The Only Thing You Actually Need as a New Business Owner with Emma-Louise

[00:00:00] Emma-Louise Parkes: Hello, my fellow ambitious introverts, another solo episode this week with me and the Louise. So hello, and thank you for joining me. And I came up with the idea for this episode while I was out on my walk this morning, it was a beautiful sunny morning, but absolutely bitterly cold and windy for the middle of March.

And I was thinking about what to, what to record. And what kept coming up for me is, you know, that game two truths and a lie, it’s kind of a. The spin on that, but we’re going to call it three lies and a truth, because as something that I’m seeing so much in the online space of what people are telling you, you need to be able to grow a viable, profitable, sustainable business.

That frankly are not necessarily true. And there is one thing that is absolutely vital to doing that. [00:01:00] I didn’t see anyone talking about, so we’re gonna look at this like three lies and the truth. And yeah, this, this, I think is the real missing ingredient. When I started my own journey in the online space, this is what held me back was not having this down.

No one talks about it for some reason. Maybe it’s not as sexy. Some of the other things that people are selling. And so it often gets overlooked. But before I tell you what it is, I’m going to cover the three things that I see being pushed to newer business owners and new entrepreneurs over and over and over again that you do not need early on in your business, especially as an introvert, empath and highly sensitive entrepreneur.

And when I say early on and many, maybe under a year or so, or also. If you are not making consistent sales, if you do not have a consistent monthly recurring [00:02:00] revenue that you can build on, whether that’s 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, K, whatever, if you’re in feast and famine mode, or you’re not making sales, then this episode is for you.

Now, what I will say is the three things I’m going to discuss that we don’t need. The reason that we get so caught up in them. Because we’re ambitious. Um, and I say this with my hand up because I did the same thing. And what tends to happen is we aim high. So we come into the online business space. We’ve come from backgrounds where we’ve been very successful.

We are super motivated, enthusiastic, ambitious, and we see these things and we’re like, yes, I need that. But ultimately they are not the things that we need at that early stage to make sure that we create a viable, profitable, and sustainable business.

And as overthinkers with love, [00:03:00] we do tend to be 10 steps ahead of ourselves. So, this is what also happens. We can see that we will need these things. So we think we need them now, when actually that’s not the case. So Alignable. The first thing you do not need in these early stages of your business is to make a huge investment in a custom website or custom branding.

And this is something I see over and over again, is people going? I need to get my website perfect. First. I need to get my website ready. I need to get my brand in done because I don’t feel confident unless I’ve got a logo and all of that, which I totally understand. However, I have seen people waste thousands and thousands doing this.

And I mean, lots of thousands simply because. There are other important things that they need to have in place. First, they need to understand their brand. They need to understand their ideal client. They need to have created packages that are [00:04:00] actually aligned with that energy type. I see people go all in and get a website and then actually once they start to market and once they start to attract clients, they realize that the website’s completely wrong.

And ultimately a website is not a priority. Because a website is really useful. There are people online that will tell you don’t need a website. You can run a business from social media. I don’t, I don’t buy into that. I think websites are incredibly important. Um, I know mine gets a lot of traffic now. I know that people read it when I have sales calls with people, people have read the website and I just think it’s I do.

I think it’s very important. I just don’t think it’s important off the bat when you are not completely set on what you are doing and you haven’t got those strong foundations in place. So I am going to disagree. People that say that, but it’s not the priority. It is not the first piece of the puzzle because you will invest in website.

It will [00:05:00] look beautiful and it will sit there and it will be like tumbleweed blown across it because you won’t have a marketing system that’s pushing traffic to it. And you probably wouldn’t have invested in SEO to make sure that it’s shown up in Google. And then the. That might find it are going to do what we all do these days and go, oh, I like the look of this website.

Let me just go and check this person out elsewhere. Let me look them up on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, and you won’t have any of that. And then we lose trust. So it’s really important to know when to do these things. And I would tell you. I’m approaching three and a half years in business now. And I’ve just commissioned my first custom website and branding up until this point.

I use templates and where I could easily switch things out as things changed and evolved, and now has been the right time for me. So, number one, you do not need to spend thousands and thousands and thousands on a website or brand number two. You also do not need to spend thousands on a [00:06:00] very specific program or course.

And what I mean is something that’s going to teach you how to do funnels or Facebook ads or. SEO or how to create amazing videos or, or any of that, because you can go really deep into all of these things. And some of these courses and programs, again are thousands and thousands and rightly so because they will deliver a lot of value and they will give a great transformation.

But not if you are in the early stages of your business or not, if you don’t already have a really strong evergreen marketing system, that’s bringing in clients to you consistently. And if you don’t have that monthly recurring revenue to build and scale upon. So these programs are really great for people that are in the scale stage of their business, but.

What happens is they’re very aspirational in their marketing and we see ourselves in them yet. So that high [00:07:00] achiever that, you know, I’m all in. I’m 10 steps ahead. We read the sales pages and we go, I want that that’s me. That is me, but it’s not quite yet. And without the other things in place first, that kind of program, or course you, you just will not get results.

You will pour a lot of hours into it. And it’s about one very specific thing. And you don’t have the infrastructure and the ecosystem in place and the rest of your business to be able to support the growth from that. So once your evergreen marketing system is in place, once you are making consistent sales, Then with intention, you can choose a way to scale.

And one of those courses will be absolutely perfect. But for now, get in that specific in the early days is just putting your energy in the wrong place. And the last thing that you do not need, that I see a lot of our, what I call everything programs. There’s a [00:08:00] program full of everything. So a coach has released a program and it’s everything.

