I have been playing around with the idea of starting a side business for years. I actually did have my own side business a few years ago. One that allowed me to not have to have a ‘real’ 9-5 job, work from home, and have a flexible schedule. I used to be a digital public relations creator and did online marketing for book publishing houses and authors. I worked with small and big authors and publishers (Harper Collins, Harlequin Teen, Simon & Schuster, etc) and while I liked it and gave me a really good income, it didn't allow me to explore my creative side and after much deliberation, I passed the business down to my assistant at the time.
I still wanted to start my own business, this time, something that I can use as a creative outlet as well. If you haven't read my bio yet, I have as Associate’s Degree in Fashion Design & Merchandising and I worked as a Technical Designer for a women's fashion catalog for several years. I knew I wanted a business that involved clothing and designing stuff but… *whispers* I hate sewing. I’ve always love the designing part of the job. Last year, after finally feeling comfortable enough with my crafting skills, and after much encouragement of my friends and family, I really started researching the process of starting a business.
I could have just started posting the stuff I was selling on Etsy/Facebook/Instagram/etc, but I wanted to take my time and research as much as I could. While my last job was financially successful, I hate to admit that I did a lot of things wrong. That job kind of fell on my lap by accident. I was a book blogger and I reviewed books, after a few years of doing this, I developed business relationships with authors and publishers. One author I was friends with had a book promotion business and asked if I could help her out since she had a writing deadline to meet. I had no idea what I was doing but I ended up organizing an online book promotion for a book release. Organized to have fellow book bloggers read and review the book, cross post reviews and promote on social media. One thing led to another and I was eventually asked if I wanted to take over the website. I grew the email list from about 150 bloggers to over 2000+ subscribers and got to work with some amazing authors, publishing houses and bloggers.
But, since I was never expecting this to be an actual full time job, I never took the time to properly set up a payment system. I was getting paid through PayPal to my moms bank account and then sending the money to my bank account (Ive always had issues with Paypal releasing funds to my account on time). I never really invested the time to set up social media accounts, other than auto posting my posts to a Facebook and Twitter page. Since I took over the website, I never bothered to transfer the website to a legitimate self hosted website (I was on blogspot *shudders*). There are so many other examples of how I failed to properly set up everything for this business that I had no intension of starting. What started off as a favor to a friend, ended up being a successful and very busy business but I always felt like I was three steps behind since I never had time to set up all these things because I had so much work coming in.
I knew I didn't want the same thing to happen this time. I wanted to take my time, do my research and set up everything right this time around. At times, it was so frustrating because I just wanted to start creating products and promoting them, but I knew I had to just trust the process. I took a lot of time doing research on what were the best (for me) platforms to use. My original goal was to open my shop in January, which got pushed back to March, then April…then May and so it went on and on. In the meantime, I was constantly setting up all the not so fun background stuff (my website, my Etsy, my social media accounts, a separate bank account, financial tracking spreadsheets, etc.) and constantly learning and improving my skills.
I’m a big believer in always learning, always growing, and bettering your mind. I’ve been listening to podcasts (which have been extremely helpful), watching tutorials, joining business Facebook groups and networking. I believe all this is just as important when it comes to starting as business as creating product. And even now that I have officially launched my business, I’m still working on learning as much as I can and trying to improve myself. I’m proud of myself for finally launching, but also proud of myself for taking that extra time to do things right that I missed the last time around.
PS - I’m not saying this is the only way to start a business or the right way, but it was the right way for me. If you are thinking about starting a business, do yourself a favor and take the time to set everything up, do some research and keep learning. How did you get your business started? Did you just start and do everything else as you went along, or did you plan first?