You probably already know this…
Building a business from scratch will not be easy.
But you CAN make it simpler for yourself — even if you’re starting from nothing like I did.
It pains me to my core to see so many would-be-amazing businesses fall flat… from believing lies.
But the truly crazy part is this…
The biggest myths we’re told (and believe) aren’t what kill us. ☠️
It’s the truths we ignore.
It’s why 20% of small businesses go under in the first year.
I don’t want that for any passion-fueled entrepreneur, including you.
But I keep seeing it happen.
Over and over again.
And I knew I had to publish this blog.
To dispel those myths.
To shine a light on the truths.
And to make sure every single person who dreams of building the business of their dreams understands that you can.
You just need to know the truth about how to do it.
So join me in busting these myths, ignoring the lies, and shedding light on the truth of how to get to a sustainable business that draws in six and seven figures… step by step.
What’s Inside the Myths (and Truths) Around Building a Biz from Scratch: Table of Contents
Lethal Business Myths That Will Suffocate Your Success
Building a Business From Scratch (Without Losing Everything)
- Step 1: Narrow Your Business Niche
- Step 2: Pinpoint Your Ideal Customer
- Step 3: Do Your Market Research
- Step 4: Launch Your Site + Get Crystal-Clear on Branding
- Step 5: Start Your Content Marketing Early
- Step 6: Delegate Tasks
- Step 7: Build a (Non-Slimy) Lead Generation Funnel
- Step 8: Focus on the Long-Term
Get Help Building & Scaling Your Business From the Ground Up
Lethal Business Myths That Will Suffocate Your Success
Everyone wants to know the right vs. wrong way to build an online business.
I can tell you believing the following will stop your success dead in its tracks:
These are some all-too-common myths entrepreneurs fall prey to over and over again. Knowing what they are is the first step to avoiding them.
- Focusing solely on social media: Relying too much on social media is a business death trap. I know several entrepreneurs who had invested their time and energy into growing their social following, just to lose them overnight through a disabled account. (One had 50k followers!)
- Not building trust & authority with consistent content: Avoid the pitfalls of thinking you only need to publish content once or twice instead of regularly. Just throwing up a blog when you have time and showing up inconsistently for your audience is a huge reason for business failure. Not only will Google fail to see your site as an authority that ranks, your leads and customers will too. 🤷
- Never delegating: To truly scale a business from zero to six and seven figures, you can’t do it alone. You’ll combust doing it yourself. Step into a leadership mindset and realize humans aren’t meant to fill 15 job roles at once.
The good news about these poisonous fallacies?
Once you realize they’re all flat-out LIES, you can focus on the truths — and build your business from scratch with laser focus.
Building a Business From Scratch (Without Losing Everything)
When you’re starting a business from scratch, there ARE advantages, even though the path can feel daunting. You just need to pay attention, stay focused, and blast past those myths.
This is a list of things needed to start a business, organized into helpful, practical steps.
Step 1: Narrow Your Business Niche
Don’t stress if you’re still whispering to yourself, “I want to start a business but have no ideas.”
I’m here to help.
What is the easiest business to start from scratch?
One that you love doing.
You know, that thing that lights you up inside. Yes, that should be your business.
As intangible as starting a business based on your passion feels, it’s actually the key to seeing it through in the long term (and not ending up in the group of 50% of businesses that fail by year five).
The opportunity to do this while launching a business from scratch is a gift that some entrepreneurs don’t get because they forgot to consider this in the first place.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What do you love doing?
- What are you good at doing?
- What could you do every single day for the rest of your life and feel good about?
- How can you combine the above into a service or product?
- Is there any ideal niche you would love to work within? (Any industries you daydream about being a part of?)
Then, keep going by asking yourself, and the internet, what businesses are in-demand. This is how you’ll validate your idea to make sure it’s actually needed.
Don’t make the fatal mistake of going into a business from scratch that offers something no one wants.
Need help developing a proven business offer that doesn’t flop? You can access everything I’ve learned in launching seven brands that have generated millions, along with live coaching feedback, 30+ plug-n-play business templates, and more. Apply for a spot in the Content Transformation System today.
Step 2: Pinpoint Your Ideal Customer
Now that you’ve got a killer niche for your business, you need to establish who you’ll be selling to and what they need.
But before you can ask them, you need to know who they are. 🧑🤝🧑
This is of uber-importance for many other reasons, including establishing your brand voice and tone, your all-important market research (covered in the next step), and starting a long-term brand that lasts.
Step 3: Do Your Market Research
Every creative entrepreneur needs to do market research before launching.
This is a huge benefit to starting a business from scratch.
Even if you’re a budding entrepreneur with no connections or established brand yet — this is still possible and shouldn’t be skipped.
This step is key to providing an impactful transformation that YOUR market and audience persona desperately needs and wants — so you can have a successful business long-term.
Here are the basics of how to do this:
- Find people: Locate individuals who would be perfect customers for your idea.
- Reach out: Get in touch with them, let them know you need their input, and have strategic calls to gather information.
- Don’t sell: The goal here is not to make money, but to gather knowledge to build your brand. The people chatting with you will be helping you at this stage.
- Have tenacity: Stick with this until you have tons of details about your niche so you can start building your brand around it.
Don’t outsource this one — you should be the one gathering these insights. Even if it feels uncomfortable, this is going to be a step you’ll be so grateful you did. 🙏
Step 4: Launch Your Site + Get Crystal Clear on Branding
This is an exciting step for so many business creators.
