JC: Having a social media platform that generates revenue is not the same thing as running a business.

Are you building your business on quicksand?!

TB: I think a lot of people are! This is why we want to create this conversation. It is not about pointing fingers or making anybody feel bad, but let’s have some real conversation beyond just hearing about the million dollar launches or the perfect funnel. All of us are striving to create, make a change, and grow our businesses, but what does that mean? 

It was just last week that Facebook and Instagram died and then were resuscitated. I’m not one of those people that are like, “Listen, they’re going to go away and you better have your email list. Your email list is everything.” It’s ONE of the things, but was a good wakeup call.  

#InstagramFacebookBlackout of March 2019 – it was a thing! I got so much stuff done that day and it was actually awesome. It wasn’t a bad thing because I’m not reliant on any one social media or platform. I need them, I love them, I know how to use them, but I have other things as well. In the beginning phases of my business (calling myself out), I thought I had a business because I was starting to generate money through social media. Then I got a wakeup call.

JC: This whole conversation was born out of the blackout from the other day. I saw a lot of people jumping in and wanting to give their two cents, so I figured we should talk about this too.

When I first started in the online space, I had no idea what it really took to build a business. I think I would still be here regardless and I don’t know if I would have believed people if they showed me what it really took to grow an online business. In the beginning, I was a network marketing. And when you’re in network marketing, you are solely focusing on sales and marketing and the company that you’re with is handling the other sections of what makes most businesses successful, which is your operations tier, your legal, your bookkeeping, your taxes, all of that *fun* stuff.

So when you’re in network marketing, if somebody wants a refund, you don’t have the process that. Somebody else that’s part of that company is handling all of those requests. I remember when I stepped into creating my own stuff, it was like, “Oh crap, I have to do all of that other work now and I’m just one person! How is one person now going to handle all of these departments and other things that need to be done in order to run a successful business?” That was a huge wake up call for me. I didn’t really even learn the distinctions for those until I was way far along in my business, which is also why I wanted to have this conversation to help define some of these things for newer entrepreneurs so they understand what their business could potentially look like so that it’s running more effectively.

TB: And I have to call myself out, as well as many of the different types of entrepreneurs I work with. I attract a lot of creative entrepreneurs.

I’m on this journey and I hope I never get off this journey. It’s not even about an end point for me. It’s always up leveling. Learning more about myself as a person, as well as a real businessperson.

But here’s the thing, as creative entrepreneurs, we often ignore the things that are the actual business. We use the excuse of being creative or artistic or being the visionary, so we don’t learn or know the numbers and the things that actually are the sustainability part. The part that creates the longevity and the ability to show up and exist year after year after year.

How could you grow if you don’t know what your numbers are? 

I was that way too in the beginning. Like a lot of people out there, I was the accidental entrepreneur even though I had freelanced and worked online for 20 years as a makeup artist and a wardrobe stylist and a set designer, and doing all the stuff in production with lots of people who are super creative. But even as a freelancer, I just would invoice and somehow magically a check would appear because I didn’t have to do those things.

I’d have to do the entire ins and outs of being a solopreneur and then go into the next phase of the solopreneur who DOES all of those things.

Oh my gosh, I have to pay taxes?

I have to have bookkeepers or do it myself?

I need to know what my costs are?

What’s a PNL?!  

I have opportunity. I’m making some money. I see the light, but now I need to act and be the business owner if I want to exist year after year. That was huge for me. It is not enough. It does not mean that you get to be the cool biz boss chick or whatever the many other hashtags are that makes entrepreneurship so sexy. 15 to 20 years ago, it really meant you’re broke and unemployed. Now everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. If you knew alllll the things, the real entrepreneurs are going to be like, “I’m going to step up. This is what I want to do. I was built for this. I was made for this. I am a hundred thousand percent unemployable,” and then other people are like, “Oh, so its not about taking my laptop to the beach and working one hour a day?”

It is, in the beginning, hard work. It’s work that we love, which is why we love to do it, but there are long days. There’s a lot of learning, but you have to have that characteristic of wanting to be a lifelong learner and investing in whatever tools and software and programs and coaches and whatever it takes to reach our next goal. Is that what makes you a business?

JC: It’s interesting because if I look back at my journey from 2011 to around 2013, I was a straight up dabbler. I just dabbled and dipped my toes in. I was learning along the way, but I wasn’t really all in until 2014 and then I was like, “I’m doing this thing.” 

I always talk about how successful entrepreneurship is, above everything else, about state management and learning to manage your emotional state through all the highs and lows and not freak out. Like you talk about during your launches: diapers and feeding tubes, baby!

TB: Who has time to eat when you’re in the middle of a launch?! Nah, launching doesn’t need to be that way, but I always joke in the beginning stages because I was so all in. I did really long live videos during my launches where I’m so excited because I get to feature and show off my best students. We end up doing these marathon live videos and we do it until, TMI, I gotta pee! I didn’t really wear a diaper… c’mon let’s be real. But I used to joke that we’re going to cut this off until I’m starving and you can hear my stomach growling.

