9 Realities For This Moment In 2024 For Business Owners

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there. Hey, everyone. Julie here, and it's been a little bit. I have been traveling and super busy this season, but I am back because I have just calcul. I think I've done about a hundred meaningful business conversations in the last month alone, and I have some things I want to say, some patterns that I'm seeing, some ideas, some analysis about the moment that we're in right now in 2024, specifically in the online business world. So, you know, I. I'm never. I'm never not amazed at how much we think we're unique or special or, you know, the special snowflake syndrome, when it's. So there are patterns and, you know, similar headaches among us, and it really doesn't matter, like the age, the market, the niche where you live. I can say with pretty reasonable certainty that whatever it is you're facing today, there are thousands of other people exactly in your shoes. So that's sort of the benefit, I think, that I bring to a conversation when we're talking about online businesses. I have so many points of data between my private clients, which I. I carry a pretty high private client load for a coach. I have about 85 clients usually at any given time, and so it allows me to see these patterns differently. And then on top of it, I went to two events, one in Providence, one in New York, each one with a small group, but a completely different network than I have. And the patterns were the same still. So I. I feel even more sure. So I've got nine things, nine things on my list here that I want to go through because I think hopefully it will give you some insight and some hope. So, number one, and I've shared this before, COVID whiplash is real. And many of us saw a huge growth spike during those Covid years. 2020 to 2022 was a bubble. And if you had started your business right before COVID like 2018, 2019, you probably didn't realize that the growth you saw in your online business was partially accelerated by the money flowing into the economy during that time. And if you started your business in 2020, this was just normal for you. You started in a sort of synthetic environment, if you will. And so this has led to a feeling of major whiplash as 2023 and 2024 have been grueling in comparison. And yet that's what I'm trying to say here is it's the comparison that's making this so much worse. It's not that things aren't selling, it' aren't having epic launches because I'm seeing plenty of evidence of money making and launches and growth. It's. It's that a lot of us are looking through the lens of what we just came out of, right? So we either, you know, had a new business burst or we had a Covid acceleration. And so now by comparison, everything feels so much harder. Especially if you built your expense line, you built your income line based on that synthetic bubble, not realizing that things were going to change. So that's a common pattern. Number two, visionaries struggle with implementation. And this was repeated over and over and over again. Visionaries have big ideas, creative brains, and this is the superpower that really propels you into entrepreneurship. And it's a superpower that's very common among entrepreneurs and business owners. But the struggle for execution is real, right? So how do you take that vision that you see in your head and bring it to fruition? And this is one thing that I'm noticing is that the vision is often significantly larger than the bank account, right? And so the gap between what you know could be possible for you and what you're able to do today is painful emotionally to live in that gap. And so the solution to this is to try to. It's not that you have to abandon your big vision, but it's try to find a smaller vision or a why in the immediate and clear present day. Because that heart sickness, that heart sickness of your big vision compared to your present day reality is really not good for you. And you just live in a state of longing which is not going to propel you forward. So you need to kind of create micro visions that are much smaller and easier to achieve. Number three, the continued importance of community. People are like blood, you guys. Like, whether it's your own customer client community around your business, or it's a community of people that you connect with for collabs, inspiration people. And the priority of them in your company is absolutely critical. And I know the world is reveling in automation and AI, but how big you grow will be directly dependent on how much priority you place on people and the communities that you participate in and the communities that you foster. So I also have noticed that the question of how Do I build community? How do I create true community? Seems to be coming up and people get stuck in the container like, oh, should I do something on school? Should I build a membership? Like, how do I build community? And this is the irony, right? Community is something that grows organically. When your desire for community is greater than your desire, desire for money. And so if you are looking at like, okay, community is a way to monetize myself. Community is something. It's like an entity that I control. The energy that you put out will actually make growing a community harder. Because most of the organic, dynamic communities that grow over time and strengthen over time are held by leaders who care about the community outside of just the monetizable nature of it, right? And so