Becoming an entrepreneur, building a business, sharing your message, and building a community, all seem impossible at times. But you can do the impossible, especially when you have a mission to pursue, a mentor to guide you, and a mindset to see you through.
Is it possible to do the impossible? As entrepreneurs, it sometimes feels that the answer to that question is a flat no. But, if we take a look at the definition of an entrepreneur and discover our mission by serving those in our community, the impossible becomes full of possibility. Think about it. The word impossible is actually, I’m possible.
About Brian Dixon
Brian has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. From a young age, he created opportunities to make money. He loves to solve problems, especially for other people. Brian is a TEDx speaker and author of Start with Your People.
What is an entrepreneur?
Brian describes an entrepreneur as someone who sees there is a problem, that isn’t theirs, takes 100% responsibility for the problem, sets out to solve the problem, and sells the solution at a profit. He sees himself as an edupreneur, and an education entrepreneur because he truly believes that education is the best service we can provide our clients.
No Brian works to help Christian female entrepreneurs who have a message to share and an audience to serve but they get stuck when it comes to money and marketing. Brian loves to talk about both money and marketing. Marketing is sharing what you care about with people you care about and money is fuel for your mission.
Often times Christians are afraid to talk about money and afraid of marketing but if you figure out both of those your mission can reach even more people.
Start with Your People and they’ll inspire you to do the impossible
Porter Gaile said many years ago that your network is your net worth. One of the reasons Brian loves to work with women is that women tend to be more social and know a lot of people. Most women already have a network of people. The question is, how are you showing up to serve them right now? Chances are that you are already doing that right now, helping with the PTA, asking how you can pray for people, etc.
There isn’t that much of a difference between what you do in everyday life and your entrepreneurial journey. Brian reminded us that authenticity is one of the key parts of growing your business. If you don’t have clients or income right now, show up to serve. Ask yourself what would it look like for you to reach out to someone in a leadership role and ask if you can start something.
As you start showing up and being faithful to God, you will begin to figure out what you love doing and what is kind of hard. Brian shared that Jesus came to completely break the curses of the fall. The curses of the fall are the pain in childbirth and work is hard. But work doesn’t have to be hard. If we put people first, work doesn’t have to be hard.
You can help the people in your day-to-day life who are facing the impossible and build your community
Think about putting other people first, maybe the other moms in your kid’s class, like sheep without a shepherd when it comes to their fitness if you are a fitness coach. Similarly, maybe they are sheep without a shepherd when it comes to their budgeting if you are a financial coach or bookkeeper. Whatever your niche is if you see people who are hurting or making mistakes and you have the vision to see what they are struggling with, you can step in to solve their problems for them.
If you show up and serve these people, you will grow your community and referral sources. Your business grows by serving the people who are already in your life.
Robyn mentioned her coaching client, Naomi Petrick, a health and wellness coach specializing in gluten-free living coach.
Why are women so afraid to do the impossible and reach out to their network?
Identity. Fear of man. Mis-placed fear. God asks us to, and commands us to fear the Lord, fearing the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear is an honor and respect. The Bible says God is no respecter of persons. God is not afraid of people. He knows who He is. When we understand our identities as daughters of the king, we won’t feel like we don’t have an identity. Our identity resides in clarity, the clarity of our purpose, and knowing our place.
Jesus didn’t come to say honor me, he came to serve people. When we know who we are, we are going to face rejection. Jesus came to earth and was rejected. But if we know who we are in Christ and focus on serving our clients, we will find success.
Yes lives in the land of no. You will hear no all day long, but if you have clarity and believe in your product or service, you can sell and achieve your goals. If people need your service or product and you aren’t sharing it, you are doing a disservice to them.
You need to put your fear of man aside and say, God, I want to make the most of every opportunity. Then, when you see people, ask them what they are working through right now. Instead of saying “how are you”, ask what are you working through. This will give you an opportunity to make connections with people and offer to help them.
There is so much wisdom in the Bible about how to approach people. But it really comes down to now worrying about where we get approval and realizing it is not in man’s eyes.
The three things you need to do the impossible
You need a mission to pursue. What are the desires of your heart? How do you want your life to look one year from now?
Mentor to guide you. Success leaves clues. Follow a mentor and learn from them. Observe what they are doing that works. These days are perfectly set for you to live and make a difference in the world. Every single day reaches out to 10 people. If you do this you will develop relationships and grow your network.
