4 steps to grow a profitable and fulfilling business

Transitioning from corporate to self-employment takes courage, you go from a comfortable well-paid job to navigating the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. But once you decide to take the leap it feels like a new adventure is starting, it is scary but thrilling at the same time. 

You’re finally in charge of your destiny and determined to make things happen. As often that’s what we want: be our own boss, follow a deep purpose and get more freedom in our lives. But developing your own business is not a linear affair, it also takes a lot of trial and errors to get there in a way which works for you.

When things take time to come to fruition, it’s then easy to take any jobs coming our way for the money and end up being back “in a job” that we don’t enjoy. Or worry so much about where the next clients will come that we forget to enjoy those little moments with the family. Until you start making regular money from your business, it is hard to enjoy that freedom that is supposed to come with having your own business.

I don’t have a formula to make 6 figures in 6 weeks. I believe in building the right foundations, so your business brings you financial security but also joy, flexibility and fulfilment in the long run. 

In this post I share my 4-steps approach to build a successful business: 

·      It starts with you: use your vision and values to build your brand which becomes your compass in business

·      Develop a deep understanding of the people you want to serve 

·   Connect your brand to your audience through powerful marketing

·      Prioritise building a strong mindset throughout - this can really be the make or break of your success

1.     It starts with you - Use your your values and purpose to build your brand

Before you even start thinking about your services and who you want to work with, your business starts with YOU: what you really want, what brings you joy, what’s important to you, what you stand for.

Define your vision: that is critical not only when you start out but also as you grow your business. Spending time defining and reviewing your vision has many benefits: it will give you a sense of direction, it will excite you and give you a boost in those moments when things get tough and also it will give you more chance to get there.

Your vision doesn’t have to be all clear straight away though, it’s a bit like looking up at the top of the mountain, it looks beautiful up there although blurry, and that’s ok.

Some look up and freeze with fear thinking they have to go up straight, but the idea is not to take the steep path ahead with no harness; just find that path which goes around the mountain and concentrate to get to the next turn, from there you will see the next turn and step by step will find your way up, and as you walk up your vision will become clearer and clearer.

Clarify your values: that is the one piece of advice I give to anyone who is starting out or stuck with how to take their business forward: work on your values and be clear on what is really important to you.

Start with identifying your personal values then translate them into your business values and define how you want to use them to drive your business forward.

This may sound like a fluffy exercise to some, but it is actually a really strategic exercise. Big corporate companies do a lot of work on values, and what they mean for their employees, their customers and their brand.

For us business founders we have an amazing opportunity to use our values to create a business which is truly aligned with what is important to us, which gives us more chances to create a business we love and less risk to burnout.

Define your brand: once you get clear on your vision, your purpose and your values, you’ve already started defining the essence of your brand, you’ve started setting up your compass for your business. It’s then easy to leave it at that but there are benefits to take it to the next level and spend time thinking about how you translate your values into everything you do in your business: your offers and packages, your services, your relationships, your messages, your tone of voice and your image.

Branding is often associated with visuals and the mistake many do is to run straight away into getting a fancy logo and website before they even spend time defining what their brand stands for; I would argue that a logo with no foundations is like a fancy car with no engine: it may look good but it won’t take you anywhere.

It saves time, money and headaches to first take the time to define clearly what your brand is about.  

2.     Connect with your clients at a deep level

Once you’ve done the work about you and your brand, the next big piece is to get clear about who you want to serve.

Maybe you feel that there is an obsession with niching out there, and it can be off putting because niching means choosing and there is often a fear of missing out which comes with it.

But niching is a marketing tactic, by being specific about who to work with it’s easier to understand what specific problems they have, and then comes the magic bullet: if you can go under the skin of those problems and understand what the real issue is (which is not necessarily what they say is the issue) how it impacts them at their identity level and how it makes them feel.  

How to do that you may ask?

Well, you can spend hours thinking about it and assuming what’s giving them a headache right now. But in the end there is nothing better than spending time talking to your ideal clients and having or following conversations. Here are a few suggestions:

·      Make a list of contacts who have the profile of your ideal clients and ask for a phone conversation – you can always offer a free session of your service is that is appropriate

·      If you don’t have any direct contacts, ask around you or post on social media

·      Register to FB group who are targeting your ideal clients and monitor the conversations there

Having those conversations allow you to scratch the surface of what they say is their problem (for eg “I don’t have enough clients”) to dig a bit deeper into what the real issue may be (for eg “who am I to think they’ll be interested in what I offer?”) and understand what is really going on in their head and in their life.

That’s why niching is powerful: it allows you to be specific about their problem and then dig deeper into what that problem really means to them. You can’t do that if you have a too wide audience or too many problems to solve. And when you understand your audience at a deeper level, you are in a really good place.

Now you have a strong brand and deep understanding of the people you want to serve – don’t stay a best kept secret: engage with them in a meaningful way

3.     Connect your brand to your audience through powerful marketing

Now that you’re clear on your brand and your audience, you’re in a good position to create strong offers which have a clear positioning as a direct response to your ideal clients’ problem. Always keep your audience in mind when you create your offer as it’s easy to divert when we move into implementation and shape our offers based on what we think. 

A  good way to make sure it’s relevant is once again to talk some of your ideal clients through it and get their feedback. 