that's going to take a little bit of deep, deep work there, okay? Number four, market from outside the house and teach from inside. And I probably have given this analogy before, but whenever I speak to someone about their technical expertise, and I don't mean technical as in, like, you're techie. This could be if you're like a therapist, right? And your technical expertise around emdr, let's say. And if you are gifted at your expertise and you're a gifted teacher, I see so much passion and excitement, which is amazing, right? It's great to know that there's so much talent behind their name. The issue, of course, is that the better you are at the thing you do, usually that correlates to the worse you are at marketing. There are some exceptions to the rule. If your expertise is marketing, then you have sort of a one, two punch win, right? If your expertise is sales and you're in, you're in luck, right? But if your expertise is emdr, or if your expertise is needlepoint, right? And you have invested so much time and energy into this skill, your marketing skills are probably deeply lacking, right? So I want you to imagine a house. You're the expert. You live inside your home. You know where everything is, down to the spot on the wall from where your child, you know, stole a permanent marker. Okay? So you know where everything is. Your customer, though, is simply walking by on the street. And the decision for them to go up to the do door and knock has zero to do with anything that is inside the home. All they can see is what is on the outside, right? The paint, the shingles, the landscaping, the sidewalk. And the important lesson here is you as the expert, must learn to change your position of perspective. If you want to market effectively, you have to leave your house and go outside focusing. What are Those outside things we focus on, we focus on problems, we focus on outcomes, we focus on transformation. These are all outside the house ideas. Once they are your customer or they're in your world in some way, then you can begin to focus on processes and steps of execution and you can show them your cool little lamp on the side table. But these are not things that you can market with. Number five, it's still true that the two resources needed to grow a business are time and money. And if your business was a car, the gasoline is the combination of time and money. The more time you have, the less money you need. The less time you have, the more money you need. And so bootstrapping a business is inherently complex. And this is the reason why most businesses don't bootstrap. Most businesses get a loan, most businesses get funding. I want to say that again. Most businesses get a loan, most businesses get funding. So if you're coming at this with this idea of bootstrapping, it is inherently difficult and complex. Especially if you want to bootstrap a, a business that is like courses and events and programs, right? It's actually very, very difficult to do unless you are ready to dig deep and learn lots of marketing skills and do them on your own. Otherwise it's going to take significant cash to get that snowball rolling down the mountain. And the main reason for this is that the effort and energy that it takes to build a platform and community is more expensive today than it was in the past. And so bootstrapping a course business is not super realist. So you're like, great, Julie, thanks so much for that great news. No problem. But if cash isn't in ample supply, you still can bootstrap. It's just the model is different, right? And the done for you work or one to one work in consulting or services, both of these business models are still sustainable bootstrapping models where yes, you have to put a little bit of money in, but not nearly as much as you think, and then you can start to save enough to spend money and grow your audience and then begin branching out into those scalable options like courses, events and group programs. Number six, the sunk cost fallacy is rampant. Okay, we're late in 2024 and people who have been caught in this economic slump have spent both money and time trying to get whatever their thing is off the ground. And maybe it hasn't worked yet. Right? And that sunk cost fallacy is when people don't want to abandon idea because they've already spent so much time and money on it. Even when it's clear that abandoning it for another option would probably be far more beneficial. Right? That's what the sun cost fallacy is. But there are no sacred cows in business, right? If it's not working, and here's the caveat, whatever you're doing is not working and you're reasonably sure you got the strategy right, it's time to read the room. The market doesn't want it. This is one of the biggest reasons for a coach, because if it's not working but you're not sure you got the strategy right, you don't know if it was the strategy or the idea. And that is critical. You do not want to be floundering around for three, four, five, six years trying to decide if it was the offer or the the idea or the strategy. That is why getting a coach is so valuable. You get a good strategy, get a good coach, get a good strategy, and if it doesn't work, then you can say, okay, I did it right, I did the strategy right. It's time to read the room. The market doesn't want it. And so this is why I get so excited when people sign up for things like launch gorgeous or they come to me for coaching because I'm like, okay, you're gonna get the strategy right. Like, you can check