Well, hey there!
Dachia here..
Welcome to Focus on Your Small Business … a podcast dedicated to Silvers, folks over 50… who have either recently started the small business they’ve always dreamed about or who are still dreaming about it… and who are feeling overwhelmed with all the online moving parts of building a brand and getting in front of your target market.
I turned 50 last April. And in just the last year, I went from working one on one with a client to scaling my efforts in a membership site. I knew nothing about the details of this project. So, I had several false starts as I tried something and either it didn’t work at all, or some of it worked and I found other resources to help me through more steps.
If you’ve been listening to Focus on your Small Business, you’ve heard me say I am niching down to this group or that. But even at that time I had said this was not truly resonating with me. I did keep going for a while to be sure it was … just not me. That was false start. I started branding that and finally just had to take a step back and say, ok, this is not working for me.
Through that process, I gave thought to who I was and who I wanted to be and how I knew that. And I made a little discovery.
My process of determination is a bit different than most others.
I have created a membership site designed to save many hours a month for a person searching for information on brand creation and building. Basically, a business owner would need to search for what they need to do, search for how to do it.. and then actually do it. And I’ve taken care of the first 2 steps of that… ya still need to do it yourself.
When I was first thinking of this project, I had a client who happened to be a Realtor. So, when I was trying to niche down in my target market, that seemed the logical choice.
Even then though, I had said that another good niche audience was attorneys. I was thinking of groups who are generally pressed for time and would see the benefit of a single place to go to get all the resources they need to build a brand. Where all aspects are covered and in all mediums- articles, blog posts, audio and videos..
But as I said, it was not clicking with me.
My brother, who is paying all the bills till this gets going, made a comment about agents of a certain age. Our age… needing to get this information. It was shortly after that that I realized I had been focusing on groups of careers instead of the people. It didn’t matter what the individual was going to do with the information.. it just mattered who they were as people.
And I started to feel a bit more comfortable. This was exactly how I navigated the process. I tried something on like it was a person suit and felt it for a while and determined if this was the right fit for me.
Imagine you are going out to eat at a nice dinner with friends. You try on several outfits. You look in the mirror, you turn around… you get a feel for it.
That’s what I do when I want to make a change in my life. And I think I’m not alone.
I think experts advise us to get all our ducks in a row before we parade them in front of others.
From a business stance, we are told to settle on a business model, detail our products or services, pick our colors, create a logo, write out our mission statement, get everything perfect and launch our business.
And that works.. for a lot o people. But not me. I need to swim around in it before I decide if it is right or not.
Quick story- I’ve done a lot of jobs through the years. One of those jobs was a substitute teacher. In fact, I was a sub for decades off and on. It was something I could always qualify for. I moved a lot… but I always had my degrees, and could always pass an FBI background check and drug test. You might be surprised that just those last two simple requirements can land you a job practically anywhere… even without the degree.
But I digress.
Back to my story. I was subbing at a particular school that had student teachers from the college… this was their field work. They did this the last year of college. So they are just about done… and they are actually trying on the job.
And one young lady, after a month or so of this work… might have been less… expressed a bit of remorse that she really didn’t enjoy this work. But she had already put in all this time for a degree… she would just keep going.
My thought was, why don’t you guys try this job on as Freshmen? First year in college, go try out the job. In fact… why wait till college… summer ofter high school graduation, go intern somewhere… or a bunch of places. Why on Earth wait till this stage of the game to find out of it is a good fit?
Perhaps that lesson stuck with me over the years, or I picked it up elsewhere, but this notion of having the perfect launch and here are the steps… is just ludicrous to me.
As I said in an earlier show, I learned about podcasts in 2014. And I was hooked on the idea. I bought a course in podcasting, paid to join a group… and was following all their proven advice. And it IS proven. These methods DO work. I was brainstorming topics and outlines, and podcast names… got some awesome art work, bought a microphone… yada yada… and did not create that show. I had changed my mind. I did the same for another show. Then I was thinking that I could combine them or be a co-host with someone else…
And I never launched. I was getting colors and securing domain names… but I wasn’t producing anything.
Now some of this is just normal human behavior. We have fear so we just stay in analysis mode. We keep getting information. We waste our time in pursuits of nothing, but make it seem like everything.
Now, I recognize that lots of VERY successful people… podcasters, had an idea, did all the steps quickly, launched and are doing awesome.
But the process wasn’t working for me.
Nov of last year, I was reflecting on how much time I had pissed away and still had nothing. I had been listening to podcasters tell about their early days. Bad sound, not consistent… not knowing what they were doing, and mistakes they made in hosting etc etc….And I decided to just launch something. It didn’t matter what it was.
I was not going to put pressure on myself to do it right from the start. My pressure was to just do it.
I had an idea, actually two, for a show I could batch. I needed to just throw myself out there. Learn the ropes.
So I created 2 podcasts immediately. One was the National Day of, a daily 2 minute cast telling listeners what that particular day was the national day of… and the other one was daily affirmations for the small business owner.
Because I love small businesses and have a background in business… I wanted to create something for them.
Boom… I recorded, I edited, grabbed free music from the youtube library, grabbed a couple free images from Pixabay… and created an account with LibSyn. And I had to figure out how to use all those tools there… get listed on all the places where podcasts live.
Best decision I’ve made since extricating myself from that leach last Fall.
And since then, I recently checked my download numbers and saw that the National Day of podcast is not very interesting to people.. ok. I Deleted it. I didn’t pour my heart into it.
The affirmations podcast is actually pretty popular… so I’ll keep it going.
In the meantime, I started another podcast, Focus on your Small Business, and I like doing this one. It is not consistent enough yet to have regular listeners, but I feel good about doing it. It is a good fit for me.
But I had to just go do it to see if it was.
Do you remember in grade school, in PE we played all sorts of sports and the goal was to find something we clicked with? Same in music class… we try all these instruments and see if something feels right.
At some point since then, we seem to have lost the beauty of just doing stuff. We were convinced that we needed to look good before showing ourselves to the world… well, sometimes we just need to show our lives to the world first… then we see how it feels.
Those are the people I’m here for. Let’s just figure this out together.
That’s the goal of this podcast. A podcast for folks over 50… or grudgingly approaching 50, who are looking for a change in their life but, likely, not quite sure what yet, but likely thinking of creating some sort of small business where they can express themselves.
And you are the people that I created that membership site for. The site has hundreds of current, accurate, easy to follow resources on launching a brand online. And I’m here to encourage you to launch some stuff… roll around in it… do a few turns in the mirror, and rework the parts that need rework.
Not all of us are meant to run fast straight out the gate. Some of us need to go out that gate a bunch of times. We’ll make up the time later.
So, this podcast is me sharing my own journey through silver. as a small business owner. It is usually briefer than this one, in case you are just joining me. While I’m fairly loquacious in person, I don’t tend to be on my podcasts.
You’re welcome.
I always want to hear how you are doing. You can email me anytime or leave a voicemail through the button on the side of my website, at dachia.com
Also, I have a simple newsletter that can go straight to your inbox each week. Please don’t let your inbox become the vegetable drawer in the fridge… where good intentions go to die. I’d love to send you clips or videos as they come to me. Anything that I think might be helpful in starting or building a small business.
If you are interested, just shoot me an email with ‘newsletters’ in the subject line and then I’lll have your email. Or you can go to my site and enter it in the box on the right side. Take note, I also offer a daily email of inspirational quotes and affirmations, just in case you’d rather not add another podcast listen to your daily line-up. So, 2 free emails, one is daily and one is weekly. Super easy to sign up and of course you can cancel anytime.
I’m excited to get to know you. Talk to you soon.
Bye now.