My Top Three Lessons as a First-Year Business Owner
Yours truly on a Zoom call with a client.
Happy Holidays!
I’m writing this on the Saturday before Christmas 2023. I hope your year has been fun and productive. It’s been a whirlwind for me, both personally and professionally.
As we inch closer to the new year, I’m taking stock of what’s been most impactful for my business in the seven months that Harbeke Marketing has been operating. (I launched my website in late May, and formed my LLC in August.)
For other new business owners — as well as those considering abandoning their W2 employment for entrepreneurship — here are three things I would tell my younger self about what to expect in the first year of solopreneurship:
1. Set your expectation bar as low as possible for network reaction to your new business. (No, lower. Keep going….)
Admittedly, on LinkedIn and elsewhere, I hadn’t done the best job of keeping my core network “warm” when it came time to announce my new business. But even given that, I was discouraged for a while after I took the time to message my closest contacts with the news, and mostly received silence back (roughly one out of eight contacts replied to me).
On LinkedIn, I recorded voice memos for over half of my close contacts — people I’ve worked with, and others I’ve networked with in person at least once. As with my text direct messages, these voice memos started off with, “Hi [name]. I hope you’re doing well. I noticed [reference to something recent they did that was cool or eventful work-wise].” Then I gave them my news and ended my update with, “I’d love to set up a time to chat and hear more about what’s new with you.”
I don’t know if the overwhelming non-response to my update was due to many cases of people seeing/hearing my update and making a mental note to reply, but failing to mark my message as unread and then forgetting about it. It could also be that some contacts who’ve had a gap between when they worked with me on a regular basis and when I reached back out have mentally moved me into a different tier where I somehow don’t merit a reply. Personally, I don’t let an interaction time gap change my level of etiquette with someone — but I also understand that not everyone thinks this way.
Regardless of the factors going on with my closest contacts, their overall non-reaction really stung initially. But I’m in a much better place now. It helps to know that few among this group are my target audience. It’s also nice to have a “digital graveyard record,” for lack of a better term, to refer back to — eg, a LinkedIn message thread with no reply to my update and just a “seen” icon — if a contact who didn’t care enough about me to reply later comes to me with a request.
2. When it comes to customer messaging and offers, simple is always best.
Related lessons here include: (a) People will always understand less about what you do and offer than you do, and (b) your audience has less time available — and less time to read your latest update/offer — than you expect. While I cringe at the earliest version of what’s now my flagship service landing page, the vast differences between the copy of the first-iteration page and the current page show my growth as a seller. And I’m proud of that growth!
This lesson was reinforced by a “new contact connect” call I had this week. When the woman I met with asked how I help businesses, I jumped to the technical aspects of my Google Analytics 4 conversion event customization service. Her follow-up question about how my answer pertains to businesses’ pain points steered me in a better direction in terms of how I should have answered her first question; I then emphasized that I reduce the amount of time that business owners and marketing leads need to spend in Google Analytics, while enabling them to better understand their revenue per conversion and where their marketing spend is working or not.
The core takeaway from my experience here is that, for everything from your elevator pitch to all of your product/service landing pages, you should put your target audience’s pain point(s) front and center, articulate your solution(s) in plain language, and strive to make your copy as short as possible in the interest of your audience’s valuable time.
3. Nothing beats networking events ➡️ one-on-one calls as your first marketing channel and funnel.
I can confidently say as we close out 2023 — when email spam filters, social media algorithms, and other digital hurdles to your message landing are as ubiquitous and sophisticated as they’ve ever been — that networking events are the best way for new business owners to drive a pipeline of qualified leads.
Because of my extensive experience in digital marketing prior to founding Harbeke Marketing (16 years of in-house roles, with moonlighting freelance work for clients over much of that time), I let the hubris of “I know what to do for email marketing, social media, paid ads, etc.” keep me from launching a dedicated push into business networking events until last month, in favor of the other channels mentioned.
I would definitely tell my mid-2023 self to get going on business networking asap. My friend and fellow marketing consultant Julie Nichols invited me to her networking group’s November virtual leadership lunch. After using the chat session from that event to connect with attendees on LinkedIn, my LinkedIn follower count increased by 15 and I generated four one-on-one calls. Those are big gains compared to my other marketing channels!
If you have a product/service that sells itself based on perceived value, and if you’re at least above average “in the room” as a salesperson, business networking events will help to establish yourself as an expert and increase your followers and referrals. This channel is a tremendous ROI given that most virtual networking events are free or very low cost.
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