Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / My 7 worst business mistakes that cost me thousands of dollars

Transcript

My 7 worst business mistakes that cost me thousands of dollars · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:09
  Hello, welcome back to the show. Today I'm tuning in from sunny Geneva, where I'm here just visiting my family. And I thought that today I would
• 0:21
  do something a little bit different, I would talk you through a few, just a few of the many mistakes that I've made with my different attempts at business. And let's be honest, this is just a handful of mistakes. So these are the ones that I'm not emotionally scarred from that I can actually talk about. But there is probably another handful that I've totally blocked out of my mind and I'm not ready to talk about. But here we go.
• 0:51
  If you can relate to any of these, I feel you, they suck, and we need to talk about this stuff more than what I think we do. So let's get straight into it. Number one, don't build a business that you don't actually enjoy. So you might sit there and be like,
• 1:13
  yeah, this isn't a big deal. It's not really a big mistake, but it actually is. And it's a really important one. And let me tell you why.
• 1:22
  Time is passing us by. Yesterday, literally yesterday, the pandemic just started, and now we're like halfway through 2022. It is so nuts. We should be enjoying life, not hating it. We spend so much of our life working that it may as well be on something that lights a fire in our belly and gets us excited to hop out of bed.
• 1:46
  If you've listened to the show for a while, you'll probably know that my now husband was first and foremost, actually my business partner for a different business. When we met, the short story is that he asked me to join his business and build the content agency arm to fund the development of the tech platform.
• 2:08
  And while it was totally the right move, especially in that turns out he was actually the love of my life, the actual day-to-day wasn't right for me. And I remember this really clear moment that triggered me to change paths and do what I just wanted to do and do something for myself. I was sitting on stage. It was Tech Week in London. This is like many years ago, probably 2017, I would say.
• 2:37
  And I'm talking on a panel with all these legit tech founders who are building these crazy businesses. And we're talking about the tax benefits of bringing a business from Australia to the UK. And I was just so out of my depth and not in a good way, not in the way that inspires you to take the challenge head on and get better at it. I was like,
• 3:03
  sitting there thinking, I actually just don't like this. I don't want to do this. And this isn't the right thing for me. And, you know, at that time I was in my twenties, it's all a learning. It got me to this point, yada, yada, yada, fine. Great. But now I'm also just so laser focused on making sure that I'm happy with what I'm doing. And I check in with myself to make sure what I'm doing is right for me still and
• 3:30
  I just don't think that it's worth losing years of my life on building something that I don't enjoy. So this is a mistake I'd say cost me more time rather than actual hard cash, but still a mistake nonetheless and worth talking about.
• 3:48
  Number two, doing stuff driven by money more than passion. And this is kind of similar to the first learning, but I've got a different example for you. And this one is actually more of a tough one to swallow because I'm going to bring up the Non-Alk brand. And I was so genuinely excited about the Non-Alk wine company.
• 4:11
  But in the end, and, you know, with a little room for hindsight now, I think that this project was leaning more towards building this exciting brand. It's going to be so glamorous and we're going to have this huge acquisition. I'm going to document the whole thing.
• 4:29
  Rather than being something that I was truly passionate about when it came to like my core being. So obviously we wanted to build the brand. We wanted to document the process right through to the acquisition. And I am still so proud of the actual brand.
• 4:45
  brand, the visual brand identity that we built. It was just so much fun, so cool. And that's what I really got swept up in. But I didn't have that burning passion or connection to the non-alcoholine industry. So
• 5:02
  That's just like a personal kind of realization that I had for myself. And obviously every mistake is an opportunity. I learned so much last year. I learned so much about direct consumer. I learned so much about the wine industry. I learned so much about developing a brand. Fine. Great. But I also lost about $30,000 in cash. And that sucks. Really, really sucks. Which leads me to number three.
• 5:33
  creating solutions for problems that no one really needs or would pay for. This is one I don't have a personal example for. I'm sure I actually do have somewhere tucked inside my brain, but like not off the top of my head. It's just something that we hear a lot about. And I've spoken to with so many women on the show. Most startups fail. That's a hard fact.
• 5:55
  And I think like for me, what happens is I'll have this little light bulb go off in my head. I'll think it's totally genius. I'll like run a million miles racing down the road, go off on a tangent, spend money, do all these things, and then just realize after the fact that maybe people don't care enough to actually want to pay money for this solution.
