Hey friends,
thank you so much for connecting with me in these strange times, it feels nice to receive your questions and record episodes in response. Not a substitute for human contact, but a comfort nonetheless!
A question I received three whole times this week is where to begin when you are starting out, so I wanted to share some tips. I also want to say that I don’t think you are required to “use” this downtime to optimise your self/life/work in any way. I spent a lot of time napping, eating and having little cries and then sometimes I have moments where forward movement and action feels better. It’s all good!
Anyway, tune in if you’d like to:
- Explore ways of mapping out your needs, talents and passions
- Really think about what you need from your work at this time
- Come up with your first products or services
Sending love,
Yarrow
P.S: Embodied Business Community opens 24 spots on Tuesday, you can learn more and get on the waitlist here: httpss://pinkwellstudio.com/diy-business-school/
Listen to the Embodied Business Podcast
on Apple Podcast // Stitcher // Spotify
⋒ Hi, my name is Yarrow and I am your host.
My Embodied Business podcast explores what it means to build a livelihood with integrity, joy and anti capitalist values. I offer practical guidance on tech, strategy, ethical marketing, creativity and money and interview other small business owners who do things their own way.
You can learn more about my work, listen to other episodes or join my community at PinkWellStudio.com
You can also sign up for my newsletter - I share free workshop invitations, resources, ideas & new episodes about once per month! ⋒
Transcript
Hello, everyone, my name is Yarrow and you’re listening to the DIY small business podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and connecting with me in the strange times through my podcast, I feel really glad to be able to at least, yeah, reach out to recording episodes and having conversations. That’s really nourishing. So thank you so much for making time for this. I wanted to answer a question that I’m getting a lot. And it’s interesting this week in particular, I heard this three times. I guess that’s because many more people at the moment I thinking about the future of their work, and how it can be more sustainable. How they can create situations that are crisis proof. I mean, I don’t really think that there’s a way to prove any kind of work situation for all kinds of crises. But I do really think that we need to obviously think about how we can feel safer in the way that we work and make an income. And before I start a rule to say that I don’t think this is about making sure that you’re optimising this downtime in the best possible way, I think this is a situation that we’ve never been in before. And whatever you need to do, to feel okay or to feel better is totally fine and valid. So I think some of us are just flopping around resting lots thinking, crying, connecting with others, I definitely have whole days of doing just dad. And then I also sometimes have moments of like, me wanting to do something and feel like I am actively thinking about my next steps and engaging in some meaningful way. And those are the kinds of moments where I’m recording these kinds of episodes. So, you know, just wanted to say something about my intention with this. I also want to say briefly that they embody that medic, sorry, Valley business community is opening, as planned on Tuesday for 24 new people. At the union programme, there’s monthly group coaching, and live workshops, as well as the big 10 module courses that you can take it on time. We also have quarterly business planning workshops. And to reflect that we’re all or many of us are self isolating, I’m also adding co working times where we just hang out and zoom and work together and feel a bit more connected that way. There’s also a community on mighty networks. And we talk a lot about how to build an anti capitalist feminist business, and what things like pricing and web design and newsletters and social media can look like in restraints time. So if you’re interested in that, sign up for the waitlist, and they’ll send the invitation out on Tuesday, it’s going to be $300 for the year, or three payments of $100. Okay, so now we want to finally answer the question Where to begin when you’re just starting out? So obviously, this is a really big question. And it’s going to look different for different people. So I really don’t want to be too prescriptive, but I want to offer some questions as invitations to explore. And I have found that with working with clients in business mentoring situations that this has been really helpful to kind of at least my mother, the first step, and then we adjust and revisit these questions maybe quarterly, or yearly as as feels right for you. And the first thing really, that I asked people to do is to explore your basic needs and how they can be met. Because I’m seeing myself and those around me time and time again, that if we are anxious about our basic survival, it is incredibly hard to be creative and learn at the same time. So I’m really interested in and shaming, really, and shaming our core needs. And acknowledging that As humans, we need to feel like we have secure housing, that we’re well fed, that we have access to community, health care, all those kinds of things. And so I think collectively, those needs aren’t always celebrated. And it’s important that we clear get clear on what those are. Before we think about what we actually want to offer. So I’m asking you to make a list of kind of the basic needs that you need, in order to feel like you can sustainably run your business. And that could be I need to be able to pay X amount of rent on my mortgage, I need X amount of income to you know, cover all my basic needs. Maybe it also means things like I need to be able to work from home or I need to be able to take a lot of time off and flexible ways when I need to. Or maybe you’re someone who’s really nourished by being improves and that needs to be part of your day to day life because it feels good to you. So it really doesn’t have to be just about money. I think it’s good to look at the whole bigger picture and see what your core needs are before you’re thinking about what actually you want to offer.
