizing on that trend. So if you are going to spend money to build a website. Please, please, please make sure that the SEO is done properly. And if you're unsure, reach out to me and I'm happy to help. Okay, let's get on to tip number two for advice that I wish I knew sooner. In business, tip number two is to take a CEO day regularly or a CEO hour.
Okay, so what do I actually mean by this? When we start a business, we're often spinning our tires. We are, in total, just like pedal to the metal, do a million things, try all the marketing, get on client calls, and this could be a recipe for burnout, which is really, really scary. Inside of our wave mastermind, we talk about burnout a lot because it is something that is really prominent in female owned and female founded businesses. A lot of you listening, your mothers, you have partners. You are taking care of the home. You are trying to cook healthy. You're trying to take care of yourself. You are also trying to act as the, like, deliverer of your services.
And, and, oh, my gosh, I haven't even got to the biggest part. You're also responsible for being the visionary of your business. Yes. This podcast is visionary life because I'm passionate about making sure we have that visionary time. Because you are somebody who gets a lot of ideas. You dream beyond the status quo. You see your life with limitless potential. But when you're stuck in the weeds, you can't do that.
When you are just ticking things off a to do list because some podcast host or online course creator told you you had to post 72 times a day, and you just do that Monday to Friday, you're missing the point of the overall big vision. Reconnecting with why you're doing this. Giving yourself white space in your calendar to dream. Looking at the business from a 10,000 foot view and saying, what am I doing that's not working? Or what am I doing that is working that I just really haven't prioritized or identified as something I need to double down on. A CEO day can look like anything. Okay, so this could even be a CEO hour. I know a day would be really hard for some of you to take off, but an hour we can all find. And so inside of our mastermind, we've actually asked people, like, what is your dream CEO day? A lot of people will say, like, time at the spa or going on a vacation, getting on an airplane and, like, disconnecting and sitting on a beach or looking at water.
So that might be something that you do. Maybe it's driving to a local pool, posting up and just sipping a juice box. That's awesome. For some of you, it might be booking a massage or whatever. For me, I am not a spa girl. I know that is such an unpopular opinion. Like, I do like to go, maybe, I don't know, once every couple years. But for the most part, a CEO day for me looks very different.
It would be something along the lines of doing something adventurous. So I might meet a friend and go mountain biking. And then I might take myself to a coffee shop with my laptop or with a notebook and just free write for about an hour. And then I might create some social media content. And then I might do something around the house for myself, listening to a couple podcasts. And then I might go out for dinner with my husband and have a good meal, have a drink, let loose. So that could be a CEO day. And it's fun because you're almost forcing yourself to enjoy life.
Like, to remind yourself that work is not what you should be doing every spare second that you have outside of being a mother and a CEO day. Not just good for your business, but also just good for your, your mental health, your physical health, scheduling in things that maybe you don't often make time for, which is dreaming. Where do you want to go with this business? What could be possible? Imagine if. Yes, and I don't know if you guys have played that exercise before, but if you get a blank piece of paper, it's like, imagine if I created a virtual marketplace with every type of marketing course you could ever want. Yes, and imagine each course was taught by the leading expert in that industry. Yes. And you could see a preview of the course on the homepage and opt in for a free lesson. Yes.
And we could actually gather the best marketers and film all of these in person in the Bahamas. Yes, and we could piggyback a mastermind with, again, the top ten marketers. And we would spend four days together just dreaming, brainstorming. And then we would spend four days recording the content. Yes. And imagine if then we were in a year long container together where we just reimagined what the easiest way for anyone to tap into marketing resources would be. Yes. And so playing a game like that, it can get you excited.
And honestly, that's the perfect thing to do on a CEO day. All right, tip number three is don't just create content and walk away. Don't just create content and hope that the universe picks it up. But don't just create content and let it collect dust. Learn from day one how to promote content and just come up with a repeatable promotion plan. So all my clients know that I often will encourage them to get started with long form content right away. Start your weekly newsletter, start posting a weekly blog. Do a weekly podcast, start a YouTube channel, whatever the easiest long form content for you is, but don't just post it and hope that viewers find it.I want you then to have five different ways that you strategically promote this content. So if you write a blog every single week, take little snippets of that blog. Share it on LinkedIn. That's one way. Share it on Instagram Stories, that's two ways. Share it on your email newsletter with a link back to the blog, that's three. Share it by tagging the guest contributors to the blog. That's four.
So the one in five method is one piece of long form content. But make sure you get good at promoting it with five pieces of short form content. So again, whether you're podcasting, email marketing, social media, blogging, don't just post and forget. Develop a repeatable promotion plan to ensure that the audience and community of people that you're trying to reach know what you're sharing. And once you figure this out, it's a system. It's like, okay, every time I post a blog, I create the canva graphic. I put it on Pinterest and I take the sexiest paragraph and turn it into a quote image. Then you can pass this over to a virtual assistant and they can do it for you.
