Lack of clarity for your new business? Read this before you do anything else.
“I’ve hit a wall. I have that idea and everything worked out but I don’t know how to approach my first client to do business.”
I know that feeling of hitting a wall very well. I’m overwhelmed because there are too many different options and what I’m starting to do is procrastinating — doing other stuff, often things that are less important or not necessary at all. But why? Why am I repeatedly falling into this behavior. How can I stop and finally concentrate on growing my company in the direction I which for?
You may struggle with the same thing and would like to finally know how to overcome it.
I find out that we are going into this kind of habit when we feel stressed. Fear and anxiety play a big role, why we are not achieving what we want. We kind of shut down because we’re afraid of failure.
What causes that fear?
One of the reason can be lack of experience. Additionally, lack of knowledge and the all time classic: lack of money. But what really lies behind is the lack of clarity.
Before we go much deeper how you reach clarity, let me make that one thing clear:
I learned that trying is the only way. There are no shortcuts, other than trying if you want to succeed. Either you succeed in the short run or you’re going to learn how not to do it. I went through that rollercoaster more than once. It hurts, it’s uncomfortable and you’re going through hard emotions. Still, it is the fastest track if you want to succeed for the things you’re passionate about.
Either way you will find out the way you have to go. It is more a lack of resources While knowing it, I don’t like to hear it myself but being patient and working hard is the foundation to building up on your new empire.
Focus on helping other people. Live is short. You will get out so much more than what you will bring into it. But it will take time.
Okay, now back to step one: Getting the necessary clarity.
Create a list and give it a name: For example Julia or you may prefer Elisabeth, Emilia, Susan or Peter. You may give it any name, but it has to be a person’s name. Whether the full name nor not, it doesn’t matter.
Create a “clarity matrix”
Part one is about writing down exercises that will help you to get out everything out of your mind. And the second part is getting clarity about the people, your future audience and/or clients, you want to address.
And coming up with one solution at a time. Yes, there are thousands of different options out there and this will get you to feel quite overwhelmed. From my experience I can tell that will always be the case, so what helps to write down all the options and then break it down to the one you think has the most impact.
Prioritisation is the key here. Make a list and prioritise the items. You can use a matrix. It’s a three column grid. The first one is wider than the other columns and it describes your activities you want to do. So for example “Posting your work on Dribbble or Behance”, “Rework your case studies”, “Research for new client opportunities” and so on. Please, write down every single thing you think you need to do as a tactic to achieve your goals.
And the next smaller columns are on the right — one column will be named impact and the other one urgency. Then you will rate each activity on a score of one to five. So if it will have a lot of impact on your business, you will rate it as a five. Low impact will be one. That means that the items with the highest score should be done first. Mark the top three things with the highest score and focus on these ones.
“Brain dump” is the goal here. It means: Write down everything you can think of. If it comes to rating your activities, use educated guesses. It sound silly, but deep down, you already know.
The “people list”
After you made that list, let’s look at the people you want to offer your products and/or services.
Let’s start with a clean blank paper. Write down what kind of people you want to address.
It will help you to recognize that different people have different needs and expectations and that you should address that in your products/services in order to fulfill the user’s needs.
You already make up a name for this person. I picked Julia. She represent your target group. All the needs, goals, pain points, expectations, desires, habits and cultural backgrounds should be listed.
Also: Don’t guess everything, go out and ask potential clients You will have it much easier to make crucial concept decisions since your created user is made up of observations of many people (Julia is now a real human being). Your application can line up for a specific somebody, rather than a generic everybody.
I think you already figured it out; it’s basically an slightly adapted version of personas. If you don’t know what personas are yet, you should check out my article specifically about it.
I know, it’s may not satisfying enough in this moment. Still, I hope I was able to provide you a first tool that brings you one step closer to your desires. Starting your own business is tough, it requires strength in your willingness to suffer. These methods and techniques will help you not getting lost, give you hopefully the decisive path to fulfill your dream.
My endeavor is to guide you through potential failure.
If you liked that article and want to read more, please, clap some rounds for that article. It helps me to identifier if you want to read more about.
Alright, until next time.
