Cake Bakers
Being an entrepreneur is more trendy than ever. More and more people are looking to make money on their own terms while following their passions and keeping their sanity intact. I’m all about this.
Except, like any trend, entrepreneurship is not for everyone. Come to think of it, neither are Crocs, but that’s a topic for another time.
There’s A LOT that goes into the business side of growing an empire.
And in my experience, the things that should stop people from starting their own businesses usually don’t. The inverse is also true: the things stopping most people are misconceptions that need to be trashed.
So what actually should stop you from becoming an entrepreneur? Well, one of the signs that this game isn’t for you is if you’re really only interested in doing the thing you love all the time.
I call this personality the Cake Baker.
The reality is, opening a bakery doesn’t mean you bake cakes all day. And starting your business doesn’t mean you’ll do the one thing you love doing all day long.
You actually wear all the hats in the business. You get to think strategically about growth. You handle the spreadsheets and budgets, decode the legalese in contracts, manage clients (and their expectations), market your tushy off, the list goes on.
If you’re the right person for the job, you see all of that as an exciting opportunity. Cake Bakers see it as a drag.
Wanna just bake cakes all day? Get a job at someone else’s top tier bakery, Babe.
My First Million
“Quick, take my picture.” I said to my partner. This is what he snapped.
It’s the moment I became a millionaire.
I knew the day would be coming soon and I was expecting the email from my financial planner to drop any second. My partner and I happened to be in San Francisco at the moment, on a little side venture after I led a workshop in Napa Valley, when word came in.
Record scratch – what? I had a workshop in Napa Freakin Valley? I took a “little side jaunt” to San Francisco? I have a financial planner? Who does that??
I had never even dreamed this day would have come.
Back in 2010, when I was so fresh I didn’t even call myself an entrepreneur, I met with an accountant to make sure I wouldn’t go to jail for tax problems.
Dave told me something like “Withhold 23% of your income right now. When you reach six figures, we’ll have to re-adjust because you’ll be in a new tax bracket.”
I literally LOLed. No way would I EVER make six figures.
I made a million the following year.
Before too long, I was paying six figures in taxes. Yes, I pay more in taxes than I used to make as salary in a whole year at my old job.
These days I look back at the photo of this sweet moment, with my complete swagger and San Francisco-styled hair, and I remember thinking “This will be the best year of business I’ll ever have.”
How wrong I was. Million dollar years are the new norm.
See, this is the thing about growing an empire: It’s hard to see exactly where you’re going.
It’s hard to trust that customers will keep coming.
The economy, a pandemic, an injury, and everything could crumple. There are most definitely forces beyond your control.
That lack of control, that uncertainty, can cause so much low-grade (or high-grade) anxiety that it clouds our ability to think clearly and creatively.
Anxiety gets us listening to so many conflicting, external voices that we freeze.
We stop dreaming big. We start making some abrupt, erratic choices. We wonder whether we should look for a salaried job.
Listen, I never know what my income will look like in 8 months. It’s been that way for 13 years now. At some point in there, I just had to trust that things would work out, because history was showing me that they kept working out.
The sooner you can get comfortable with uncertainty, the more you can stay focused on your work.
My advice is not to relax. My advice is to channel that energy into the #1 trait you need to get to your first million: Absolute faith in yourself that you will figure it out.
You will figure out how to market yourself to bigger, better clients.
You will figure out if, how, and when to hire who in order to increase your business capacity and gross income.
That might mean getting some advice and, if that’s the case, check out my online course, Boost & Bloom. Enrollment opens February 1.
We may not be able to see what’s coming down the road. We may not be able to predict the day we’ll get the email from the financial planner with the million dollar news. But we can trust ourselves that we’ll figure out the very next step to get there.
If you look carefully at your life, I’m sure you’ll find places where you trusted yourself to figure it out. Write back and tell me about it.
Easy Social Media
Why is social media so freaking scary? Oh yeah, because people on the internet can be real jerks.
So much so that a lot of folks are pre-intimidated. Like, too afraid to even put anything out there in case a jerk happens to come along.
I just heard Glennon Doyle say that waiting for jerks on social media is like watching a jack-in-the-box.
Surprise jerks suck. For sure. So we let our fear of them keep us from using social media to be in community and help others with what we know.
We do nothing.
The cost of doing nothing is expensive. Social media is one of the key places future customers are going to find out about you and make a decision to listen to your advice. Creating that relationship builds trust and eventually turns some of those people into paying clients.
Even if you can nod your head along to everything I’ve been saying so far, I still don’t see you tweeting, Honey.
Like, even if you know you need to be on social and you are able to confront the fear of offending someone or saying the wrong thing, you still don’t know WHAT to post. Coming up with ideas for content can be hard.