A mindset to see you through. We have to have a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset. The world is always changing. This is a good thing, yet we build our castles on what worked yesterday. We need to look for new opportunities and pursue them when they are in front of us. The reality is that opportunity is all around us.
Instead of having the mindset that you can’t do things because of your past, address those things, and look at the opportunity. Think of your mess as your message or an opportunity. This is a shift in mindset from letting negative past experiences hold you back. A positive mindset is what it takes to keep taking action and action is what leads to results.
Remember, things don’t happen to you, they happen for you. Anything you go through becomes part of your message to help you build connections and show how you understand what others are going through. If you don’t share what you do or how you can help others, you are doing a disservice to them.
What if you are afraid or resistant to investing money in your business?
The first question Brian would ask is, how is influencing your philosophy of life? For the next week, pay attention to everything you watch or listen to and document what the agenda was, and what were they trying to teach you.
Brian thinks that one of the reasons we are hesitant to invest is that we are accustomed to getting things for free. But if you don’t pay for something, then you are the product. If you aren’t paying for something, then others are selling your attention.
There are two ways that we pay. We pay with our time or we pay with our treasure. We are to take our time and steward it well. Brian always has a coach and when he pays his coach for one hour he is getting about 100 hours of value because a coach can see what we can’t see in ourselves.
The bottom line, the more you invest in yourself and your business, the more likely you’ll be to do the impossible.
Find your expert and discover the power of focus
Having a mentor or coach can help you take the right steps to do the impossible. To create the life your dream of while falling into your calling.
If you depend on multiple sources and each says something different, you now have to spend time discerning which is right, and which is right for you and your business. Ultimately, this causes you to be more overwhelmed and struggle even more to make a decision. Likewise, we don’t know what we don’t know. This is the benefit of having someone else look at our business and advise us.
Brian shared the analogy of building a dream house and having the faithful 5, faith, family, finance, fitness, and friendship. There are different areas of life, and on every platform there are gurus. Select your guru wisely. Look at your faith. Who are you going to listen to, to grow your faith? When you find that person (or people), go all in. For example, Brian and his wife love John and Lisa Bevere as Christian role models and Bible teachers to help them grow their faith.
You will make more progress because of the power of focus. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Double-minded means listening to two people at the same time. Don’t be double-minded. Align yourself with someone you trust.
Brian stressed that we all have a message and you can make money from your message.
Learn more about my Purpose to Results™ Method by downloading my free eBook so that you can build a strong foundation for long-term brand and business success.
Growing a successful online business as an entrepreneur can feel daunting and overwhelming. But if you follow these 5 tips you can grow an online business, with more ease and less stress.
You can start and grow an online business without feeling so overwhelmed
The online world is inundated with people sharing tips on how to grow an online business. But a lot of times, those tips aren’t applicable to everyone, they aren’t accessible to everyone starting out, or, they are confusing and hard to do alone. By the way, no one is meant to grow a successful business alone. We all need someone to help us and guide us and hold us accountable for intentional action.
But, even before hiring a business coach, you can take steps to grow an online business without feeling like you are climbing a mountain with no lifeline.
Let’s take a look at how my 5 C’s of personal branding can be applied to help you grow an online business
Clarity is the first step to take to successfully grow an online business
If you want to start and grow an online business, you must have clarity. When you have clarity, you have more confidence. And when you have more confidence you also trust yourself more. Likewise, when you have clarity and confidence and trust yourself, your soulmate clients are going to have clarity be confident, and trust you.
So where do you begin to discover clarity?
Purpose
It starts with knowing your purpose and what you can do to truly make an impact and serve others. If you make a list of your values, visions, and passions you will see overlap in the three. Where that overlap occurs, you will discover your purpose. That thing that you can do to feel fulfilled, but also make an impact and serve others.
Soulmate client
Once you have clarity around your purpose, it’s time to discover who your soulmate client is. Who are the people you feel called to serve? What specifically do the people need from you? Know exactly what the problem is that people have and how you can help them with it.
How you can help
If you are struggling to identify how you can help people, look at what your purpose is and all of the experiences that have led you to where you are today. Your soulmate client is 10 steps behind you. That may look like 10 years, 5 years, 3 years, or a few months, but all of the experiences that you’ve grown through are what they are going through at this moment.
