15 things I wish I’d known before I started an online business

When you're going through a challenging moment—and running an online business certainly has its ups and downs—it can be hard to see the lesson until you're on the other side of it. In today's episode, I'm sharing with you 15 of the lessons I've learned in the last few years:

– Why selling is a non-negotiable element to every online business and understanding the difference between cash flow and profit
– Why diving into the ‘scary' zone can be so beneficial to your success and the value of learning from your failures
– Not everything is going to be a shiny sparkly squirrel, which means getting comfortable with the boring tasks of running a business
– Your success is based on a measurement of your vision and goals and not anyone else's.
– Why the strategy behind what you sell is more important than how you promote it.
– Why controlling the controllable is key and showing up for long-term success.
– Why each launch doesn't have to be a new offer – the benefit of doubling down on one product
– You are the most important person in your business—self-care is imperative.
– Embracing your fears and doubts as a path to success – repetition breeds confidence.

And more…

 

I want to share a bunch of little random lessons and things that I wish I had known before I started my business because hindsight is such a beautiful thing. And these lessons might feel and seem really obvious to me now, but a couple of years ago they are not. And even though I might've heard these lessons from people I followed online or podcasts I was listening to or books that I was reading, I think we often don't learn the lesson until we actually go through it ourselves. 

Okay. So I'm going to jump into the lessons. 

 

Lesson #1: 

You can be the best expert, have the best offers, deliver the best results, but until you get good at selling, you're going to struggle to make sales.

I learnt this one the hard way. I used to hate selling. I felt like whenever I was telling anybody about how they could work with me, whenever I got to the end of a webinar and I was pitching my course or my program, I would sort of rush over my offer, by the way, this is how you can work with me rather than making it the main event. 

And here's the thing that I think has really flipped my mindset around selling – my offers is incredibly good. They get my students and my clients incredibly good results. And they are the solution that somebody is looking for to solve their problem or to achieve a particular outcome. And they need help to buy that solution. They can't achieve that outcome unless they know what I am selling. 

So by me getting better at selling, I get better at also serving my audience. 

 

Lesson #2:

The second thing that I learned is cash flow and profit aren't the same thing and you need cash flow to survive in business.

You can have a super profitable business and no cash flow. You can make a lot of sales and not have any cash flow and not have any profit. So I really can't emphasize how important it is to be on top of your cash flow to be tracking what's coming in, what's coming out, and having a budget for it.

So that when that unexpected tax bill arrives, it's not so unexpected. And if you've made a lot more sales one year, you're going to have a bigger tax bill. So making sure that we've always got that cash flow and you know what's going in and out.

 

Lesson #3:

Unless you do the things that feel scary to you, your business won't grow. The scary things are good, but I think a lot of the time we take it as a sign that we shouldn't do something. Oh, creating a course feels scary because somebody might not buy it. So I'm not going to do it. 

You're not afraid of it because it's a bad idea. There's a difference between feeling afraid of something because it's outside of your comfort zone versus your gut being like, oh, this doesn't feel aligned with my vision or it doesn't feel aligned with me for whatever other reason. 

 

Lesson #4:

Failure and rejection are good things because you can learn from them. This segues beautifully because a lot of the time when we're afraid of something, we're really afraid that we're going to fail.

Same with rejection. If a client didn't want to work with us, if they rejected our pitch, we can find out why, what was it that made you decide not to work with me. Okay, I'm going to take that on board and potentially tweak my process or tweak my messaging or tweak something. And that way I've learned from it. I'm not just collapsing into a heap and crying about it and having a little pity party for myself. I'm taking something constructive from that experience.

 

Lesson #5:

The stuff that truly matters in growing your business can feel really boring. Like my ADHD brain loves sparkly squirrels. It loves novelty. It loves all the new things, but I've realised that it's not about doing all of the shiny fun things. And it's actually more about structure systems, consistency, things that do not come naturally to me, but that I realised I have to prioritise getting comfortable with getting good at it if I want my business to grow. 

You know, it's always going to be so much more fun to create a pretty Instagram graphic or write a caption or chase some shiny idea than it is going to be to sit down and do your cashflow budget for the week. But only one of these is going to ensure you have enough cash in your bank account to pay the bills.

 

Lesson #6:

Your self-worth has nothing to do with your business success and vice versa. It should not determine your self-worth. If you feel good about yourself, then yes, that's going to make it easier for your business to succeed. But if your business isn't succeeding or you're having a bad month or a bad year, this shouldn't define how you feel about yourself. 

