Starting your own business is an act of creation, your business is sort of like your child for a while – who at first needs all your attention and help, if you don’t go through the different seasons of being an entrepreneur, you might end up babysitting forever!

Starting your own business is an act of creation, your business is sort of like your child for a while – who at first needs all your attention and help, if you don’t go through the different seasons of being an entrepreneur, you might end up babysitting forever!

Just like there are different seasons of parenting, there are different seasons in starting and growing your online business.

Recently, I’ve seen other entrepreneurs criticizing and judging other entrepreneurs for the season they are in – there was a very established entrepreneur railing against another entrepreneur who was “all in” and it sort of reminded me of the “mommy wars” – where moms seriously judge and criticize each other, which is so disempowering for all.

There are different entrepreneurial seasons and they are all wonderful creative, exhilarating, joyfilled, heartbreaking, exhausting and fun places to be, where YOU get to create your business the way you want it to be – there’s no wrong in any of these seasons.

In this episode, I want to go over a few of the Entrepreneurial seasons – how you know which one you’re in and how to get to the next season, the next stage of development in your business…

1) Conception – This is the spark of the Idea for your business – Something happened – either you decided you didn’t want to work for someone else, you found a need for something that wasn’t being filled, or you got a lightning bolt of inspiration – and you decided that entrepreneurship was the route you wanted to take!

To get to the next season, you want to:

• Stay motivated and inspired to develop the idea and see it through
• Protect your idea from naysayers who can shoot it down and deflate you before you even launch

2) Infancy – Gathering information – Unfortunately, this season is where many would-be entrepreneurs stay… forever!

In this stage, you develop your business idea, research if it’s viable, staying inspired and motivated. It’s important to get the expertise, tools and support you need to launch, but it’s also important to start your business before you actually feel ready – because you’ll never ever feel 100% ready… there will always be fear and self-doubt, that’s normal!

To get to the next season, you want to:

• Set a time limit for researching and learning – 1 month/3 months? This will be dependent on how much time you have available – you might be learning after work or on the weekends at first
• Get extremely clear on the real value your future customers and clients will receive from your business’ products and services
• Decide on your selling process – business is all about selling right? It’s vital to have this in place as soon as possible. You’ll want to decide how you will find prospects and how you will invite them to be list subscribers and then how will you turn a portion of those list subscribers into your paying customers.
• Learn from someone doing the type of business you want to do successfully

3) Launching season – Woohoo! You did it! What most never ever do, yet so many think about! You hung your “virtual shingle” and you opened for business! Now is when the real work begins – This is when you must live and breathe your business to help it survive and eventually thrive. This is when you have to be completely gung-ho, you cannot be ½ way in…

To relate this back to the child analogy, this is school age – you’re getting your creation (your expertise, products, ervices, whatever you’re selling) out there and into the world. Just like a child, there will be wobbles and fear and tests and anxieties and joys and wins – be ready for them all and be ready for a bit of a roller coaster time where you will have to put 100% into growing your business. You will have to hustle and hustle hard!

You’ll want to drink lots of coffee, get up early and stay up late most days. There will be a lot of sacrifices and it will be worth it in the end if you do give your business the attention and nurturing it needs.

To get to the next season, you want to:

• Set things up so that you are setting specific number goals. (Tweet this🙂 Numbers are the best way for you to see if you’re going in the right direction.
• Celebrate the small wins – this will give you the confidence your business needs to build on those small wins. Even a failure can be a win if you use it as a stepping stone to learn from, build upon and grow.
• Start giving a little bit of freedom. This can be doing things such as adding a support team member or setting up some automation. In the long run, these are the things that will turn your business from something that needs you to watch over it full tim to something that brings you the joy and freedom you hoped it would. If you don’t start doing these from an early age, it may be harder to implement them later.

4) Growth –  You can relate this season to Teenagehood in children – This is Massive Testing and tweaking and pushing for positive growth time.

There can and will be some frustration during this time. There are lots of things that won’t work – You might feel like the work is too hard – you might feel like throwing your hands in the air and giving up – but this is EXACTLY the time you want to give lots of love and attention to your growing business. This is the time you want to give it absolutely everything you’ve got – the 100% from before plus some more… – these are the moments that will determine whether or not your business will turn into something that survives and thrives over time. Just like with a teenager, you cannot give up. There may be pivoting, zig zagging and unconventional methods you use but you want to give your  everything… In this season, you’re still drinking lots of coffee, getting up early and stay up late most days.

To get to the next season, you want to:

• Reinvest in your business – at this point you want to think about spending money to bring new prospects into your world – you can do this through FB ads, media buys, really cultivating affiliate relationships
• Invest in yourself as a leader – join a mastermind group, learn from a mentor, invest in a coach
• Continue to grow your team and give them the freedom to prove themselves, to make mistakes, to come up with new ideas you actually implement
• Use automation as much as possible – with today’s technology, this is a must-do to continue to grow your business. This takes strategy and planning and some time to think through and implement.

5) Established Business – Ahhh finally, The season that all entrepreneur’s strive for – this is when you’ve grown your business to the point that you do have a lot of the time and money freedom  – I liken this season to Young Adulthood in the child development analogy – you’ve put in the work, and now you can continue to guide and help, but there is more joy and freedom – and this is the legacy you started the entrepreneurial journey for.

Next time you see an entrepreneur in one of these seasons, ahead of or behind you – don’t judge them – celebrate them for being courageous enough to be on the entrepreneurial path too!

If you want to join me for a very special webinar I’ll be doing on January 10th 2015 – go to EasyOnlineMarketing.com/vision2015

And on the next episode of the Easy Online Marketing podcast – I’ll be bringing you one of the first interview episodes that I know will inspire you! See you then!