15 things I learned as a successful service provider
Little did I know when I designed my first website for a paying client in late 2014 that I would run a successful six-figure online education business ten years later! I worked 1:1 with clients for four years, and I sure learned a lot during that time. Here are some of the most important lessons, specifically for service providers; I hope you find them helpful!
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1. An external office space can make the transition easier.
As a web designer all I needed was a computer, so I could work from pretty much anywhere. Which, of course, is a big part of what I love about having my own business! However, when I first started out I decided to use some of my savings and leased an external office space for 12 months. This had a number of benefits:
It made me feel professional and like I still had a ‘proper’ job.
It gave me structure and helped me develop a routine that worked for me and my business while I transitioned from being a corporate employee to self-employed.
It plugged me into the local business community. My office was located in an office building in the historic part of our small town and soon I made friends and business connections which led to new clients and me becoming the local go-to designer!
After one year I was established enough and moved into my home office which I love as well. I am still friends with many of the local business owners and enjoy working in coffeeshops whenever I need my ‘people fix’.
2. It is ok to say NO to a potential client.
I once had a situation where the client’s way of working and attitude were not well aligned with my own values and business processes. I missed out on a potential opportunity for regular income which at that point in my business would have given me a lot of peace of mind. But it would have come at the cost of my integrity and, likely, sanity.
Looking back this was one of the best decisions I ever made as it made me more focused on the kind of clients I wanted to work with. In total I designed more than 80 websites and I am happy to say that they were all wonderful client experiences.
3. My business benefits from my past professional experience.
Did you know that older adults are more likely to succeed at running their own business than younger people?
I can of course only talk from my own experience but the technical and organizational skills I developed during my professional career benefit my business in so many ways! They enable me to do a lot of things myself for instance, like setting up my LLC and managing my finances and administrative processes. My extensive experience in sales, customer service and corporate management also helps me support my own clients and customers as well as lead my small but mighty team.
Are you transitioning from a corporate career to your own business? Make a list of all your skills and then evaluate them:
How can this skill support me as an entrepreneur?
How can I utilize it with my clients or customers?
How can I develop my skill into a service or product?
4. Offline balance is important!
As online entrepreneurs in an increasingly digitized world it is easy to spend hours and hours glued to our screens and office chairs. I am certainly guilty of getting sucked into the Instagram, Facebook and Google vortex. As we all know, this is neither healthy nor does it make us more productive, on the contrary. Over the years I have become better at balancing the need to be online (for my business) and the benefit of getting my head out of my screens and into my body and ‘real’ life.
Here are some of the things that are helping me:
I set my timer every 30 or 60 minutes to take a break, during which I stretch, take a few deep breaths, go into my kitchen and drink a glass of water. Sometimes I’ll even go for a quick walk around the block to clear my head.
Shut down my computer at the end of my work day. Meaning: shut it down properly. I am less tempted to ‘quickly’ check on something in the evening if I have to restart my computer.
Regular walks or bike rides along the sea. My cure for almost everything.
Other intentional offline activities such as spending time with friends, reading a book, knitting, going on an artist date and generally living more away from the screen.
5. You don't need an expensive marketing strategy to start an online business.
For the first few years in my business, I never had a dedicated marketing or sales strategy, nor did I spend any money on things like ads or hiring a marketing specialist. My business grew very organically, and here are five things that helped:
High-quality customer service and products have always been at the core of my business. This ensures lots of word-of-mouth recommendations from happy customers and gets my name out there for delivering high-quality work.
Work in alignment with your personality and values. Knowing yourself and how you work best is crucial to your business's ‘karma’. This is all about aligning your values with your business goals and practices and honoring your personal temperament in the process.
Love what you do. It is no secret that I love teaching, technology, and people. My passion for my business is what gets me through the tough times and also what motivates me to give it my best at all times.
Mingle—my word for good old networking. I never liked networking in the corporate world, but it feels very different when you have your own business. Networking can take the form of joining local business groups, online communities, or mastermind groups. It not only helps spread the word about what you do, but it’s also a great way to give and get support.
Have a website that attracts and converts customers. Our websites are our calling cards; they are often where people form their first impression of you and your business. Make sure it looks good, flows well, and reflects you and your values. If you need help, consider working with a designer.
6. You don't need to know everything to get started.
Most of my skills are self-taught, and I am one of those people who learn by doing.
