How to get unstuck
when building your business
People often get stuck. Stuck in life, stuck in their business. People who found their passion and want to make a living out of it often get stuck at some point.
The thing is, you need to learn by doing in order to know what to change, what skills you need to learn, what knowledge you need to gain. And even when you have:
all these skills
all the knowledge
you know what you’re good at
what gives you energy and
what your goal is
you might just still get stuck.
Let’s be clear. It’s hard. You need to get one giant block rolling even when it’s not round. It takes a tremendous effort to keep that block rolling and once it is picking up speed, the block starts to reshape and starts rolling by itself. But even then you need to keep nudging it once in a while because exterior factors will make sure the ball’s speed will decrease over time.
Many people will tell you that you need to know your full Business Model Canvas and your Value Proposition Canvas before you start building your business. These models make you think about who your ideal customer is, what the pains and gains of this customer is and so much more. And this is the exact phase I have been stuck on.
Don’t get me wrong. These models are crucial, they’re needed. But don’t feel pressured to have all the answers before you start your business. You need to collect enough data to know who your ideal customer is, what their pains and gains are.
You need data. In order to need data you need to test. In order to test you need to start doing. You need to get that block rolling and by testing, iterating/ adjusting you will see that your block will reshape and will change into a ball.
So how do you start?
Start small with little investment: you don’t need a website in the beginning, start with what you have and scale up along the way
Talk to people: people love to give advice and when you start talking you might see what they struggle with and what they find important
Start with your own network: ask friends and family if you could test something on them and get feedback from them
Write offers for free or with discounts and see what catches people’s attention. Along the way you might find out that your offer is not interesting enough (because you don’t know the pains), or that you’re too expensive (or too cheap),.. or many other things
I started talking to my network. I started asking what things they were struggling with in their professional life in order to start the conversation. I emailed some people to ask if I could come do a workshop.
The important thing is to start before you are ready. Get out of your comfort zone. That’s when you start to grow, learn, reshape that block.
Get out of your head and start doing. It doesn’t matter that you still need to learn so much, or that you don’t have enough experiences yet. You just need to be one chapter ahead of people you are helping out.
In my newsletters I will talk about:
How facilitating can improve your workplace
Improve team productivity
Improve happiness at work
Sustainable workplaces
Innovation and Design Thinking
Fixing team collaborations