#14: You Need More than Passion in Business. You Need a Plan.

On this episode I sat down to chat about passion and profit in business. Passion in business is important; if you are not passionate about your business, you won’t succeed. But you need more! You also need a solid plan that will harness that passion and turn it into a successful business.

Take a listen!

In this episode, Jan discusses:

[1:15] Getting to the online space.

[8:17] Four places to start out with.

[11:52] Exciting Announcement! And getting back to basics.

[13:03] Just starting out? I’m here to help!

Links mentioned in this episode:

[11:52] Spark; A Business Incubator for Online Entrepreneurs 

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Transcript

I'm Jan Ditchfield. And I went from frustrated corporate business consultant, trying to fix broken systems, to teaching women the secrets to turn their passion into a profitable online business. becoming an entrepreneur isn't an easy journey. It's filled with many missteps, and moments of massive self doubt. But I'm here to teach you the secrets to get past your roadblocks. So you can build the business of your dreams. Without the overwhelm. I created the Hey Spark Plug! podcast, to share with you easy to follow strategies and frameworks that will help you to your dream from spark to launch. If you're a first-time female entrepreneur, who is looking to understand how to build a business, which allows you the lifestyle freedom you want, this is the podcast for you. 

Ready? Let's dive in. 

Hey, you, and welcome back to another episode. So stop me if you've heard this one. You don't need a plan to launch a business, just do it and go for it and see what happens. I just came out of the conference. So we just held the annual entrepreneur conference that I hold for free. And we had a lot of discussions about getting into online space. And what you need to do to think about, you know, creating your first course or your first store, your first program, your first you know, membership, whatever it is kind of that you are really looking to do and how you can transition from being or have a typical business in the past of maybe services, or bricks or mortar into something where you can actually start creating out a business platform for yourself in the online industry. And one of the things that was good, I think the theme throughout everything was strategy. And you need strategy and understanding strategy and putting strategy into place and really knowing where you're going and what you're doing. And for me, strategy is key in everything when it comes to business development. So I hear a lot of people say like, you know, to early entrepreneurs, or to people who are first starting out and thinking, you know, maybe I want to step into this space, but I'm not 100% sure what I want to do, they hear the wing it model all the time, just go for it, just wing it just like you know, get out there and see what happens. And while I am encouraged people to kind of like step into the world, like I really encourage people to take that risk and to, you know, muster up the courage to say, Okay, I'm going to do it, I'm finally going to become my own boss and start my own business. I also always have a little bit of a Oh moment when I hear people say, you don't need a plan, or you don't need a strategy, just wing it. Because that's usually what happens when you win something in business, generally, you are going to not make it through your first year. And there's nothing more defeating than feeling like you have chased your passion into a brick wall. So when I hear that being said to people, I'm always like, no, no, let's like, you know, kind of come back to me a little bit here, I want you to hear what I have to say, I want you to think about why having a plan is so important. I want you to understand why having a strategy is necessary for your success. It's not really about anybody else's success. When you're starting a business, it's your success. So you should be doing all of the things and putting those things together in order to be able to, you know, really move your business forward. And so you're giving yourself a fair shot at being successful, instead of just kind of jumping into the space and being like, I don't know what I'm doing. But like, let's just see what happens. And if you want to do that, that's great. Like, go for it. I'm not gonna say, you know, there's, that's the wrong way to do things. But I am going to caution you that it's going to be a much harder way to do things and I would say that you're probably going to have a lot more failure than if you really sat down and started thinking about what is my plan? In my business? Where do I want to go? And there were some common mistakes that are made when people first start businesses, and they kind of go back to the same core principles. So a lot of people, you know, start out with a business because they have an idea and something they really want to pursue, and they want to chase, and they want to put it out there but no one's actually stopped us think about the fact that is this something that's actually a problem that is being experienced by someone out there who's going to become a potential customer of mine. So we tend to do the business model backwards. We launch businesses for ourselves instead of launching businesses for our customers. So I always encourage people to flip it and start identifying like the thing you should look at first off is what problems exist in the market space that my skills could solve. So when you identify problems or problems, challenges, pain points, desires that other people are facing and you align your skill set to solving those things or to, you know, being able to help someone walk through their own journey to solve it for themselves. Or if you provide something that makes brings joy, or use that desire to someone's life, then you are building up a customer basis, then you serve a purpose within your business. Because when we don't actually focus on the problem first what happens is we often end up launching to crickets, because people like maybe friends and family will buy from us in the early days, God, God bless friends and family. But when you try to scale your business past, then you're going to find yourself struggling to be able to understand where can I go, and who's going to buy from me, because people will look at what you are offering, and they just don't see themselves within it. Because they have no, it doesn't serve a purpose in their life. So really identifying what problem you are solving is so key when you're first coming out and you're first starting to think about what is that idea strategy that I'm putting into place for myself? How can I incubate this idea into something that's going to be successful? And the other thing is, as well, that I really see a lot of people looking at is they haven't really clearly defined who it is that they're actually going to serve within their business as well. So they haven't sat down and said, Okay, I'm going to do some hard work on figuring out, who am I targeting? What is my niche market? Who do I serve? How do I serve them? How do I understand their language? How do I understand their, their problems? Again, they're facing How can I provide benefit to them? When we come again, and we kind of get out there, we're like Keno, a lot of the time in the early days thinking, well, I'll just serve everybody, and everybody's gonna want to buy from me and everyone will want to be able to do business with me. And that metaphor I use all the time is the Schitt’s Creek menu, where you walk in and you open it up, and there's just like 17 pages of choices of things you can order and it's so overwhelming that people just kind of fold it up, and they put it away because they can't see themselves again, within, you know, what it is that's offered there they don't can't clearly say okay, yes, this is a vegan restaurant, or yes, is a vegetarian restaurant, or this is a Thai restaurant, there's just too many choices. So they don't feel represented in the choices. And it's exactly the same thing in a business. If we don't focus on who we're serving and get really niche and understanding what their needs are, and how we can meet those needs. We're not serving anybody well, because we've just become basically like Jill's of all trades, right? And, and yeah, but masters of none. And that cliche is accurate. It's, you know, it's great to be great at lots and lots of things, it's better to be an expert at one specific thing. So really narrowing down how is it that I can become an expert and known for an expert in a really specific market to serve a really specific group of people that I can then scale that business to bigger people and more people and outside of there, as I grow, but start off being really focused with what you do and who you serve. And all right. 