And I know this can be really hard when you've put so much time and effort and so much of yourself into your business. But your business is not an extension of yourself and because your business is having a bad year, doesn't make you any less of an epic human than if you were having a good year.

 

Lesson #7:

It is okay to say no. Say no to that client, that collaboration, that opportunity, you only have a certain amount of time each day. And every time you say yes, that takes time away from something else you can be doing. And whenever you decide to do something you're also saying no to something else.

So it's always a good idea to think about what else by saying yes to this thing. What else might I be saying no to? 

 

Lesson #8:

Measure your success in the context of your vision, not someone else's success. So when we go on social media and we see somebody else celebrating a million dollars a year and we're like, oh, why is my business only at a hundred thousand dollars? Oh my goodness! That doesn't feel great. 

And we don't see all of the other bits that went into that person's success. We don't see the hard work. We don't see the struggle. We don't see the tears. We don't know if that million dollars a year actually translated into profit. Maybe they spent $999,000 on Facebook ads to have that million-dollar year. 

You know, it might not be in your vision to build the kind of business like that person you are comparing yourself to has. And that's fine. Because that's not your vision. The fastest way to create a business you hate is to follow somebody else's vision.

 

Lesson #9:

You can be grateful for where you are and still have big dreams you are working towards. You can enjoy the moment right now, you can reflect on how incredible it is that you quit your job or that you started this business, or that you got that first client or that 10th client, or had a $50,000 a month or a hundred thousand dollars a year or whatever it is, you can be so grateful for that and celebrate that.

Without it being like an acceptance of this is all where I'm going to be. It's not settling to be happy for where you are. 

You can still have those big dreams, those big visions and celebrate where you are right now. Otherwise, you're going to get to those big dreams and those big visions, and you're going to have missed that entire journey along the way, and you're going to get there and you're going to look around and be like, okay, cool. What's next? And you're going to keep working towards that next thing.

So enjoy the journey. It is such a journey.

 

Lesson #10:

The strategy behind what you sell is more important than how you promote it. You can have the best marketing in the world, the best followers, and the best podcast, and still struggle to make consistent sales if you don't have any kind of strategy behind your offers.

 

Lesson #11:

You can't control the external things that affect your growth and your business growth, but you have a hundred percent control over your own actions. And way too many business owners try to change the external things and they fail and they think like, ah, if only this was different or if only that was different, you can't change how many hours that are in a day. You can't influence whether the Instagram algorithm shows your content to people, but you can change how you work within these constraints.

The only thing that is blocking what you want to achieve is your actions, your habits, and your thoughts. If you change these things, everything else changes too. And it's a much more empowered way to approach it.

 

Lesson #12:

You don't always have to launch new things. I always had to keep launching new courses. I had to build this entire library of things and each time I had to have one launch and then that would go and live in my library and it would continue to generate sales. But it wasn't until I doubled down and I launched the same product, the podcast launch plan over and over and over again that I started to see measurable growth. 

And from tracking the numbers of those launches so well, I could start to put fuel on the fire. And by that, I mean, I started running paid ads because I knew this was generating a good return. And then from that, I could scale it up because it was profitable.

So doubling down on one product and launching it over and over again, allows you to grow your impact and your income a lot faster than if you're constantly creating these new things to launch. 

 

Lesson #13:

There are no shortcuts, hacks, magic pills, or anything like that. 

If it was quick and easy, if there were shortcuts, everybody would be doing them and they wouldn't work anymore.

The people who succeed in the long term are the ones who put in the reps. So you got to keep showing up day in, and day out doing the work, even when you are not seeing those instant results, and keeping your eye on that long-term goal.

A lot of the time, the things that give us short-term wins are not the things that are going to give us long-term success. 

 

Lesson #14:

You are the most important resource in your business, not money, not your software – you. And unfortunately, many business owners put themselves last. They live in this constant state of stress. They prioritise work over health, eating and exercise. They prioritise everybody else around them over themselves. I see this, especially with women. 

You can't show up well for your clients or for your team or for anybody else if you are burned out. You can't have incredible ideas for offers for content for ways to better serve your clients, if you don't have the mental white space to allow these ideas to pop up. So prioritising self-care is so important. 

 

Lesson #15:

You can't think or plan your way to success no matter how scary it feels. The only way to overcome those fears and those doubts is to take action. You're never going to plan your way through those fears and those doubts. And unfortunately, we can think, well, I'm not confident I'm going to wait until I feel more confident. I'm not ready. I don't know enough yet. 

So I'm going to wait until I know enough yet. And a lot of the time, the only way to feel confident, the only way to learn enough is to do the things before you feel ready. 

 

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