Now we have a solution. My husband comes in and he’ll entertain! They love it. He’ll pop in so I can go do whatever I need to do… shove some food in my face, grab a drink, and then come back! He’s my commercial break.

JC: I may need to ask Michael if he will step in! Ha!

TB: Your fiance can come in and he can sing and perform. It will be so entertaining! That will be your little commercial break. It’s not always that way, but it for me in the beginning. That’s one of the things, right? You create more systems. Just like Jen, I didn’t have this amazing day where the skies parted and all the angels sang. I didn’t have this phenomenal epiphany, but I did make a switch where I was going to take myself seriously.

The catalyst that helped create that wasn’t one distinct moment, it was more about the idea that what I teach actually matters. What I teach actually has a transformative effect on my students. What I teach is actually helping people get in front of the camera so that they’re not hidden, they’re heard, because they have their own unique teachings and messages they want to get out into the world.

I had a handful of students that I was working with and we were creating those real changes, which were having a ripple effect. They got over their fears, decided to go all, and take their businesses seriously. 

For me, the catalyst, the push, the reason behind EVERYTHING I do is because it fuels me. The passion is to help other people. We all want to help other people and that’s fantastic, but how are you going to do that? How are you going to create the machine that is the business? As creatives, we still need to look at ourselves as business owners and figure out what we don’t love to do and outsource that.

Going back to the great blackout of March 2019 when everyone freaked out because Instagram and Facebook was gone for seven and a half hours, it made us wake up to how dependent we are on those platforms. During that day, I did have a scheduled call with my paid students in my monthly membership. We luckily did not have the call on the Facebook platform via Facebook live or inside our private group, it was on Zoom, but we oftentimes post reminders and will let people know when the 45 minute count down is. But because I can also contact my students via email, they got the reminder.

I have secondary and thirdary (?!) way of contacting my students. You don’t want to be social media dependent. If you’re like, “Instagram is my jam,” you should have a secondary jam! Don’t be dependent on a platform that you don’t own. Yeah, I’m never going to get off of Facebook and Instagram. I do build my business there, but it’s not the only option that I have. Have options, just like you need options for shoes. Just like with your financial investments, you’ve gotta diversify.

JC: I had a big scare with that back in 2014 or 2015 when I was still doing network marketing. I was running so many active groups for my network marketing team at the time for people at different levels. Facebook thought I was spamming Facebook groups, so they blocked me from posting in any groups. At the time, I didn’t have an email list. I didn’t have any other way to contact these people and provide the service that they had invested in.

A social media platform that generates revenue is not a business.

There’s so much glorification right now of being an influencer and getting paid brand deals and having the swipe up links. All of that is great. I’m not discrediting the way that anyone makes money. I think if it’s providing a service or solving a problem for someone, you’re doing it right. But if Instagram or Facebook is the only way you can contact people, well, what if you get hacked? I don’t say this to scare you. I say this so that you can prepare yourself for the worst and never have to worry that anything’s ever going to happen to your business.

TB: Right – that you’re not building your business on quicksand! We know phenomenally huge accounts that did get hacked a few years ago. I know people right now who have gotten their Instagram accounts shut down for no reason.

Tell me my friends… if you don’t believe me right now, tell me what the 1-800 customer service number is for Instagram or Facebook. There isn’t one!

So even if that happened and you are able to get your account back, do you have four to seven days or weeks to recover your account? What if your account doesn’t get recovered and you have to start from scratch?

JC: There was another influencer who had built 90 percent of her business on YouTube. And because of some issue with it being attached to an old Google Plus and not the active account (which she didn’t realize), they deleted her entire YouTube account. She didn’t have backups of any of her videos and didn’t have any way to rebuild any of that content. She had to start over from scratch. Thankfully this person had built up her Instagram and had an email list, so she was able to recover, but still that’s a huge loss.

TB: Yeah, and I’m sure it was never the same. Maybe it’s a good way to filter out the people who are no longer interested in what you do, but I would choose not to do it in that way if I wanted to do that.

We’re not here to scare anybody, but this is a wakeup call.

Put your big girl business pants on.

( I hate the word panties… It’s like the word moist. Can’t stand it. Ahh!! But I digress.)

I really appreciated it when people gave me that real talk. I do not identify myself as an influencer, but a huge part of my business is still in affiliate marketing. I am just not 100% dependent on affiliate marketing, even though in just a few years I’ve sold millions of dollars in digital and physical products. I don’t talk about it a ton, but it’s been the thing that I built when I originally started my blog. I still have traffic coming in through those old funnels.

What are those things that you qualify as a real business?!

JC: For me, what makes something a successful and legitimate business is something that is sustainable, consistent, and scalable. If we look up the dictionary definition of a business, it’s pretty much ‘has an income stream’ or ‘is an exchange of money for services.’ So if we want to look at that base level of what is a business, sure, then you could say posting something on Instagram and making money means you’re in business. However, when I look at my personal understanding of what I needed in order to actually be scalable, it really does need to have all of those key pieces.