So that's tip number three, is to learn how to promote all the content that you're creating. And tip number four, I feel like I said, five tips, but we're going to do four tips. So tip number four is don't force work when it's not happening. So many of you are reaching burnout or you're feeling frustrated, or you're approaching that point where you want to quit your business because you're kind of like banging your head against your desk and you're just trying to do, do and follow the template that someone handed over to you. And you're still kind of operating under this employee mindset, which is like you're trapped at your desk. Nine to five, you have to suffer through your work day. Business can't be fun. And I kind of want you to flip that on its head like, yes, building your business is going to be hard.
It requires structure and it requires you to show up sometimes even when you don't want to. Right? But there is a little asterisk here that when you feel like you're hitting a wall when things just aren't working. I want to challenge you to actually walk away, to do something completely unrelated, and to come back and enter into a flow state if possible. If you've never heard of flow state, you definitely want to check out the work of a couple of my clients who are mental performance coaches. Kate Levitt is one, Amy Ford is another, other. You can just google their names. They're both just revamping their businesses right now, but they talk a lot about the power of mindset as it relates to athletes specifically. But as entrepreneurs, we have so much that correlates with being an athlete.
Like, we're always driving for more, we're always pushing the level of our performance. We always have a goal that we're training for, right. And yes, with an athlete, it very much is like, you have to put in the time, right. You have to show up for your workouts, you have to put in the 2 hours of running, you have to put in the hour of strength training. But you can fit that into any part of your day, right? So if you wake up and you're super groggy and you just don't feel like doing your two hour run, if you have the ability, could you not spend an hour meditating, visualizing your next marathon? And then hopefully by the time you finish some self care and when you kind of just like, surrender into the fact that being an entrepreneur doesn't mean you're bound by a 40 hours workweek, you could actually compress that into 10 hours. You could expand that into 60 hours. It's more so about finding that thing that puts you into momentum, figuring out how you can tap into flow state. Um, like, for me, having a five month old child now, I do feel like I can get more done in a three hour nap window than I ever used to get done in an eight hour workday, it's like compressing time.
But also just realizing that I'm not forcing work all day. I'm literally just going off being a mom, doing my thing. This morning, I was out at the grocery store. I had to go get my husband skate sharpened. I had to stop by the bike shop to buy myself a couple things for my mountain bike, and I was in full mom mode and hanging out with Freddie. But then when I got to nap window, I had a few things I wanted to get done. And instead of, like, forcing work all day, I'm like, I just hit that flow state and find a system that works for me. Now your version of this is going to be totally different.
You might be a morning person. You might be a night owl. You might love working six hour days. You might like only working, you know, 16 hours or 16 minutes. Time blocks. The important lesson here is to don't, to not force work when it's not happening. To try and release that employee mindset that is binding you to work within certain hours and to actually challenge what you can output. I am a true believer that when you have clear goals and when you are forced to work within limited time, so you actually put constraints around your creation.
So I got to get this Instagram post up in twelve minutes. I want to write this blog in 16 minutes instead of spending 16 hours. Like, we can totally reframe that. We can do whatever we want. We can make this business look however we want. We can challenge the norm of how long it has to take or where we are creating content or where we are building our business. You can do it from anywhere. If you work on your laptop and outside of your client appointments and your, your calls, I want you to think that if taking an hour rest is actually going to help you propel your business later today, it is absolutely valuable.All right, you guys, so that is advice that I would give myself if I were just starting my online business. Of course, every business is nuanced. I never want you to assume that this is gospel. I just want to share my own experience, open my heart and just let you guys know that it's a journey, it's a roller coaster. But those who win are the ones who don't quit. So until next week, I hope you have a visionary day. And if you like this episode, please consider rating or reviewing on your podcast app of choice. All right guys, we will talk later.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of visionary life. I love bringing you these conversations on a weekly basis. So it would mean so much to me if you could help me out by rating and reviewing the show on either itunes or Spotify. It just takes a second and if you don't want to rate the show, you could also just take a screenshot of the episode and share it on your social media platform of choice tagging. Melseyreidal I'll catch you in the next episode. Probably gonna see a video where in the most picturesque lakeside market, in one of the cutest towns in Ontario, we gathered 13 amazing entrepreneurial women. We had hairstylists, we had real estate agents. We had lawyers.
We had naturopathic doctors. We had beekeepers, we had photographers. We had Google Ad specialists. And we hung out for 2 hours. And we had really amazing snacks and drinks, coffees, and we had these amazing twix bars that are 100% clean. And we just chatted about the highs and lows of business. Emily and I facilitated a two hour discussion about. About everyone's business, what they're working on, what their challenges are.And then we walked out of there 2 hours later with new connections and a deepened sense of joy and fulfillment and knowing that we're not alone in our business. So I would love to invite you to our next meetup. There was such high demand that we're hosting a second one Friday, July 19. And if you can come, dm me the word market on Instagram. Dm me the word market on Instagram. Kelsey Reidl if you can make it to puss Lynch Lake on Friday morning, June, or, sorry, July 19. I wish it was June. I wish it could come sooner
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