Clarity means aligning with your values
The key to clarity is aligning all you do with your values. Your purpose involves your values and therefore, if you want to connect with your soulmate clients to grow an online business, you must stay aligned with your values, your visions, and your passions.
You must have clarity around your purpose, the impact you want to make, the service you can and want to provide, who you want to serve, how you will serve them, where and when you will serve them, and your mission for serving them, in other words, your why.
Keep in mind that it is challenging to achieve clarity if you are struggling with mindset barriers. Similarly, if you aren’t aligned with your values, you may feel more fear and anxiety which will result in procrastination. I can’t emphasize enough how important having a positive mindset is to achieve clarity.
Being Cohesive is the second thing you need to grow an online business
When I talk about being cohesive, I am referring to your brand identity and your branding. Your personal brand is what others think, say, and feel about you. Branding is how you communicate what makes you unique from all others in your area of expertise. And your brand identity is your color palette, typography, and logo, identifying factors, but now what truly differentiates you? Click here to read more about the differences between a personal brand, branding, and brand identity.
Become recognizable, memorable, and sharable to build trust to grow your online business
In order to stand out as a personal brand and become recognizable, memorable, and sharable, you need to use all of these things cohesively from your website to your social media platforms. In order to grow an online business, you must have trust. Trust determines buying practices. The more recognizable, memorable, and sharable you are, the more people will trust you.
Think about stopping the scroll on social media. You want people to see your content and immediately think, that’s Jane, I love her and know she provides value so I don’t want to miss this post. They stop and consume your content, and their trust in you grows.
The third thing you need to grow an online business is consistency
Consistency doesn’t refer to the thickness of cake batter when talking about how to grow an online business but rather being consistent.
Consistent messaging to grow an online business
When talking about being cohesive I didn’t mention your copy or messaging. These are very important and they do need to be cohesive, but they also need to be consistent.
Every piece of content you create should be clear and consistent about what you do, who you serve, how you serve them, and why you serve them. You never what to confuse your audience. Confusion will break trust. And we know that confused people never buy.
The more consistent you are with the content you create on your website and all other platforms, the more trust you will build.
Consistently showing up for your audience helps grow an online business
You also want to be present consistently. The best part about being present is that you get to choose what works best for you. Do you want to write a blog post once a month or once a week? How many times a week do you want to post on social media? What about emailing your subscribers? How often do you want to show up in their email inbox? You get to decide so that you can be consistent, showing up in a way that works for you. Following recommendations of people online is not necessarily going to work for you. Some people show up on social media multiple times a day. If that doesn’t work for you and you can only show up 3 times a week, make that choice but stay consistent so that your audience knows when to expect you and can see that you are consistently showing up for them.
The more consistent you are, the more trust you will build. In addition, the more consistent you are with your messaging, the more people will see you as an expert.
The fourth tip to help you grow an online business is content.
Your content will become the deal-breaker for your audience getting to know you, understanding what makes you unique from all others in your space, and building relationships. At the end of the day, your goal is to build trust. You build trust by building relationships. Your content from your website copy, blog posts, email marketing campaigns, and social media post is what will help you emotionally connect with your audience to build relationships and trust.
People often dislike social media and the demand for creating content. However, if you look at creating content as an opportunity for developing relationships and building trust so that you can grow your online business it won’t seem so daunting.
Ultimately, your content is your branding. It is your effort to differentiate yourself, create an emotional connection with your audience, build relationships and community, and convert them to soulmate clients because they trust you.
Repurposing content to make your life easier while you grow your online business
In addition, repurposing content makes content creation easier. You can begin with a blog and repurpose the blog into multiple social media posts and an email to your audience. It takes people 7 to 20 times to see or hear something and remember it. This statistic is justification for repurposing your content to ensure that your audience gets to know you as the expert you are.
Lastly, you need a community to grow an online business
Your community begins with your family and friends. You might think they will get sick of hearing your messages or seeing you on social media, but they love you and want to support you, and will share you with their friends, neighbors, and extended family.
Your community is not only a referral source but an opportunity for collaboration. The more you create opportunities for collaboration, the more your community will grow. For example, when you are a guest in someone’s Facebook group, when you collaborate for an event when you collaborate for a social media post or guest on a podcast or blog, you are reaching a larger audience. The collaborator’s audience will immediately trust you because the collaborator trusts you.
As you develop relationships on social media and through networking, build your community and extend invitations for collaborations and joint referrals.
