The Most Deadly Thing You're Doing In Business

Having a strong foundation for anything you do in life is important.

BUT… letting the process of getting that foundation hold you back from actually starting that thing… can be deadly.

I started my first business during my senior year of college. Portrait photography.

At the time I had zero experience starting or running my own business. All I knew was what I saw online. The initial “to-do” list of starting a business that I now refer to as “the Instagram bio”. Here’s why:

People (including myself at the time) get extremely caught up in and waste so much time in the “creation” of a business. Making a website, picking brand colors, deciding on a name, and you guessed it - setting up their Instagram bio.

This isn’t to say that those things aren’t important, and they are tasks that should definitely be done (although I’d argue name and brand colors aren’t very important at all). But, the amount of time that is put into these initial "set-up” tasks when the business hasn’t made a single dollar yet is crazy.

When making that photography business, I spent weeks crafting what, at the time, I thought was the best solo photography website ever. I hadn’t even scheduled one shoot yet. Yikes.

I did the same thing for Instagram. Hence the collective name of all these tasks.

And what makes it worse is that so many coaches and consultants in business actually preach that these things are do or die - before even teaching you how to actually make money.

So what should you do instead?

Determine your business’ minimum viable product needed to make money. Then go make the money. Figure out the rest later.

Here’s a recent example from my own life:

At the end of October 2022, I had built up a successful yoga and wellness TikTok that was continuing to gain attraction. On a road trip one weekend I had the idea to create a yoga advent calendar for the month of December - 24 days of guided yoga practices leading up to Christmas. The next week when I got home I set up a basic landing page that allowed people to buy the advent calendar and filmed 2 TikTok videos to promote it. Those two things were my MVP.

I hadn’t planned or created the videos. I didn’t have a teaching license (I didn’t need one but this is an example of something that holds a lot of people back - thinking they need to gain more qualifications than they really do). I didn’t have any product actually made yet. But I had a “buy” button and an “ad” in the form of a TikTok video.

And it worked.

What’s the take away here?

Get the necessary foundation in place, but don’t waste your time. Then, start getting sales. Start getting clients. Start making money.

Figure out the rest as you go.

You CAN’T succeed in business if you’re not making money. You CAN succeed in business without the perfect Instagram bio.