When I first started out as a web designer, I had been dabbling with Wordpress and Squarespace for years, and that was enough to get me going. There was, of course, a lot I didn't know, but I am so grateful that I didn't let that deter me from the path I had embarked upon. I just kept learning as I went along, and let me tell you, I could be pretty tenacious when it came to finding CSS solutions and implementing Squarespace tips and tricks to ensure my clients get the best possible design and functionality. Give it a few months, and you’ll be amazed at what you learn during that time. As your knowledge grows, so will your confidence!
7. Don’t wait a whole year to do your bookkeeping!
A hard lesson I learned twice! When it comes to your bookkeeping, you have two options:
Hire a bookkeeper.
Do it yourself.
I tried two bookkeepers, but it didn’t work out because they didn’t quite understand my online business.
I finally decided to take control of the situation and learned how to use Quickbooks Online (QBO). It was a steep learning curve that required me to enter transactions for a whole year three times! But it was worth it. Between QBO and the Dext extension that imports all my sales from Squarespace, what used to take me hours now only takes me minutes.
Here is a video on how I use Quickbooks/Dext with Squarespace.
→ Try Quickbooks Online (save up to 55% with this link)
→ Try Dext (save 10% with code KERSTIN10)
8. Don’t be afraid to try different systems until you find what works for you.
There is a lot of advice out there on how to best organize our small businesses and it’s taken me a few years of trying different systems to finally arrive at a place where I found my groove with what works best for me. To get to this point I had to become clear on what was important to me:
It needs to be simple. I did not want to spent a lot of time learning new systems and managing them, I don’t want or need all the bells & whistles.
Seamless functionality across all my devices.
Something that doesn’t over-organize me. Organization is a wonderful thing but with all the fancy productivity tools out there we can spend more time organizing than actually doing the work!
Cost effective. When you add everything up you can end up spending a lot of money on your ‘systems’. By streamlining everything and also using tools you already have (like Notes for Mac users) you can save a good amount of money, too.
I’ve narrowed my system down to 5 tools:
17hats* was my preferred CRM for quotes, contracts, invoicing, time tracking, automated workflows etc. I don’t use it much these days because I no longer work 1:1 with clients but when I still did I loved using it for all of my client-facing activities and documents. Use my link to save 50%.
Google for shared documents and surveys.
Apple Notes for shared communications and organization. Shauna wrote a great post on how we use it.
Squarespace* for my website, email marketing, blogging, scheduling, online courses, commerce and analytics. Love having it all in one place!
The Eule Planner® is my trusted business buddy that keeps me sane and organized! I use it for my daily to-do’s, planning and strategy, brain dumping and keeping track of stats and such.
9. I love being a solopreneur!
This was a bit of a revelation. During my 3rd year, I reached a point where I was so busy that I needed to refuse work or get help. At the same time, a young designer approached me, saying he wanted to work with me. Serendipity, right? So we collaborated on a few projects, and overall, it went very well; he was a smart guy with good manners, and it was nice to have someone to talk shop with! Alas, I soon realized that I was exhausted from managing my client relationships and the space between my clients and my assistant. He was great, and this is purely a reflection of my HSP nature, which does not handle multiple energies too well. At that point I probably could have started growing my business into an agency but I realized that I don’t want to manage staff, I like being my own boss and no-one else’s! So I let go of the young designer, raised my prices, and only accepted projects I could handle and would enjoy.
When my business evolved to teaching online courses full-time, I started working with my trusted business manager, Shauna. She helps me with day-to-day admin, strategy, and content. She is a part-time contractor, so she is not an employee.
Between Shauna and my systems, I can enjoy what I value most about being a solopreneur: freedom and flexibility, while not being too far removed from the core of my passions: design and teaching.
10. Say thank you.
I’m a strong believer in good karma and one of the things I love doing is sending out thank-you notes or small gifts to clients, students, peers and online friends. I believe that these tactile gestures are valubale analog touchstones of our digital businesses.
→ Beautiful cards from Moo
→ I love Madrona Gift Boxes, they are from Bellingham, WA!
→ Check out our Christmas guide for more ideas
11. You will work harder than ever before.
Can't wait to get away from your 9-5 job? Welcome to your new 7-10 job! Or as a friend once put it: you can either work 8 hours for someone else, or 20 hours for yourself.
