Kiley Peters (Rossi), MBA, CPCC, ACC, CEPA

First and foremost, make sure you’re clear on your personal goals. Then make sure you are clear on your business vision, and that the two are in alignment. After that, focus on your audience. Make sure you are super clear on who your audience is, the problems they will pay to solve, and how you are uniquely positioned to solve them. Once you are clear on those things then potential revenue streams should begin to make themselves apparent. Where is your audience now and what problems do they have now? What problems will they have in the future and will you be able to support them? What strategic partnerships could be valuable? Memberships? Tiered services at different price points with varying levels of support? One-off products?

One could argue that in the world of entrepreneurship there are no failures just learning lessons. Some happen to be far more expensive and detrimental than others, but they are all learning lessons if you allow them to be. The worst thing we can do is to take a look at something that didn’t turn out the way we had hoped, and repeat it again. One of the beauties of being able to build and create things is the opportunity to learn from them. Look at feedback as information. And use that to inform your next decisions and remember not all feedback is equally valuable.

The world of entrepreneurship is not for the thin skinned. This world requires resiliency and yes, there’s a lot to be said about building your network, financials, etc. But I think the greatest tool you can use to build resiliency is your mindset. So much of this world is a game of mindset. When you’re in a negative headspace it’s really difficult to move forward and not project a sense of desperation. As much as possible, practice gratitude. Practice taking inventory of everything that you have versus everything you lack. Remind yourself of how far you’ve come not how far you have to go. And remind yourself that you’re playing the long game. This isn’t a sprint.

We swear by a detailed adjusted gross income (agi) spreadsheet we use to track every expense, hour, etc needed to create a deliverable. We calculate a range to provide a little wiggle room so we know what we can discount to without losing money and also account for referral fees, commissions, etc. This also allows us to calculate production bandwidth and revenue potential. We also maintain a very detailed annual cash flow projection spreadsheet, broken down by month. This allows us the opportunity to make smart business and budgeting decisions based off of monitoring cash flow so we make sure everyone gets paid, credit cards are paid, and any major expenses are allocated without dipping into negative cash flow.

Always ask for feedback and stay humble. Remeber, feedback is just information. You can decide to do something with it or not, but we're not mind readers. Ask your clients for ways you can continue to improve their experience through surveys, feedback loops, etc.

Do the research. Stop trying to build audience avatars. They're both more complicated and simpler than that. Go talk to your audience. Conduct interviews. Distribute a research survey. Gather data. Use this information, and only this information, to build your audience. All too often our own bias gets integrated into building this avatar and it skews the results. This part needs to be taken from a more unbiased perspective. Start with data, ask good questions, listen with an unbiased agenda, and then give the people what they want.