So let’s talk about easy social media.
Start with a post a day, during the week.
That’s just 5 posts to write in a week. You can do this.
Try structuring your weekly posts in a pattern. Here’s an example:
Monday – promote someone else’s cool work
Tuesday – quick tip about my main service (should be educational in and of itself)
Wednesday – pose a question related to my services
Thursday – a light brag about a client win
Friday – cute cat or kid photo (Fridays are good for something casual)
A pattern structure helps you generate ideas for your posts.
And bonus: It creates a balance so you aren’t ONLY promoting other people’s work or ONLY ever talking about your services. You are a real person with a real cute dog.
No one else is paying enough attention to recognize or predict your pattern. Stay chill, ok?
Sit down on Friday afternoon and think up next week’s posts. Make a calendar for yourself of your upcoming posts so that if you come up with an extra (and you will – you’ll get good at this) you can queue it up for the week after.
At first, planning out next week’s posts might take you an hour. As you get into the routine, you’ll get faster and faster.
Social media doesn’t have to be scary. Or a giant time suck.
We’ll talk so much more about where to put your social media energy in Boost & Bloom, the online course for entrepreneurs reaching for seven figures. Enrollment opens February 1. I’m still tweaking the webpage with details but since we’re friends you can get a sneak peek and sign up for the VIP list here.
Once you know what your pattern will be, write to me and let me know, along with a link to your account so I can watch you work your magic.
Make Yourself Take Vacation
This is what my face looks like on vacation.
It isn’t just the culture, nature, and sunshine giving me that glow. It’s that I’m not at work.
Don’t get me wrong. I often send tweets with #ILoveMyJob because all of my work is deeply fulfilling.
But it’s also exhausting.
Caring deeply about something (anything) often means we put in extra time. We get up early and steal time from the weekend to create its infrastructure. It takes up part of our brain space even when we’re playing with our kids.
There’s a reason clergy and academics take sabbaticals.
Their traditions recognize that we need deep rest from mental work.
Yet Hustle Culture makes it seem like if you rest for just an afternoon, you’ll miss your chance at making a million.
Maybe this is just me (but I don’t think so): Even when I’m on vacation, my business has still set up shop in my head, the shop just shrinks temporarily. My empire is still a part of the low key background noise.
When I take a step away from being IN THE WORK, the background processes are still kicking and I end up hearing my own insights loud and clear.
That’s how, on a hike through the rainforest, I got the best idea for a newsletter article.
On a weekend trip to Chicago, I realized I don’t want to take on any more design projects.
I don’t know about you but by Summer 2021 I was in a streak of burnout so bad that I knew I was going to self destruct if I didn’t get a little break.
So my partner and I found a location within driving distance (so we could stay isolated and also because we had teenagers), and rented an AirBNB (again, no contact with others), right on Lake Erie. We hiked and kayaked.
On Day 4 I woke up at 3am with the idea for Evergreen Empire.
The AirBNB was set up as a vacation home for a family with small children. Perfect. I cracked open the art supply tub and pulled out fluorescent note cards.
Me, my coffee, and my new note cards stared out at the dark lake and sketched out the architecture of this new adventure.
When my partner shuffled into the living room at 5am, I said “Babe, I just started a new business.”
I can guarantee that you wouldn’t be reading this newsletter right now had I ignored my signs of burnout and continued to push through. It’s almost like I have to get away in order to do my best work.
It took me 9 years of running my business before I set up an actual out-of-office reply. In my head, I thought, I’ll lose a client if I don’t write back to them immediately.
The pandemic helped me remember that the world needs a little less pressure and a little more grace. Nothing would fall apart if I didn’t respond within 24 hours.
When you build your own empire, you get to be your own boss. So be the best boss in the world. The best boss in the world would make you take vacation.
Now for your moment of truth. Write to me with the last time you took a proper vacation.
Where did you go? The answer could just be “I went to my couch, not computer, for a whole week.” Vacations, especially in a pandemic, don’t have to involve travel. My dear friend Kate commits to a week off per quarter and most of the time, she spends it just hanging around her house, petting her pup, not thinking about work.
Do you recall getting any clarity or insights when you stepped away from the grind for a moment?
Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen
I am not proud to admit this, but I spent $10,000 on 8 weeks of business coaching. The course was pitched for high-earning (that’s me), executive-level (also me) women who were burning out (ahem, me too).
I’d be happy to share that I forked up 10 grand if I had actually learned something that made my life easier and my business run smoother.
Not so much.
I learned that you just need to stop yelling at your husband. And if that doesn’t work, try the keto diet.