It’s everything that they know about business and mindset. And energy and anything else and journaling and gratitude and everything that they have learned about writing content and everything they know about the Facebook algorithm. And I could go on and on and on, but it’s like everything and they throw it into something like Kajabi and it’s like a vault.

And it makes no sense. And there’s just video after video, after video, that doesn’t lead anywhere and you just end up in this big consumption cycle. And I know this because I have been in these programs, they get you very intrigued because there’s always guest experts. There’s like a million guest experts.

Guess what? If you’re in the early days of your business, you don’t need all the guest experts. You probably don’t need to know everything. About human design from an expert. If you’re just not in your business, [00:09:00] you also will not need to know about Facebook ads or about buyer psychology or these things that can, can be really, really useful.

And I love them all, but we’re talking about where you are right now. And if you are in that earliest stage where you’re not making consistent sales, then one of these overwhelming everything programs. Going to leave you spinning your heels even more. What you do need is something which is curriculum or journey based.

And what I mean by that is a program that is designed with a specific outcome in mind, so that there’s a deliverable at the end and you know exactly what you’re getting, not just access to, you know, every piece of content someone’s ever created. And you’ve just got to log into Kajabi and go down the rabbit hole and try and work out for yourself as empaths and highly sensitives.

It’s not good. It is not. So those are my three lies. You do not need a big, fancy, very expensive custom built website with [00:10:00] brands and logos. You do not need very specific niche program about something that you don’t yet understand. If you don’t have a things in place first, and you definitely do not need an everything overwhelmed, stuffed to the brim program with bonuses and guest experts and everything else, which is just.

Generic brain dump of someone’s business knowledge. You don’t need those. What you need are foundations. You need solid foundations. And what I mean by that is we need to know that your business is viable. And the only way we can do that is by carrying out things like market analysis and research. So we need those foundations in place to understand that.

Your business needs to be profitable because otherwise it’s not a business. It’s just an expensive hobby. And to be profitable, we need to understand your revenue model and your packages and your services and how that all fits in. [00:11:00] We need to understand how all of this fits in with your own vision for your life, because that is absolutely the most important thing.

It’s no good building the wrong business that doesn’t actually give you what you want and scalable. Is it scalable. We see people online all the time that I’ve had 10 K months at quotes, and then they don’t make sale for the next three months because they just happened to show up on stories or something that month, or, you know, they got referred to clients, but they’ve actually got nothing in place to keep repeating that.

So that is not scalable. That is feast and famine. So. This is exactly why I designed startup to scale up. It is a culmination of everything I have learnt. And then I got rid of about 80% of it because it’s not required at this stage of business. You know, it’s so hard not to throw everything in the kitchen sink in to make something seem valuable, but ultimately.

Things need to be stripped back. You need the information that you need [00:12:00] to be able to create those foundations. That’s why I worked with an instructional designer on this because I could not see the wood for the trees. So I had lovely Emily come and help me for months. And she took the contents of my brain.

She took all of the resources, all of the frameworks that I use, all of the business strategy. And we mapped out this program together so that it delivers exactly what you need at that stage of business. And what you get at the end, after you’ve gone through the modules is your bespoke business blueprint.

And yes, it’s bespoke to you. This is not the kind of course stroke program where you come out with, you know, 10 steps that everyone’s following. We create this together for you based on you, based on your vision and values. Based on your ideal client based on the kind of service and packages you want and based on how you want to do your marketing.

So [00:13:00] the other thing this does is it ensures that your business is fireball profitable and scalable, and we want it to be sustainable. We don’t want a business that, you know, has a few good months, but you can’t keep up with it and it burns you out and you suddenly hate it because that happens too. So I designed this.

To cover exactly these things because it’s missing because no one wants to talk about creating your business plan or your per spoke business blueprint. As I like to call it because it’s not as sexy as talking about a glossy website or talking about running Facebook ads and reaching tens of thousands of people.

So people are shying away from it, but it’s like building a skyscraper. You can’t build a skyscraper without first going down into the ground and laying those absolutely solid foundations. So that’s why I have created it. So if you are service-based business owner who doesn’t have everything that I’ve just discussed in place, if you [00:14:00] are not super clear on your vision and values, if you’re not clear on your ideal client, on where you sit in the market, if you’re not absolutely clear on your revenue model, your profit forecast, then.

The services and packages that you offer, if you are not absolutely clear and implementing an evergreen marketing system, we can week out that is delivering you a constant leads, which is turning into monthly recurring revenue. If you don’t have all of that in place, then this is absolutely for you. So the doors will be open it at the end of March at the end of this month to start in early April.

So I’d love to invite you to hop onto the wait list with we’ve got just over 30 other people on that at the moment, which is very exciting. The link is in the show notes. And the reason I would say hop on the wait list is because wait-listers will get exclusive early bird pricing to start it to scale up before it’s launched publicly.[00:15:00] 

And there is a good chance it will set out from the wait-list. So even if you want. Moderately interested on the fence, even if you’re even just slightly intrigued, like just piqued your interest a tiny bit. I would say, get on the wait list. I’m not going to spam you. I’m not going to buy the you, but you will be the first to hear all of the details and be able to make an informed decision that way.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to email me links in the show notes, or send me a message on Instagram. That’s probably the best place to reach me by Dan at ambitious introvert. And I’m happy to answer any questions you’ve got, but in the meantime, hop on that waitlist and I look forward to speaking to you soon.