Episode 12: Your First Test As An Entrepreneur

Welcome to the Create youe Laptop Life podcast, where entrepreneurs all around the world come to learn how to market and grow their online business right from their laptops, wherever they are. We don't have traditional nine to five jobs and we don't want them because financial and lifestyle security and freedom is too important to us. We know the world is changing for the better and that the freelance and entrepreneur economy is the cleaner, greener, smarter way to work for both families and businesses. My name is Julie and this podcast will teach you everything you need to know about creating and growing your laptop life. Hey, what's up, guys? This is Julie. It is actually 3 o' clock in the morning and I am recording podcasts because I can't sleep. One of the things that kept me up tonight that was making it really hard for me to go back to sleep was this idea of, you know, I have a lot of students and clients and they all come to me with this question, yes, but what about my business? And what I mean by that is, as a course creator, as a coach, I'm constantly trying to figure out where the patterns are and the themes are in online business. If you want to start a coaching business or if you want to start a course business, or an agency business or a software business, what are the themes and the patterns in that business to follow? This is important for me to know because I write books, because I build courses and I create curriculum that is aimed to help people on that journey. And yet, no matter how many times I go around this merry ground, and no matter how many times I say, this is the process or this is the way you do it, I get people that come to me and they say, yeah, but what about me in my business? And I find this so fascinating because I think intrinsically, as humans, we want to be unique, right? We want to think that our idea, our business, our life circumstance is somehow unique and that other people don't experience what we experience. In fact, I had someone the other day join my big program, the Digital Gangsta, and it's basically a comprehensive digital marketing program designed for most online business types, right? It's designed for agencies and course creators, coaches and consultants, even software businesses, blogging businesses. The only kind of business that Digital Gangster doesn't work as well for is a physical product, ecom business or a local business. So anyway, the point is, it's a big curriculum, it's pretty comprehensive, and it is going to give you digital marketing skills for all those businesses. And yet, even with learning paths and welcome modules and step by Step instructions on kind of where to go and how to. To get there. I still get the question all the time. Yes, but what about me? What about my business? I'm trying to start this type of business and then they proceed to tell me the same type of business I've been helping for the past three years. Or they say, yeah, but what about me? I'm a single mom. Or what about me? I don't have money. Or. And I guess my question, one of the things that are tumbling around in my head is in your business, in your journey to a laptop life, how many times do you think that you're unique? Do you think that the problems that you're having getting started, or the tools that you can't figure out how to use or the customers who are hating on you on your Facebook ads or whatever that happens to be? You think, yeah, but this is unique. Like, this happened to me and this doesn't happen to other people. I can assure you 10,000 million bajillion percent that it is not unique. You are not as unique as you think you are, and that it is happening over and over and over again to other people. That shouldn't be a discouragement to you. That should be an encouragement. Which means, number one, you're not alone. Number two, there are a lot of people who start their online business life. Maybe they buy a course or they sign up with a coach. And what happens? They feel overwhelmed. They feel like, well, wait, this doesn't. Like it doesn't say, Susie, step one, go over here and do this. Step two, let your cat out and then do this over here. And so people, then they panic because they're looking for that spoon fed, step by step. This is what you do. Maybe because you're scared, maybe because you're not sure, you're overwhelmed. And then you think to yourself, well, but what about me, right? And I see this happen all the time with Russell where he's like, I've given you the blueprints. Like, Russell Brunson has written dotcom secrets, he's written expert secrets, he's created courses, he's hired coaches like me and Steven Larsen and other people like this to help walk the path that so many people have walked over and over and over and over and over again, right? And so one of the things that as a coach I do in both my business and over with clickfunnels is we coach people, we help people, and it never fails. Even after the path has been laid out again and again and again, people come to us and Say, well, this isn't working for me because I have a unique situation or my funnel has to be unique because of X, Y and Z. And it's somehow our drive to be unique or to be like the exception to the rule. And I guess what I want to do is I want to flip that on its head and say, listen, I know it may feel like saying, hey, you're not the exception to the rule like everyone else. You know, 8,000 people before you have gone through this, but that I want to flip that to be an encouragement to you that if you trust in the fact that there are a lot of people who've run this path before, there's a lot of people who've signed up for courses or signed up for programs or embarked on the laptop life and then all of a sudden felt like they were drown drinking from a fire hose and completely unable to see the forest through the trees. That's normal. And I'm reminded of a story when I started with WordPress. So back in my journey, I applied for a job with WordPress, which is a company called Automattic. And they give their new hires a six week trial. And at the time I was just applying for a customer support role. I wasn't applying for anything exciting. And I remember them telling me that they were going to throw me into basically into their entire system with very, very little in the way of instruction. And that that was kind of the point and that the, the idea was that they would figure out who was best for the job based on how they fared in the ocean of automatic. And I remember the first day that like I got my account and the first day I got access to the software and it was just like, holy crap. There was like this whole underworld of things happening. I remember entering and being like, oh my gosh, look at this, like, look at this Slack channel. Look at this, this and look at this whole forum. And there was just like this massive society of WordPress team members that was living right underneath my nose. And I didn't know it and I felt like I was drowning. I felt like I was drinking from a fire hose. I didn't know which way was up, which way was down. I didn't know who to ask. And I remember them saying to me, like, that's the point. Like that's the whole point, because you're never going to be ready this job if you can't navigate this landscape. And so I want to say to you, if you're starting an online business and you're feeling that Overwhelm that fire hose. Your instinct is to be like, well, this isn't for me. Like, this isn't unique to me or my business is different or my situation is different. The actual thought that I think you should switch it to is actually, no, this is normal. This is my first test. This is my first test to see if I can survive this feeling of overwhelm, this feeling of the fire hose, this feeling of, I'm not sure what to do next, but you know what, damn it, I gotta just take a step in a direction. I gotta try, I gotta fail. Because that very, very first feeling, when you create that laptop life for the first time and you're just freaking out, that's actually a part of this journey. Like, everybody goes through that. You're not unique. You're not alone. It's not a problem with your mentor or your course. You know, we want to look for something to blame, like, oh, well, if I just had a different way of looking at it, it easier, better, I would figure it out. No, actually, this is normal. This is how it feels. This is what you're supposed to feel in this stage. This is actually your first test. How are you going to fare? Overwhelm. How are you going to fare the fire hose feeling? And so my encouragement to you is if you're starting your laptop life and that's how you feel. If you feel like the person who joined the digital gangsta and said, oh, my gosh, but what about my business? Like, I'm totally overwhelmed. This doesn't seem like I don't know how to figure it out. The reality is that it is exactly for you. That feeling is normal. And it's your first test. So I hope that that helps and I appreciate you all and I'll talk to you again soon. If you're ready to create, grow, scale your online business, you can go to createyourlaptoplife.com podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today. Sam.