6 Things We’ve Learned our First Year as Business Owners

It’s Our Brand’s 1 Year Birthday!

Recently my husband and business partner Jon and I came up on our first year birthday of business! it’s been a time of celebration with a lot of reflection, and we gathered some of our biggest lessons we’ve learned this last year we wanted to share.

1.) Manage Your Expectations.

Be realistic with yourself in terms of results. whether that’s in the form of sales, leads, social media engagement, follower count, etc. your business is a baby- give it time to grow. be sure to factor the true amount of effort you’re putting in to your business, and be honest with yourself about it. if you’re wondering why you’re not seeing great engagement on your posts but you also haven’t really sat DOWN to compile a strong social media strategy based on your followers, that just may be your answer right there. in that same breath though, take into consideration things that may be out of your control like algorithm changes, etc.

2.) Be Realistic Of The Time You’ll Spend.

Especially if your business isn’t your sole job like ours where we work full time outside of this. I get asked frequently how we juggle all of it, and while I joke that we just don’t sleep much, it’s honestly not much of a joke. we spend countless early mornings and late nights outside of our day Jobs working on our business, and to be quite honest I don’t remember the last time we had a full weekend off and don’t see one coming in the future. but here’s the thing- we loooove it. there’s something about what we do now that makes me finally feel complete in my professional life so the long hours are so worth it.

3.) There’s A Fine Line Between Offering Discounts Vs. Knowing Your Worth.

THIS IS something we’re still navigating today, if you want us to be honest. for some background, this is Jon’s first business he’s ran on his own, but I work as a self employed hairstylist as my full time job on the side. In my early days as a young stylist, I saw the negatives of clients knowing you as being a frequent discounter and getting taken advantage of, so I have a stricter boundary with pricing which puts us at this crossroads. you want to build your portfolio, gain experience, and trust with your customers, but if those customers will only book the. you’re running deals, those may not be clients worth working for as your value should be seen no matter the price.

4.) Be Willing To Continuously Make Investments.

As exciting as that first paycheck is, make sure before you’re going shopping with that money that you’re investing in your business at the same time. in full transparency, just about every penny we earned this year in this business went right back to it for upgrades. between equipment, cRM systems, etc., investing back into your business primarily should be the first priority especially when starting up. the more you invest into your business, the double that will come back to you later.

5.) Take Each Stressor As A Learning Opportunity & Be Willing to Continuously Learn As You Go

one of the most humbling things you can be is a business owner, and I don’t think I have had one client or lead interaction where I couldn’t take something from. you have to be open minded, accountable, and disciplined enough to keep your head down low and see how you can make the next similar client experience even smoother, whether that’s on the client end or your end.

Now we’re not business building coaches, these are just our experiences. but we hope you’re able to either take something from today’s post or at least feel seen if maybe there’s something here you find very relatable!

Here’s some content we shot ourselves in our newly renovated home office for our one year birthday for you to check out!