And then the next step, of course, is to explore what feels fulfilling to you and what themes you’re particularly excited about, and also what talents you have. And I think the beautiful thing in the communities that I’m part of is that many people have lots of different passions and talents. And often the problem is more to do with where do I begin then with Oh, my God, I have no idea what what I should do. So if you have different passions, like I do, I love web design of mentoring, I love tech support. I also love ritual and breathwork, and self massage and bodywork and embodiment, then make a map and either make it a list or like a beautiful a visual Mind Map depending on what feels easier to you. And just map it out, you know, just write it all down, because I think it can feel really fuzzy sometimes in our brains to hold all these different directions and ideas. And if you put it in the paper, you kind of externalise a little bit. And maybe you can even ask a friend to walk you through what they’re seeing there. Or you can share with them in some way to really kind of, like get clarity about what the options are when it comes to your passion. So the first step was identifying your core needs and how you’re thinking about what you’re really passionate about. The next thing that I’m inviting you to consider is that it’s totally fair and okay to do the easiest things when you’re starting out because on your list or your map, might be stuff that’s currently not totally practical, because maybe you need more training. Or maybe you just don’t feel confident about that yet. I’m always, you know, advocating for building confidence, of course, and I pretty sure that you are totally amazing at what you want to do already. But if the reality is that you don’t feel really confident yet it will be hard to market what you want to do. So I think in that case, it’s totally fine to start small and slowly but gradually kind of expand your zone of your comfort zone basically, or your window of tolerance when it comes to speaking up and really using your voice and being seen in that way. So yeah, again, I think it’s totally fair to do whatever comes easiest to you in the beginning. So as you’re sitting with your core needs, and and you’re looking at your passions, ask yourself, where is the overlap between these two things, that would be easiest to put into practice right now. So to give you an example, maybe you’re someone who has a lot of tech knowledge, you like design, like I do. And you also have massage, or bodywork trainings like I also do. In beginning of my business, I knew these things were both equally exciting to me. But I also knew that some of my core needs were to make a basic income and to be able to work from home. So decided not to build a local bodywork practice, because that was meeting my core needs in the in the easiest, most available way, if that makes sense. And it doesn’t mean that I have let go body work forever through my other business digital roles. I might teach self massage. And I actually have found really beautiful ways to share this work without needing to leave my house, which I’m super grateful for. But you see what I’ve done here, if you have made this list of the things that I can do, that I’m good at, and I’m passionate about. And then I also looked at my basic needs. And I decided, Okay, this is the easiest way for me to meet those right now. And that’s about it. I give myself permission to look at it that way. The next question is how do you want to be of service? And who do you want to serve? Because once your basic needs are met, we can excitingly look at creative fulfilment and a sense of purpose. And so there are probably particular things that you really want to support people around. And there’s probably also communities or groups of people that you feel particularly passionate about and working with. So I think that’s a great next step and looking at, okay, you’ve identified what area of work you want to focus on, who is this going to be for? And how are you going to serve those people? And when you’re asking how I would invite you to get really specific in for example, saying I would like to offer a one on one sessions, or may or maybe I mainly want to add you ADK groups, or mainly I want to create courses, or I want to actually make products with my hands. So really get specific on what that being of service could look like for you. And if that feels overwhelming, just make a list and don’t decide just yet you know, you can just make all these lists and sleep on them for however long you need and then discuss with friends, meditate on them, dress and tarot cards room feels helpful for you. But for now just write the options down. I