Can I just repeat: TEN. FREAKIN. GRAND.
I coulda taken my whole family to the Virgin Islands, first class, five star resort with that kind of money.
I wish I could tell you that this disaster was an isolated incident but the truth is that I’ve spent years consuming business advice. I’m a lifelong learner, I can’t help it.
Trouble is, when I started implementing what I’d learned, I realized everyone’s advice conflicted.
One podcaster said “Don’t worry about the social media algorithms because the algorithms change too much for the every day Jane to keep up with it.”
A blogger wrote “Placate the algorithm gods, that’s the only way your posts will get seen.”
The $10K course instructor told me, specifically, that my struggles with social media were because I am unwilling to give up control over my brand’s voice and that I should pay (another $10K) to someone else to run my social media for me.
The next time I opened Instagram, I froze. All of that advice was duking it out in my head.
I had too many cooks in the kitchen.
It took me a minute to realize that just because someone has a podcast on business doesn’t make them an expert in running a business. Duh, Stephanie. I get so impressed by the glitter sometimes.
In fact, too many business coaches have business experience limited to… being a business coach.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather learn from someone who has been in the same hot kitchen.
So let me tell you what I did with that conflicting advice: I tried it all. I sautĂ©ed every cook’s recipe.
Some stuck to the wall and some ended up as compost. I’ll tell you the good stuff in future newsletters. For now, I’ll pass on one solid, consistent, enduring lesson.
Listen to your audience.
Sounds vague and vanilla, I know. But it really is the secret trick.
In my newsletter, I asked readers to write back with their most pressing business questions. I got soooooo many awesome responses that both broke my heart a bit (y’all are stressin!) and built my heart a lot because I know I can help.
The solution for at least 50% of what you sent me is to listen to your audience.
Don’t know which of your many talents should be the focus of your business? Your audience will tell you which they want the most.
Don’t know how to price yourself? Oh honey, your audience will tell you when you’re too expensive. And they’ll tell you when you’re too cheap.
Don’t know how to find customers? Your audience will tell you where to show up.
I swear, it sounds corny, but this truth is so universal it might become my next tattoo.
I promise to expand on all of these ideas and more in upcoming newsletters.
Until then, let’s make this a potluck. Write to me with the best piece of business advice you’ve heard.
In some ways, consuming every business book out there is just my slightly masochistic hobby. In other ways, I should have been more discerning early on. I would have saved a lot of confusion, time, and money (I’m still pretty sad about that) if I had just chosen wisely about who to listen to.
You know how BrenĂ© Brown said, “If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I am not interested in or open to your feedback.”? That applies here, too. Let’s use our time and energy judiciously.
Do you know someone else who needs to make this mindset shift? Send them the link to this page so they can sign up for my email list.
Building an empire can be a lonely venture. It’s easier (and more fun) to share your journey with someone who has been there before and can tell you what to do next. I’ve got the company you need in my newsletter. See you in your inbox.
Don’t Freelance
“I’m a freelancer” sounds sexy because media imagery involves rich athletes looking to trade teams or courageous journalists helicoptering to the next international assignment. But in reality, saying you freelance is more like packaging a Le Beccherie tiramisu in a Tootsie Roll wrapper.
Don’t be freelancer.
Freelancers trade their hours for money.
This will, inevitably, stretch you. If not today, SOMEDAY, you’ll find yourself wondering how to scale, how to get more hours in the day, how to get to six or seven figures.
If you worked (and billed) 40 hours per week and never took a vacation or sick day, you’d have to charge $480 per hour to reach seven figures in a year.
Trading hours for dollars isn’t the way.
Freelancers are treated like crap.
When organizations do business with an individual freelancer they act differently than they do when the exchange is business-to-business.
They are less respectful of boundaries and more likely to expect you to be available 24/7. They request the draft on Saturday and the final on Monday. They count your hours.
Somehow freelancers are interpreted as part-time, not really fully employed, and therefore available at the ring of a bell.
Don’t freelance. Own a business.
Your business doesn’t have to be any larger than a company of one. This isn’t about breaking ground on a new HQ. It’s simply a very important shift in position.
The position shift happens in your own head.
When shift your mindset to owning a business, you carry yourself differently. You are doing something bigger than yourself. This might seem small but it solidifies your identity in a way that brings extra confidence and maturity
When you represent a business, other companies treat you as an equal partner. I don’t love this fact, but you get more respect.
To shift from a freelancer to a business owner you don’t need to file any new legal paperwork. You just need to shift the words you use to talk about yourself. And your entire concept of who you and your business are. You know – nothing major.
Do you know someone else who needs to make this mindset shift? Send them THIS LINK to get on my email list.