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Finances, Strategy, & Marketing, Oh my!

Finances, Strategy, & Marketing, Oh my!

Behind the curtain of starting a small business

Rubin Patterson Jr.
May 03, 2024

Tech Trivia!
Updates!
The Tech News
Custom Phone Wallpaper of the Week!

Tech Trivia!

Question: Which well-known tech company rented a herd of goats to maintain the grass and landscaping at one of their headquarters locations?

*See the bottom of the newsletter for the answer

Updates!

It’s hard to believe this is only week 8 of the newsletter. It feels like I started this forever ago!

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Document, Don’t Create.

-Gary Vaynerchuk

I usually have no idea what to write about for these newsletters until the day I sit down to write them. You have to be pretty creative to come up with original ideas over, and over, again as a content creator. But the fact is, most creators don’t have the ability to be that creative.

This is where the quote “document, don’t create” comes into play. It means letting the documentation of your life, what you do, and your current interests, be the creative subjects of your content. It’s much easier to talk about what you do and put it out for people to enjoy, versus making a movie about your life.

So here are some thoughts from the past week of my life as a startup business owner pre-launch day. By the time you read this, my business will be launching tomorrow May 4th. As of today, May 2nd, here’s what I have left to do:

Finish the website!!!
Start populating the Square dashboard with pre-set service prices to streamline customer checkout efficiency and experience
Invite people to like the company’s Facebook page
Create 4 separate introductory posts for my personal FB page, Town FB group page, and two for the company FB page.
Plan out specific times to post on each specific page
Map out where to drop off/hang up flyers on Saturday (Launch Day)
Buy Quickbooks and learn all the things
Set the company voicemail on the company phone for when people call during the day when I’m at my full-time job
Create a company Venmo?
Plan where to celebrate after a successful launch. (Waldy’s?)

As you can see, just like with many other things in our lives, there’s always something to be done. I’ll probably find 20 more things that I “need” to do by the time I go home tonight. Which leads me to my next quote:

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Perfectionism is killing your progress.

Some of you probably saw that list and thought, “Wow, that’s a lot to get done in a day!” and you’d be absolutely right. It is a lot! But the thing with business, and goals in general, is you don’t have to finish everything to start. I’ve been guilty of this in the past but I’m much better about it now. One might say, “I’ll just postpone launch day until I get everything done how I want!” and they may end up perfectly fine. But they lose out on all that time of people knowing their business exists and building the brand in exchange for worrying about what the theoretical people in their head may think of their unpreparedness.

Now, there are some non-negotiables, such as the website being up or the voicemail being set because they lead to bad business and a bad reputation. But for little things behind the scenes that customers will never see, it’s okay for them to be “good enough” before starting. We get so wrapped up in everything we think we need to do that sometimes we forget to actually “do”.

I don’t know how much of that list I’ll actually have done by tomorrow, and that’s okay. Whenever we start something new, we tend to create problems for ourselves that don’t exist. In my case, and most startup business cases, it’s the fear of being unprepared and the thought that as soon as I launch, my business will skyrocket and the phone will be ringing off the hook nonstop. In reality, that’s just not true for most businesses. Five years seems to be the standard for considering a business established.

Which means that whatever I don’t finish by launch day, I’ll have plenty of time to finish before my steady stream of customers starts to roll in. Whatever you have on the back burner, just start. It won’t be nearly as bad as you think. Rome wasn’t built in day and success won’t happen overnight. Everything will be okay!

-Rubin ✌🏽