Starting, running and growing a successful business is a lot of work and entrepreneurial burn-out is real!
BUT. Working hard for your own business feels completely different to slogging it away for someone else.
When you love what you do you never have that sinking pre-Monday feeling anymore and while you will still get stressed and overwhelmed, it's a different kind of stress, the kind where you can take an afternoon off if needed, because you are the boss and you make the rules. Which means you can break them and shape them.
So work as hard as you need to but remember who is boss and take those well deserved breaks because you can.
12. You will burn out and upset clients.
I consider myself very lucky because overall I've had nothing but wonderful clients and students! From small brick & mortar business owners to creative entrepreneurs they've all been such a pleasure to work with, resulting in consistently happy client experiences.
However, there was a time a few years ago when I was trying to catch up after illness and injuries had caused delays, and I ended up juggling 5 website projects at once. It all got too much and two projects were abandonded half way through and one ended in tears. That was tough. While it wasn't all my own doing – there were some clientside dynamics at play that were out of my control – I felt terrible. But I also learned a lot about my processes and how to handle tricky situations with dignity and empathy.
This was also when I decided on a one-project-a-month schedule which worked so much better for my sanity and also for my clients who got my undivided attention during that month. A hard but valuable lesson learned.
13. This is NOT a hobby!
I am not sure why but it wasn't until my 4th year that it really hit me that I was running a 'proper' full-time business. People were paying me good money for my services, I had more than trebled my income, I was sending checks to the IRS, I had a proper home office, an accountant and the letters LLC after my name.
I am no stranger to the imposter syndrome and even after more than seven years a part of me still worries that one day my business will just go ‘poof’ and up in smoke! That's the part that also thinks this is still a hobby and that I'll be found out soon.
However, the business woman in me knows that this is simply not true and over the last few years I have felt a decisive shift in my perception and trust. These days, when someone asks me what I do, I am very proud to say: I am a business owner.
14. Know yourself and manage your business accordingly.
Understanding and honoring how I work best has been a game changer for my business. Here are some examples:
I am a sprinter. Meaning: I am good at starting things and giving them momentum, I can work very focussed and effectively over a short period of time. As a result I prefer shorter projects which is why, for instance, my 3-Day-Wonder website service was such a smashing success! Or why I was able to create the Calm Business Review in only a few days.
I prefer to operate a solo business. I hire help, I collaborate, but I don’t want manage a big team and/or employees.
I like to experiment. Much of my business trajectory is driven by this. For instance, at the end of 2018 I was pretty burned out from running a busy web design studio and teaching more and more online courses. So I decided to ‘experiment’ and stop doing 1:1 projects for 12 months and focus fully on my courses. At that point my 1:1 work brought in more money than my courses so I knew it was a risk. But I also knew that I always could go back to web design if the experiment failed. Needless to say, it was a huge success and after 12 months I had made more money than ever before.
I don’t mind working at weekends. A big part of why I love running my own business is the flexibility to make my own schedule. That means that I sometimes take time off during the week and if there is a lot to do I simply work at the weekends. I never minded doing this which is probably why shift work always suited me so well when I was working in the airline and hospitality industries.
It’s all about energy management. As an HSP, empath and Human Design Projector I absorb external energy like a sponge and that can get exhausting quickly. This is why the ‘Energy Review’ is such an important part of the Calm Business Review, identifying and managing my energy drainers makes all the difference in how I run my business.
☞ Grab your journal and make a list of your traits. How do they impact your business and how can you leverage them to run your business more calmly and effectively?
15. The most important one: Put on your business blinders!
I talk about this a lot and it bears repeating: put on your blinders and ignore the noise around you.
After many years of getting worn down by the shouty 6/7-figure hustlers I finally decided to refuse them entry into my zone of peace. Instead I put on my ‘business blinders’ and choose to stay the course and focus on my own work, clients and students. I talk a lot about running a heart-centered business and while that has become a bit of an over- and misused term, its core message still holds true for me:
It is very important for me to act from a place of substance, integrity and caring. Above anything, I believe in great service and delivering high quality work, and my business has grown very organically, and steadily, as a result.
I have learned that these values are also very much at the heart of my Calm Business philosophy which rejects hustle culture and instead embraces a calmer, more gentle and honest approach.
These days, whenever I feel myself being pulled down the hustle rabbit hole I literally say to myself: “Blinders, Kerstin!” It works!