Summary
All of the Cs are connected and result in trust. Clarity builds confidence which builds trust. Being cohesive helps you become recognizable and memorable, which in turn helps people trust you. Consistency in messaging and presence builds also helps you become recognizable and memorable and is the key to meaningful content. Content is your gateway to developing relationships, differentiating yourself from all others in your space, and building trust and community. Your community is your fan base will who ultimately share about you and hires you.
Your why is what will help build the emotional connection that will make people trust you and want to buy from you.
Knowing your why, and your purpose is a critical part of building a solid foundation for a successful business. Simon Sinek speaks about the importance of knowing your why and starting with why in his TED Talk.
About Chris Olson
Chris Olson is the master of knowing your why. After more than a decade working in broadcast media, Christ founded a communications consultancy and began leveraging her behind-the-scenes media expertise to benefit clients. Through that work, Christ realized her why – to support women-owned businesses in confidently communicating their purpose and impact, setting them up for entrepreneurial success. She is the founder of the My Founder Story platform. Chris is the author of Whyography, Building a Brand Fueled with Purpose.
Knowing your why is important for confidence and funding
Women get about 4% of venture capital. Similarly, only 25% of women who apply for business loans receive the loans. This is not because of bad credit or poor ideas. Most likely, it is a lack of confidence or inability to show the impact you will have through your business when pitching to investors. Knowing your why is critical for conveying confidence.
Getting clear on your personal brand is the foundation for your business. Clarity on your why, your purpose, and what is trigging the emotions inside of you to create your business. If struggling to find clarity around your why use Robyn’s purpose equation: values + visions + passions = purpose (knowing your why).
Likewise, when you have clarity and are focusing on your why, you will feel more fulfilled.
Values are a huge part of your why. Start with the values that resonate with you. Sometimes, people choose values that are aspirational but aren’t how you are showing up in the world. Choose values that you are actively living.
You can look at where and how you are spending your money. Most likely, you are purchasing from brands and companies that align with your values. Similarly, evaluate how your values show up in your everyday life.
The first step is getting clear on your values. Narrow your values down to five that show up in your life in action every day.
The tiny why statement
There are 20 power verbs: educates, empowers, and advances, the words that indicate a powerful action. What power verb would you choose for your business and connect that to the person you serve?
For example, Chris’s tiny why statement is: I empower women-owned businesses.
To grow confidence in your business, practice saying your tiny why statement.
The impact statement
Now, to make your tiny why statement your why statement, add the impact you have on your ideal customer. For example, Chris wants to help other women make an impact by confidently communicating how they serve others.
Shoppers want to purchase from purpose-driven businesses. Likewise, people want to work for purpose-driven businesses. Therefore, there are a lot of reasons to have clarity around knowing your why and your purpose.
Be sure that your why is about how you are making an impact in the world.
Leading with why instead of what
From a young age, we are taught to lead with what. But leading with your why is much more impactful for building connections and keeping the conversations moving forward.
Eventually, you get to your what, but it is best to lead with your why.
Likewise, starting with your why will hook people because of an emotional connection.
Similarly, your why is rooted in who you are so you don’t have to remember buzzwords or bullet points, you are speaking from your heart and with confidence.
What is whyography?
Whyography is writing about your why.
Your why is your natural differentiator. The concept of whyography is the art and science of telling your story. Think about how the human brain reacts to stories. Whyography touches on telling your story to really engage the senses of your audience.
Start with the big moment of wanting to start your business. Next, explain how you pursued the path to do this, and the climax is taking the leap and starting your business. Then, encapsulate what you are doing in your business and your why. The conclusion is your vision for the future, and what you hope your business is doing five years from now.
Whyography captures the principles of storytelling and the power of purpose.
Your why is your compass
When feeling stuck, pivoting, rebranding, or feeling confused, come back to your purpose to regain clarity. Your why may shift slightly, but if you think of it as a compass, you will be able to redirect yourself by regaining clarity. If you feel like you are floundering, or your business is floundering it is because you aren’t aligned with your purpose. Do the exercise of the tiny why statement to bring yourself back to a place of clarity.
Likewise, ask yourself if you are doing something to serve your clients. Ask yourself what impact you want to have.
When you look at your why think about the moments in your life that were big moments. Look at the moments good and bad, that have guided you to what you want to do. For example, does empathy drive you? And what did you do next? Your values will show up in what you did next.
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