think that that’s really helpful. And then another question I would ask you is not that you have some ideas about what your products or services could look like. You can ask yourself what you want. You’re at the structure of your days and weeks. To look like, and again, I’m gonna use myself as an example. So I knew in the beginning of my business I wanted to offer web design and tech support. And further down the line, I also wanted to offer business mentoring. And I knew that I wanted to work with people from all over the world. And I also had strong feelings about wanting to have really slow mornings, needing to have lots of time with my dog and needing to be able to take some time off spontaneously if I needed to. So as I was kind of narrowing down the details of what I was offering, I was really keeping that in mind. And I was trying to create a situation that’s sustainable for me, if I had set myself up, for example, to work, work primarily with people that are based in Australia, that would mean I would have to wake up at seven every day. And that’s just not working for me. I do have clients in Australia, and they’re awesome, I love working with them. But I couldn’t have all my clients over there, because I need most of my mornings to start pretty slow. And that’s important to me. But maybe you’re someone, like I said, who really wants to work from home, or maybe you are someone who really wants to be part of your group, ideally, every day of the week. I mean, particular I know that is complicated over all that, but you know, generally speaking, or maybe you’re someone who may be really cannot be committed to being live or being present at any certain point in the week. And that’s totally valid too. And so for example, right, I had times like that I was mainly during translation and editing work, because in that case, at the beginning of the month, I would be given a big chunk of work as a freelancer. And then I would throughout the month, kind of work maybe 80 hours or 20 hours on average. But I could really kind of do one week of no hours, and then another week of 40 hours. And I was incredibly flexible. And that worked for me because I needed that flexibility. And I was willing to make other compromises for that, for example, that really wasn’t, well paid work, but because the flexibility of the time was so important to me that I was still okay. So yeah, ask yourself, what you want your days and weeks to look like. And then finally, if you have now after all these questions come to a place where you are a little bit more clear about the things that most excites you within the range of things that you’re passionate about what you want to do, who you want to serve, what you need, on a basic level, the next thing that you can ask yourself, if you still have more than one thing, or you’re still unsure, is what would your younger self one, alone allow you to consider this because I really think there’s such grounding in creating something or serving someone who is basically your younger self. So the business mentoring, for example, is definitely something that I would have wanted at the beginning of my business, but couldn’t afford or didn’t see available in the form that I’m offering it from with the embodied, embodied business community, this is something I’ve really was craving really wanted to be around other people who are like minded, similar questions. And I was seeing these big expensive business programmes, I did one of them. But it wasn’t making me feel less alone in the process. And it didn’t inspire me or make me feel heard in the way that I was hoping for. So that’s why I created these things. And I think this is a great starting point. Because in your marketing, it will give you so much more confidence to it. Like I said, take up a little bit of space and share what you’re offering. Because you know, you needed it, you know, because I’m speaking with confidence about the embedded business community design. I know, I would have said yes to it. And so trust that there’s other people out there who might say yes to it. And I don’t have any hesitation and extending the invitation, if that makes sense. So that’s the final question. I think that’s really good to consider. I hope this has given you a little bit more clarity and maybe a little bit of distraction in these wild times as well. I hope you will make some space to sit down with your journal and go through these questions. If you have more questions afterwards, as always, let me know. And please consider joining us in the embodied bed medic community and by the
business can be I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. Oh my goodness, I keep getting it wrong. But anyway, it would be great to have you there. Thank you so much for listening.