that box off your list. And now if the market doesn't want it, we know there's something wrong with the offer, okay? So that's the, the problem for lots of people is that they're not sure if they've used the right strategy. You're not sure if your KPIs are telling you that it or not. There's a this thing called purgatory where you use the right Strategy and your KPIs are okay, it's kind of working, but it's not working enough to sustain you financially. I'm going to get to that in a second. But for now, if we talk about the people who it's not working and they're in that sort of sunk cost fallacy mindset, it's really hard to admit the market doesn't want something and it can feel personal, which is why building up an audience and a community to attach yourself to is so much more safer than attaching yourself to a product or company. So if you grow an audience, if you grow a people group that you want to serve, then you can continue to try to find products and services that will serve that community versus getting super attached to an idea or an offer and then it not doing anything. Okay? So let's talk about Purgatory. The Purgatory drama is number seven. And this is worth its own line item, right? So this is for the people who do have coaches helping them, good coaches. You have a strategy that's tried and true and your KPIs are okay. KPIs are key performance indicators, numbers that tell you it's working kinda. And this is painful, right? The traffic isn't big enough to get the volume you need to really set that business on a solid financial foundation. And my heart goes out to people in this situation. I am coaching a few people in this situation. This is one of the toughest calls to make. And these are the offers and, and companies with owners that are tired because what do you do in this situation? And so this is kind of my advice. If the product it's is in Purgatory, meaning the offer that you're launching is in Purgatory, keep building other products. It's possible that the company will never be sustained on that one product. But other products with different hooks or positioning might take off. Don't make your Purgatory offer your sacred cow. Now, if it's your entire company that feels like it's in Purgatory, this is harder, right? And this usually indicates that your position, message, USP or tactics are not dialed in. This is some of the most nuanced and difficult stuff I coach. It requires excellence, experimentation, talented tactics, patience, money and time. Because these things, it's like, it's not that the offers are bad, but the way they're positioned or the way you're executing on your sales script or on your webinar or on your copy needs work, right? This is hard. This is very, very hard. But it is doable to shift the business into a more profitable momentum building state. Okay, number eight, check your expectations. One of the biggest killers of business are the expectations that you are carrying in your head. If you consistently set unrealistic expectations and then you don't meet them, everything will feel like it's against you. So my, my ask of you is to talk to yourself both frequently and really honestly. Where are your expectations even coming from? Like what? Like logically, factually, where are they coming from and are they serving you? Momentum in business is similar to blood. It's oxygen, right? It you need it. And so the best way to get in moment is to consistently set expectations that you can hit. That is what is going to put you in momentum. And so if your expectations are off, this is going to be tricky. All right, number nine, online Business and AI is not going anywhere and you have time to get in the game. There's a small corner right now of the Internet that where like rumors, like big names are burning it all down, leaving the space, closing up shop. You know, no one buys courses anymore. No one watches webinars. The guru is dead. Like, the rhetoric is everywhere. And it's hard because there are some big names burning it down, leaving the space, and it feels very disheartening and doomsday. Ish. But there is one thing I can tell you, and that is that real people with real solutions to real problems are, are killing it. People are buying. The Internet is the center of commerce. AI is going to continue to push us into a new way of living and buying that will be more digital than ever. So you have time. You can get in the game. Things aren't over. You didn't miss the boat, right? The number one thing that you can focus on right now is building an audience and a platform. And to do that, you need to stand for something. You need to attach yourself to people versus products. You need to learn the critical marketing skills to be able to speak from outside the house, stay connected to communities and networks. Right? Kill the sacred cows. Do not get stuck in sunk cost fallacy thinking. Find something that is bigger than money to propel you, because that is going to make everything work better. Know when it's about nuance and strategy and when it's time to squash the model and try again and expect to spend a lot of money. Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart, but you didn't want an easy path anyway. All right, you guys, I hope that was helpful. Sorry for the big hiatus. I will talk to you soon. There you have it, folks. Another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle. Harness your grit and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie and this has been Million Dollar Grit.