3 Things I Swore I Wouldn’t Do in Business, That Now I Do!

Have you ever said, “I swear I won’t…. insert thing you think you’ll never do here”? We all do it. In all areas of our life, right? When we were kids, we probably said, “I swear I won’t do XYZ to my kids” or in this case, when I was just starting out with my business, there were SO many things I swore I would never do. But, guess what - I am doing them. Today, I want to share with you three things I SWORE I wouldn’t do in business, that I am definitely doing now.

Pay for Stuff

It’s really tough in the beginning, we aren’t really making any money and so if you do pay for something, it’s coming out of your own pocket, right? But for me, when I was just starting out, I thought people were crazy to be spending so much money on all of these services and platforms I was getting for FREE, even when they had a huge following. There are so many platforms that have their free version, right? You have Canva, Notion, various email marketing platforms, and so much more. In the beginning, I thought to myself, why would I ever pay for something that I could just get for free? If you keep using the free stuff after you scale your business, your profit margin will be out the roof. Right?

Wrong.

These “free” services have limitations, and these limitations can prevent your business from scaling. Let’s use Notion, for example, its free version is perfect if you are a one-person show, but if you ever decide to have a team, you have to pay. Email marketing is another great example, a lot of platforms offer a free version, but they limit you to a small number of email subscribers, so once your business grows, they require you to pay more and more as your subscribers grow. Also, just a side note about email marketing, I recommend FloDesk if you’re in the market for an email marketing platform, because they don’t keep charging - with my affiliate link, you can get this for around $20 per month indefinitely, for unlimited subscribers and everything. The link will be in the show notes.

I remember when I was in the early stages of my business growth, I was still working solely out of my email. Communication, contracts, agreements, packages - everything was in never-ending email chains, and saying I was overwhelmed would be an understatement. There was no structure and honestly, I probably lost so many client opportunities just from not having a system and being organized. I fought so hard before finally making the decision to get set up with Dubsado, which is my business management system. Dubsado provides support in storing and getting signatures on contracts, setting up meetings, invoicing, store client details, and it allowed me to place an application on my website to help collect potential client information. It made my business have more structure, which allowed me to scale.

Build a Team

Another thing that I swore I wouldn’t do is hire anyone. This is really twofold for me. There was part of me that truly believed that no one will care for my business the way I do. This business, these clients, this was something I built and it was beautiful. I was so concerned that if I hired someone, they just wouldn’t understand my vision or deliver it to the clients the same way I do. And honestly, some of that is true. Sure, no one was going to be ME, but I eventually realized that there are people out there that are more than qualified and amazing at the same things I am. Once I started hiring people, I realized how many skills they brought to the table that I didn’t have and how we were all learning from each other.

Another reason I swore I wouldn’t build a team was that I also felt like I couldn’t let go of the income. If I were to hire people, I had to pay them, obviously - and that meant less money in the pocket of me and my business. But, I can only take on so much on my own, so as soon as I hired a team, I was able to grow my business even bigger, get more clients, and focus more time and energy on doing the parts of the business I loved. Not having a team or some help is a very unsustainable approach, it can cap your business growth. It’s also a fast track to burnout, which if you are a frequent listener of the Creator Club - you have probably heard about my battle with mental health and how that was a direct connection to burning out with my business.

Complain about my Success

Lastly, I swore I would NEVER complain about anything related to the success of my business. I hate to admit this, but I remember when I was in the grind of trying to build my business, I would look at big creators who were “on top” and it would make my skin crawl when I would hear about them being overwhelmed with their success or complaining about their life in some way in regards to how busy there were or being “stuck in a niche” on YouTube. Back then I would think to myself, “I would kill for 100k subscribers, who cares what topic you’re talking about”. But, then, I got a taste of my own business when my YouTube finally started getting some traction and my business flourished because I hit a point when I was creating my YouTube content for the algorithm and not for myself anymore, and my mental health took a huge hit. I finally understood what all of these bigger creators were talking about. I just told you a bit about when I had burnout recently, and it was all because I felt trapped in this cage I created for myself within the YouTube algorithm.

Even now, I don’t complain much, but I do accept the reality that you will never feel 100% satisfied with where you’re at in your business. I know from experience now, that even if you hit 100k, you still feel insecure or don’t think you have enough views. You still want to reach that next milestone and you also still get imposter syndrome. You still have issues with mental health and burnout…. and you still occasionally want to quit it all. But, that’s all okay. It’s okay to feel that way and it’s okay to “complain” and be honest with how you feel at that moment. Maybe that’s something creators should share more often so that new creators know that “complaining” or feeling defeated is normal, and totally okay.

I guess the moral of this story is… never say never. You really never know where your creator journey will take you. So just be open with the idea that your thoughts, opinions, and feelings might change - and hey, by just going with the flow, you might skip over some of those barriers I created for myself by swearing I would never do them.