I’m about to get real with y’all. 

Because friends, there have been a few months this year that have not been great. Both mentally and business-wise, I’ve been struggling. 

I haven’t felt aligned, money stopped flowing and my motivation disappeared for a hot minute.

I wasn’t going to share this, or talk about the bad financial months I’ve had, but I’ve noticed that in the online business world, we tend to avoid talking about money.  Especially when we haven’t been having amazing financial months. 

I believe this is because more often than not before you enter the online business world as an entrepreneur and you’re sold this dream of starting a business and instantly building up a loyal customer base and bringing in 5k,10k+ months.

But in reality, that’s rarely the case. 

Either people are earning money but they’re at full capacity and it doesn’t feel like a dream, or they aren’t making money because they haven’t learned how to sell yet, nailed their messaging, and generally learned how to do everything well enough in order to break through the noise in this online space. 

This is why in this blog. I’m not going to be talking about the good stuff. I’ve had a hard few months this year and it’s time to shed some light on it! 

Opening the conversation 

Many people tend to shy away from conversations about things not going well in their business and it’s understandable.

Why would you want to broadcast the things that haven’t gone so right? 

But it’s such an important conversation to have, especially when you first become an entrepreneur.

It can be lonely and confusing, particularly when the majority of the messaging out there is focused on how amazing owning a business is and how much success you can have. 

Now don’t get me wrong, friends, it can be amazing and you can definitely achieve that success, but that’s hardly ever the whole story. Things don’t magically happen and I honestly believe a big part of being successful lies in the ability to build up your skills and resilience. 

The truth is that these hard times are (if you have that resilience we just mentioned) what will set you up for success. 

This is why it’s important for those who are successful now, to talk about how they got there and the challenges they overcame. It’s also why it’s important to speak up if things aren’t going right because I guarantee you aren’t alone! 

Setting yourself up for success sometimes looks like not being successful

Having bad times, your mindset not being right, not earning thousands every month, and feeling stressed can lead to real growth and change in your business IF you don’t give up. 

Which of course, is the temptation. 

You see everyone else talking about how amazing they’re doing and how much they’re bringing in and you think ‘well this isn’t happening for me so should give up’ but that is the opposite of what you need to be doing!

Although I am always here to celebrate other people’s success (I’m always going to be your number one hype girl)  the reality is that when people share their successes, you’re just seeing a snippet of it! 

You don’t know how long it took them to get there, what they had to learn, what obstacles they had to overcome, or what bad months they had before. So don’t compare and don’t give up.

Let’s get real 

It was only recently that I truly realized why I shouldn’t compare myself and my business to others. 

This realization came to me a few weeks ago when I was having a chat with someone who I massively look up to. She’s someone who I always saw as killing it! 

And during this call, she revealed that she’d had to take out a loan to do payroll. 

Maybe it was because of where my headspace was at the time, but this really surprised me. I just didn’t expect it.

But, what was really interesting, and what I think is the key to her overall success, was how calm she was about it all. She wasn’t worried about it, she just accepted it for what it was and had this confidence that this would pass. And rightfully so!

She trusted herself so much and took comfort in the fact that she’d had ‘bad’ months previously and they had helped her have more success in the future.  

Hearing all of this from someone I thought had it all together all of the time and hearing that they went through a blip themselves and were okay with it helped me massively! 

Let’s cut ourselves some slack 

As we’ve said, there are high expectations for the online business world and some would never fly in the ‘real world’ of 9-5 office jobs. 

For example, if I had to go VA for someone to earn a bit more money or had to get part-time work while I built my business back up, people would automatically think that equaled failure. There would also be a ton of shame attached to having to “go backwards”.  But if you weren’t in the online space and were working a traditional 9-5 and needed to do some extra training or work some overtime…no one would bat an eyelid! 

It’s a double standard I’m sick of seeing! The same amount of understanding needs to be applied to the entrepreneur world!

It’s easier for me to say all of this now I’ve come out of the other side of these bad months and have some very exciting things in the works, but that doesn’t make anything I’ve talked about less true. 

Working for yourself isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. 

It isn’t going to be magical and easy all the time.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t working or you’re doing something wrong.

Keep going, adjust when you need to and come back stronger! You’ve got this! 

If you feel like you’re going through a tough time at the moment, feel free to reach out for a chat and I’ll always help if I can!