It’s time to launch your website! And establish your branding guidelines, so your site reflects that.
This step involves:
- Picking a solid brand name that provides clarity
- Finding other websites that make you gasp “I love that!”
- Hiring a website designer to execute your vision
- Hiring a graphic designer
Then, make sure to create a shareable document that contains everything about your brand so that you can share it with a developer and other team members to come. 📄
Don’t let this part stop you if you’re trying to start a business from scratch with no money (or you’re keeping the budget extra tight).
You can easily build a WordPress.com website from scratch and earn a following, even if you have little technical skills and/or time.
Overwhelmed with the idea of starting your own business? Learn how to start and scale your own content-based business in my powerful free training for budding creative entrepreneurs.
Step 5: Start Your Content Marketing Early
You’re going to want to build your content marketing strategy in the earliest days of your business.
Here’s why:
Once you know the basics of SEO blogging for small business, ranking on Google is entirely possible (and necessary).
But once you start publishing high-quality blogs consistently, it still takes time for those blogs to “age.” It needs to be published for a while. 📈
No post targeting a valuable keyword can jump to the top of the search engine results page the same day — that’s simply not how it works.
So, start writing for those great keywords that will connect you to your audience persona — and get those blogs live. It may take longer to get your content seen and selling for you, but the lifespan of blog content simply can’t be beat.
Invest in both blogging and YouTube videos for the best bang for your buck, time, and energy — ESPECIALLY early on. Both are on my list of the best content types to grow your business from scratch for good reason.
Step 6: Delegate Tasks
Your business needs your full attention.
Clarity. Vision. Rest.
The way to get it is through delegating.
Whether you’ve been at it for a while (lone wolves, I see you) or starting your business completely from nothing, you need to build a team from scratch as well.
There’s a way to do this without burning out and breaking the bank. 💸
Creating your rock star remote team involves a focus on:
- People
- Processes
- Profit margins (keep these low — that’s key in creating an online business that pays you what you deserve.)
I always advise my coaching students to start by hiring a content writer.
Like we covered in step four of this powerful list, your content will be the rocket that propels your business into the success-o-sphere… and a great content writer will be the fuel that takes you there. 🚀
After that, you can grow your team even further with multiple team members who remove more and more tasks off your plate (like customer service, finances, video editors, etc.). ✔️
Need help finding a perfect content writer you love and trust? I’ve dedicated an entire phase of my five-phase business coaching program, The Content Transformation System, to hiring a rock star writer who’s got your back. If you’re ready to launch a sustainable business from scratch to 6- and 7-figures, apply for my 12-month mentorship program here. Or get started immediately with my free training.
Step 7: Build a (Non-Slimy) Lead Generation Funnel
A lead generation funnel will be an essential piece to building your business from scratch.
It’s the process people go through, from being a lead who has no idea who you are, to turning into a paying customer. Here’s a great example of what that can look like:
But there’s an art and a science to doing this right… without over-automating and sending leads screaming.
An attraction-based funnel like this doesn’t need to be complicated, but it needs to exist to make sure your business is sustainable (and can run without you being involved in every single step).
There’s a BIG secret that most of the sleazy, click-baity, upselling funnels aren’t telling business owners:
Since you have the golden opportunity to start your business from nothing…
Fill every single bone and cell of it with trust.
I teach a concept called The Forward Flow, which illustrates the power of attraction-based selling. You can and should use this in your lead generation funnel (and anywhere else you’re creating content).
Brand trust today is wildly important, so keep your funnel authentic, honest, and skip the sleaze. I promise your customers will fall in love with you for it. 💕
Step 8: Focus on the Long-Term
When you open your phone and scroll past all the accounts you follow that inspire you…
Those business owners who are where you wish you were…
Who are making massive income and seemingly have tons of time, energy, and clout…
Please, please know this:
They had to put in the work to get there — and you will, too.
But it isn’t just some dream. 💭
Imagine what your life could look like in just three years after you have a solid business idea, a wonderful team, and automated processes that let you focus on leading and growth?
Once you get there, you’ll want to start lasering in on scaling and getting known.
One of the best ways to do this is by self-publishing your own book.
Not only are self-published books easy-peasy to create and promote, but 86% of entrepreneurs say their self-published book helped their business grow.
On top of writing your own books (I self-published six books between 2016 and 2022), there will also be additional growth opportunities to keep your eye out for as your business starts entering a stage of growth that frees you financially, mentally, and emotionally for those kinds of tasks.
This will be a thrilling part of your entrepreneurial journey, and I can’t wait to watch you get there. 🥰
A life above the day-to-day grind, late nights and weekends, and exhaustion is available to you. But you have to forget all the myths you’ve believed in the past about doing this and focus only on what works to get yourself there.
Get Help Building & Scaling Your Business From the Ground Up
This can be a very scary time in your life.
Starting a business isn’t for the faint of heart — and lacking clarity can truly trip up even the BEST ideas and motivated entrepreneurs.
There’s an easier way to start your business from scratch than going at it alone.
I can help you get there.
Ready to launch your sustainable business empire without having to spin your wheels daily asking what you should be doing?
I can show you the proven roadmap I’ve used to launch multiple digital businesses that have given me freedom and financial security. The skills, systems, and strategy will be completely laid out for you, step by step. The Content Transformation System is not only what I wish I had when I started my business from scratch, but my most advanced program that gives you everything you need to succeed online.
If you want to skip over all the guesswork and start creating the business of your dreams today, I invite you to apply for my 12-month business growth mentorship now.