• 6:20
  And so it's one of those things, I think, like if you're starting a business, make sure you seriously do the research. Make sure you prove out your concept with your ideal target customers before you go all in. It's such a critical mistake that we see kind of time and time again. Number four, hiring too early.
• 6:46
  This one sucks. This one sucks a lot. And this is the one where you lose so much money, you lose so much time, you lose so much patience, you lose all the things.
• 6:56
  And it's also one where you can really harbor quite bitter emotions. And I bet anyone who is listening to this episode who has a business or a side hustle or has a friend who has a business or a side hustle will know this all too well and has also made this mistake a zillion times over. I feel like I've done this with every single business and I've also repeated the same mistake over and over and over again.
• 7:20
  In all of the businesses between my husband and I, we have hired agencies to help us with one thing or another with the best of intentions. And, you know, we've been so excited to just jump right in and get stuck into it. But the reality is, and this is the part that's really important to tune into, the reality is that sometimes someone is trying to sell you something that you really do want and you do need it.
• 7:49
  But the reality is that you're not ready for that service just yet because you need to have the right foundations ready to go so that you are set up for success when you hire that agency. And it's such a tough one because seriously, I still haven't learned this lesson, but I am getting a little bit better at it. And I'm a little bit better at spotting when I'm like going in the direction too quickly. Yeah.
• 8:15
  But it is just always so much money wasted for no ROI. It's always a few thousand dollars here, a few thousand dollars there. It's always a multiple month retainer and it's always a real pain in my butt. So hiring too early, especially when it comes to agencies. My advice here is just truly make sure you're ready. Make sure you are set up for success so that when you do start working with an agency, they can take you to the moon. And this leads me to number five, which is kind of similar.
• 8:46
  making the same mistake twice, three times, four times, maybe even a fifth time, you get the drift. I've hired agencies too early. Yes, we've just covered that. But I have hired staff too early. I have hired contractors too early. I have signed up for software that I absolutely don't need yet. All of it. I've done all of it.
• 9:08
  I get into the habit of thinking, and I don't know if you'll like this, but I get into the habit of thinking that someone has this magic bullet, they're going to know better than me, and they're going to change everything. Which obviously, there is those kind of, you know, wins that you can have. And there's a lot of people out there who over promise and seriously, seriously, seriously under deliver. But I also want to quickly caveat this.
• 9:33
  And this is like a bit of a spin. And this is where I wasn't sure if I should put this in, but I decided to still put in this number five. Sometimes it's actually the best thing ever. And you hire the absolute weapon that you needed. All the stars align. And that's why I think that this mistake is worth repeating because sometimes it actually pays off. And that's where the reward totally outweighs the risk and the money that you lose. All right. Number six.
• 10:01
  guilty of this so many times over as well, not having clear focus that ends up pushing you in multiple different directions. Total time waster, total money waster. I'm literally forever guilty of this with Female Startup Club. I have a million ideas of what I want to do. I go off on some random tangent where I really should just be focusing on what's working right now and doubling down on that and kind of keeping those systems and processes and workflows going.
• 10:31
  I'm actually really working on this though. I'm strengthening my willpower and saying no to things to my own brain that don't align with my current goals or just parking them for a future, future me to kind of jump into or just trying to be more realistic about what I have the capacity for. What really helps me with this one is having a super clear North Star that I check myself against and kind of keep on track with.
• 11:00
  And number seven, last one, lucky number seven. Is it lucky number seven? I can't remember. Oh, my God. Anyway, I think seven is lucky. I like seven. Let's say it is. Seven is not understanding my numbers. My goodness. When I think back now about my D2C jewelry business, I had no freaking clue where my margins were. I had no freaking clue about anything numbers related. Now.
• 11:30
  Don't get me wrong. I had a financial model. I had all these things, but I just didn't truly understand it. And knowing your numbers inside and out is absolutely critical in building a business as we all know.
• 11:44
  We need to know where the profits lie. We need to know where the margins are. You need to know how much you can be spending to acquire a customer and where you can put a dollar in to get a dollar back. All those kinds of things. This is like the one mistake that you shouldn't make. You really need to understand your numbers so that you can figure out how to grow and take over the world.
• 12:07
  Alrighty, that's my seven points. If you love, well, not my seven points. That's my seven mistakes, actually. If you love this mini episode, please do share it on Instagram, drop into my DMs or leave a review wherever you're listening to this episode. Have the best day and I'll see you next week.
• 12:43
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 13:08
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• 13:30
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