The other thing too, that we, you know, was talked a lot about at the conference, and I think is an important thing to think about when you're first starting out, figuring out how am I going to get into the online space is understanding what the right type of space is for you. So generally, there's kind of like four places that people can start out with so there can be creating a course creating a membership, building a program out, so kind of like, you know, coaching, programming, and then online stores as well. But they're all really different spaces, and they all serve really different purposes. So understanding again, what is the right place for you, where your skills are going to really translate well into that area. And where your customers are going to want to meet you at so are they actually the type of people who want to be doing courses? Or would they rather be doing a membership? Would they prefer to be doing shopping online and have like, zero interaction with people after that, you know, really understanding what's the right model to use is going to be key in the success that you have moving forward with your business as well. Because this is not like, you know, fit one, like, everyone fits into one model type of thing. Like, it's not like, you know, one size fits all, that's what I was searching for. There are a lot of different, you know, reasons for using the trying to build out the different types of online spaces. And there are different outcomes from those and there are different things that you need to do within it. And it's very different building a membership than it is to build a course it's a very different experience is a different strategy that you have in place as well. There is a different it's different offerings. So understanding what those look like before you kind of step into the world of say, I'm going to be a course creator and I'm just going to write a course and put it out to the world. And there it is and are people gonna buy it. Instead of understanding that journey that goes along of, you know, how to do your framework and you know, and understanding how to be able to sell a course online effectively and understanding what a launch looks like. For a course, and all of those things in place, that you can then go out and you can be successful, you know, and do maybe your first launch can be a four figure or a five-figure launch, instead of your first launch being something where you might sell one or two. And you just don't feel at all as though you've, you're getting, you've been successful like that, you're really setting yourself up to be unsuccessful, because again, that strategy hasn't been put in place. That plan has not been clearly defined before you try to build your business. 

