Who doesn’t want a thriving business? I am pretty sure that when you started this journey you envisioned your business bringing in enough money to sustain you, to give you the freedom that you’ve always wanted. But instead you’ve been struggling to grow your lash business, the number of clients and are barely making enough money to pay the costs of running your business. That State of Struggle is very familiar to me, for the first three months of my business, I experienced it. Trust me, I’ve been there. . .

After nights of running the midnight oil, you are probably at a point where you are wondering how long you can actually sustain this state of not just struggle but stress. The good news is that there ARE ways to get off this hustle hamster wheel to nowhere. Let me shed some clarity on what I did to make sure that I could focus on living in my purpose and focus on fulfilling my dreams.

Mindset: If You Don’t Believe It, You Can’t Achieve It

If you struggle with believing in yourself, you’ll never get where you’ve envisioned yourself to be. These growing pains are signs that you are not in your comfort zone. No one ever grew by staying inside of comfort and what is already known. And truth be told, entrepreneurship is not a get rich quick scheme. It is totally the opposite. It takes time, it takes grit, it takes tons of motivation and will to educate yourself.

Success doesn’t come to those who have it all figured on the first time. That’s not realistic at all. It comes to those who didn’t give up and committed to “figuring it out”. Evolving. And learning the sometimes painful lessons that come with growing a lash business.

If you do not accept this struggle as growing pains – you may want to reassess your WHYs and even this whole entrepreneurship thing. You may be better off working for someone else who provides you the stability and comfort of simply not having to “figure it out on your own”.

Another hard pill to swallow is that school doesn’t necessarily prepare you for entrepreneurship. It prepares you to be a good employee. So when you graduate school (primary, secondary, college or even beauty school) – you may be expecting entrepreneurship to be somewhat of a no-brainer. But this is not a natural state of mind in our world and the reality is that entrepreneurship is not for everyone. You have to learn to roll with the punches and acquire a tough, relentless skin.

Clarity Drives Action

We sometimes are diving deep into the “Monkey See Monkey Do” rabbit hole (rabbits and monkeys? Stick with me here!). Maybe you’ve asked a question in a free Facebook group and you got 30 different answers to your question. You’re now more confused than you were before, but you are convinced you need to start going through this new list of “ideas” to implement in your business to get you where you want to be.

You try the first 2-3 things on this lash biz knowledge dump from other successful artists and you’re still not seeing results. So maybe you cling to the one theme you see through half of the responses and that’s using Groupon or lowering your prices or taking another lash training or using a different adhesive

But what you actually need is clarity on where to start and creating a clear action plan to execute that strategy. Assess your current resources, work with what you got and start rocking out your plan that will actually get you forward progress in your lash business. It can be as simple as identifying your ideal client and creating an entire marketing plan and customer experience that she (along with 20 of her closest friends) would rave about.  Once you have that clarity… business will click for you! Check out this video training I did on “Step 1 of Marketing”.

There’s nothing better than having that “AHA” moment where you see the plan ahead with clear and concise steps.

MARKETING WITH INTENTION

Let me be clear, marketing is where most of us fail. The most important missed concept is your Unique Selling Proposition – what makes you special, unique?

Once you get clear on things like your USP and your ideal client, you can start approaching marketing with intention. This creates effective marketing – there’s nothing like having people DM you for your business on social media as you are killing it with content and showing what you are made of. It’s addicting and makes you want to keep posting and keep serving your audience because you know it works to draw new clients into your business.

But, you cannot hand this essential piece of your business over to someone without you actually getting your hands dirty in it first. You need to learn who your ideal client is, what their typical pain points are, and what their objections are for not purchasing your product or service. Once you have this down and you have the resources to support a social media or marketing manager, you can then start to outsource the marketing over to someone else.

As a business owner, it is your responsibility to:

1. Consistently drive leads of potential clients into your business.
2. Create awareness across all platforms so that you can continue to fill in your books.
3. Get to know your clients and increase your skill sets and artistry as you grow.  

Keep in mind that as an entrepreneur, no one will make you do anything you don’t want to do. You are the boss. So you need to be disciplined enough to wear all the hats necessary as a business owner until you’ve figured out enough of them to start seeing some success and generating some income to hand them off to someone else’s who’s an expert at it or who can take it to the next level and do it better than you.

One last thought: If you don’t prepare yourself to be a student in your own lash business, how can you measure someone else’s success in growing -your- business? You have to know how to do it first to train someone else to do it for you.

If you are ready to remove yourself from this state of struggle and finally accelerate your lash business to the next level, we encourage you to join 100s of your fellow Lashpreneurs inside of The Lashpreneur Society, our group business coaching program to help you START, BUILD, and GROW a thriving lash business on your own terms. Get on our waitlist to be notified of our next open enrollment at www.thelashpreneur.com/society