Unfiltered summary

Once you’ve identified your own personal reasons for starting a business, the next step is to get into the mindset of the business owner you want to become. This includes deciding which type of business makes the most sense for you and your lifestyle.

Rachel likes to refer to this step of the process as finding your “Square One.” 

Throughout your business journey, you’ll be subject to a lot of welcome – and unwelcome – business advice. This can be overwhelming, especially because our society is partial to the idea that you can only reach success if you hustle hard or find a quick fix to all your problems.

Often used interchangeably, hard work and hustle are not the same thing. Hard work involves taking actionable steps toward achieving a specific goal. Hustle is more of an unfocused state of constant movement.

There’s no doubt that social media is a crucial part of getting your business seen – especially in the early days. That being said, the only predictable thing about social media is that it’s…unpredictable. Platforms come and go, audience appetites change, and algorithms seem to evolve overnight.

So how exactly do we craft a killer online profile in a space that’s constantly changing? First, let’s start with the basics. While Rachel has a lot of valuable advice for growing on social media, she swears by two golden rules.

Picture yourself shoveling your driveway during a heavy snowstorm. No matter how much snow you manage to get rid of, it will just keep piling up until it becomes too much to manage. This is what it’s like to run a business without a solid plan.

In the first few years after starting her business, Rachel said yes to everything and took on far more than she could manage. This meant that she barely had time to eat, let alone sleep. Realizing that things needed to change, she created a solution that she calls “Business-By-Design.”

A lot of prospective business owners see “success” as the light at the end of the tunnel. If they could only just reach it, everything would be better. This is a nice idea in theory, but it doesn’t make sense for a few reasons.

First, everyone’s idea of success is different. What you consider “making it” could be someone else’s step one. For example, your goal might simply be to help your family live more comfortably, while someone else might not feel that their journey is complete until they reach one million dollars in sales.

The decision to start a business is not one that you’ll make only once – you will have to continuously choose it, each and every day. There will be failures and times where you will want to give up, but how you react to these challenges is what really matters. In times of trouble, we find out what we’re truly made of.

Success looks different for everyone and changes as we grow. As long as you put in the work and stay true to who you are, you’ll be able to build the life you want and the business of your dreams. Even when you’ve achieved your goals, there’s always room to make new and even bigger ones.