So I am, like, I encourage that I encourage people, if you're listening, and you're thinking, is this the right time for me to build a business? Do I want to do this, I say yes, this is a great time to build a business. It there's lots and lots and lots of opportunities out there still, for people to be able to step into the market and create unique, really heart driven passionate solutions to problems that people are really facing and continue to face. And those are those problems are things that they want to solve, right, they're looking for your solution, you can be enormously successful in the online space, even though it's crowded, there's still lots of room to carve out your own path within your own little niche within it. But you need to do it in a way that's going to be strategic, that's going to set you up to understand those very basic things at the very beginning of your business. And then also how you can then take that and learn to grow it past just one offer. So a course does not a business make a membership does not a business make, there are many things that go into that into owning a successful business that are much deeper than just here's my off my here's my offer, you have a lot of things that go in around it that are going to have to be put in place to make sure you're successful. But first, you need to get that offer figured out. 

So I'm really excited that I've actually just launched as of today, a brand-new course called Spark. And it's a business incubator for online entrepreneurs. And it goes back to validating that early idea that you may have of what is the right thing for me to build online? And what's that right offer to create before I move forward with trying to do anything else with it. Go right back to the basics, again, of understanding what the problem is understanding how to choose the right online solution, understanding how to be able to really drill down on who that ideal customer is. And then defining what your value proposition is, and clearly outlining your unique advantage. And unique advantage is something that scares that the you know what's out of so many people because it's what forces you to have to look at yourself, and clearly outline why you're so great. And you're so different than other people around you in the space, like What makes you so unique. And if you can't articulate it, you're really going to struggle in your business, you're going to struggle to grow your business, if you can't say why you are different than the competition, and why someone should choose to do business with you versus them. So Spark is there to help with all of those things. It's a really, really interesting course, it's easy to work your way through but it is rich in value. Because it's for those people, it's for you if you're someone who's just like, I'm just starting out, and I want to get into the space. But I don't know how I don't know what to do, how do I get the right idea. I'm going to show you how to get the right idea. And just five simple lessons, how to go from I think this might work to now I know this is going to work. We're going to validate your business idea before you do anything else with it. So I'd encourage you to go check it out. You can go to janditchfield.co, forward slash Spark, and take a look at what's there. And if you have some time as well, I'm actually going to be doing a new masterclass called the five secrets to starting a successful online business. And I'm offering that masterclass out for a couple times this month. So if you want to jump over again to janditchfield.co forward slash masterclass. It's free. jump in, you'll get a chance to go over some things with me. I teach live, I love doing master classes and I'm a big believer in the live class experience. Because I think that for me, I get more out of it as well when I can actually see that there are people there. Obviously, it's virtual, but I can see people in the chats. But also I think it's a better opportunity for you as well who's taking the masterclass to be able to get your questions asked and answered in real time.

So those are my two things that are going on right now. I'm really excited and I hope that you get a chance to go over and check some of them out again. So Spark which is my new course is an online business incubator for there's a business incubator sorry for online entrepreneurs, janditchfield.co forward slash Spark, and then you could also check out my new free masterclass at janditchfield.co forward slash masterclass. I'll be doing it for a couple times in the month of April. So that's it. That's all for this week. Super excited about I'm bringing it to the podcast for you next week, you want to take a listen. For the next two weeks, we're going to do some really fantastic highlights from the conference. If you didn't get a chance to attend, you can capture, get bits of it that we've caught and we've put together kind of this really fantastic two parter of some of the highlights that came out it was a phenomenal event. And I'm so grateful to everyone who attended and especially grateful to everyone who came and gave so generously of their time presenting at the conference. So make sure you are registered for, you are subscribed to a podcast so that you can get that download into directly into whatever player you use next week, because I will be back as always, same time, same day and until then sparkplug keep building something magical