Then you need to find those clients who need your solution, and here again it is so easy to run in too many directions as there are many ways to look for clients: word of mouth / networking / partnerships / social media / newlsetters / SEO – you name it.

Usually these approaches play the long game and so take time, they don’t bring results straight away, so it is easy to end up having a scattered approach and try to do too many things, or swap approach too quickly if results are too slow to come.

Therefore it is key is to choose where to focus your efforts as whatever you decide doing, consistency is key: whether you decide to network or show up on instagram, you need to show your face consistently. And consistently doesn’t mean every day, it means at a pace that you can sustain in the long run so even when you get really busy with client work, your visibility doesn’t suffer.

Once you know where to focus your efforts to connect with potential clients, you can then think about how to bring your brand to life to reach them.

Whether you decide to build a presence on social media or build a contact list, you then need to create engaging communications, and that can be challenging above all if marketing is not part of your skillset.

Being clear on your brand makes it so much easier to communicate your messages though; it also helps to differentiate yourself from anyone selling similar services.

So when you work on your communication plan, not only you need to make it clear that you understand your prospects’ problem and how you can help them but you also need to create preference, and that is where your brand comes to play: it allows you to create an emotional connection with your audience.

It may not always feel that way but all our purchase decisions are emotional, and we tend to buy from people and organisations who share similar values.

So share your values! Use story-telling to talk about them, explain what’s important to you and why, talk about what you stand for and what that means for what you do, share anecdotes that you can link to your purpose and values.

People will relate, and if you’re also clear on how you can help them they will want to work with you.

The big benefit for you as well is that it makes your marketing easier – which I often hear is a part which can feel hard.. having that brand clarity serves as compass to know what to talk about and how.

4.     Maintaining a strong mindset and building resilience

Having a plan which gives you focus is key in business, however it’s worth nothing if your mindset is not supporting you.

The mind is never a final product, it is complex and evolves constantly, it can be a driving force but it can also be your worst enemy.

And when you build your own business you need it to support you all the way, but that requires care and attention.

By nature what is happening in our head is messy: we have all those thoughts being tangled and it can be hard sometimes to see the wood from the tree.

Can I really do this? Who would be interested anyway? Who am I to think that I can charge that fee? What will they think of me?

Those thoughts pop up in every minds and believe it or not they’re here to keep us safe somehow and stay in our comfort zone. It is human to experience them, but what we need to remember is that they are thoughts, not reality.

If we let those thoughts take over, it will fail all our plans and dreams.

Entrepreneurship is a thrilling adventure but it also has holes and bumps on the way which can seriously affect the way you think, so taking the conscious decision to always care for your mindset is one of the best thing you can do for your business and your well-being.

Building a strong network of peers and business friends is one way to make sure you don’t stay in your own head, we may have left our job to be our own boss it doesn’t mean that we have to do it all alone: we need a team of like-minded people who understand what we’re going through, cheer us along the way but also pick us up in hard times, so we don’t allow the negative thoughts to impact us and our actions.

But when comes the right time, the support of a qualified coach or mentor can make a big difference in taking you further, we often think we can do it on our own, but the truth is, that is very hard, and if you ask around you the most successful entrepreneurs didn’t do it alone, with no support.

I personally experienced it, as I am good at helping others work on their marketing strategy and mindset, I was convinced I could do it myself for my business.

What a faff. I eventually realised that what I was doing for my clients is to get them out of their own head, and I can’t do that with myself. Investing in a mentor definitely helps me to go further faster than I would have done alone – and that’s the whole point.

Entrepreneurship is a journey, there is no better school for personal development than building your own business. It does provide you with a unique opportunity to bring your purpose to life and use your values to create something unique and meaningful: that is to me the foundations to build a fulfilling business.

Getting clear on the essence of your brand also give you a compass to drive your business forward, it gives you a sense of direction and the added (significant) bonus is that it makes your marketing much easier.

When it comes to understand your ideal clients, the real magic happens if you manage to get under the skin of what they say their problem is, understand what the real issue is and how it’s impacting how they feel and live their life; that’s why niching is important so you can concentrate on one specific problem and dig deep.

Once you’re clear on your brand and on your ideal clients’ world, then you’re ready to fire up with some powerful marketing – which is in essence the connection between your brand and your audience. That clarity allows you to craft messages which resonate with them, make them feel understood, see you as the one with the right solution, show some humanity and get them to like you - and that combination makes them want to work with you. That approach not only allows you to grow your business, it also allows you to attract people you really enjoy working with.

Finally, throughout your entrepreneurship journey, your mindset is your biggest asset so nurture it: a strong strategy is powerless if you don’t believe in yourself. Neuroscience studies are bringing the evidence: the way you think impacts the way we feel which then impacts how we act. 

The power of the mind is mind blowing (no pun attended), it can really be your super power so combine it with a strong strategy and you’re set to build that profitable and fulfilling business and shoot for the stars.

I hope this blog gives you ideas and inspiration about how to move your business forward.

Even if the theory makes sense, it can be hard to implement it on your own. Combining marketing strategy and mindset work is my speciality, so if you’d like to know how I can help you to grow a rewarding business, get in touch at delph.koall@gmail.com

I offer personalised workshops to deep dive into specific topics (for eg Build your personal brand to grow your business / Understand your audience at a deep level / Create a content plan which converts) as well as 4 to 6 months coaching packages to help you go further faster