Tiffany and I coach a lot of people who come to us with these problems where they’re like, “I’ve been growing my business for three years and I’m still in the red. I’m investing in myself, I’m showing up, I’m making a couple of sales, but it’s not consistent. I’m working 12 hour days and I feel like my husband is mad at me.” It’s fine if you need to hustle in the beginning. I did it. You did it. Most people do it. But I’m kind of in this place where I want to come to the table and challenge that and say…

What IF we didn’t have to struggle and work so hard in the beginning?

I do think there are some things that you need to learn and go through as an individual to be able to handle the next level of abundance that is coming to you. If you’re a brand new entrepreneur and I hand you a million dollar business tomorrow, you’re not going to do anything with it. You won’t know how. There’s things that happen one brick at a time. I see that and I also want to challenge these old paradigms of…

We need to struggle.

We need to be hustling.

It takes seven years to grow an audience.

It takes ten years to hit your first million.

Nonsense. If you have the right steps in the right order, you can do it as fast as you want.

TB: Have you seen the documentary about social media influencers with Paris Hilton? That girl on that platform (that I never use because I’m probably too old!) who built her entire audience one video platform and then IT WENT AWAY. Her entire business. All of her income. She has a presence on Instagram, but she never saved her videos, she didn’t put them on YouTube, and she didn’t diversify.

Don’t ever put yourself into that position. If you want to be an influencer, fantastic. If you’re getting brand deals, great. I love them too, but I don’t become dependent on them. I look at them strictly as a bonus of my business. I don’t become revenue dependent on that because people can drop you. 

JC: I’m so glad you’re talking about this because I think this does have that overlap with the brand deals. They can decide you’re done and you don’t have control over it.

TB: OHHH, THAT GIRL whose mama – oh my gosh – it’s all over the news. Her mom Laurie what’s-her-face from Full House, the one that bought her daughter’s way into USC! You guys know the story. She paid all that money to get her in there when she didn’t legit qualify and then they got in through sports for sports she doesn’t even play.

The daughter did build her YouTube and her Instagram as an influencer and she had deals with Sephora. Sephora dropped her the next day! Regardless if you lose your brand deals because of a scandal and you blame your mom, I still think she could make a comeback because people loooove to see people go down, but people also love to see the comeback and she can rephrase that. I know she could. Don’t be dependent on these brand deals alone. The thing is, you are cutting off your options if you’re not diversifying how it is that you’re putting your information out there.

I’m really looking at my business as a real business, including the legal stuff to make sure you’re doing all the things to protect yourself. I didn’t know any of these things before, but this is your friendly wake up call to do those things proactively before you have to stop everything else that you’re doing and this is the only thing you’re focusing on.

Don’t wait. We all wait for those catastrophes to happen to take the action. Could your business survive tomorrow if your Instagram page disappeared? Would your business disappear tomorrow if your email service got shut down?

Just because you have an email service, it doesn’t mean that your emails are being delivered. People can unsubscribe all day, everyday. It’s not the end all be all, but it’s one of the things that we are using, brick by brick, to build a solid foundation of a business. I wish people talked more about the financial and legal sides and how we are diversifying our business. When I started off, I did invest in those coaches that looked at my business with a microscope and said, “You know, you are building your business on quicksand and it’s going to sink if you don’t take care of those things. You owe it to the people that you’re serving to solidify your business.”

JC: I see this too, especially with legal documents. A lot of newer coaches are like, “Well, let me just sign that first big ticket clients so that I can afford the thousand dollars worth of legal documents that I need to cover my ass,” and I’m just like, “That’s a really dangerous way to go about your business.” You need disclaimers, especially in health and wellness. You need to make sure all the language is in there. If you’re doing one on one coaching, you need to make sure that cannot decide, “You didn’t get me the results that I wanted, so I’m going to reach into your bank account and take back that five thousand dollars that I paid.” I’ve heard from coaches that this has happened! Better to go into that dynamic with your clients knowing, energetically, that the expectations are clear, that the outcomes are clear, and that you are not going to get screwed, especially if you don’t have an LLC.

Of course, I’m not giving legal advice, this is passed along from all of my other legal friends, let me give my legal disclaimer here! I am not  a legal expert! I’m just passing this information along. Somebody who wants a refund or somebody who wants to sue them, because they are not protected with legal documents or an LLC, can go after their house and their other assets. That is probably not going to happen to you, but why put yourself in a position where it could? That’s what, to me, makes somebody a CEO. Somebody who’s being conscious of all of the different areas of what it takes to run a successful business.

TB: A lot of us, myself included, buried our heads in the sand when it came to legal, financial, and the whole accounting part of our business. You will either face the ramifications of that or you are going to be proactive and do something about it.

JC: Avoidance doesn’t make it go away! There’s just way too many things that can go wrong.

You want to be proactive instead of reactive.

What would you say is the one thing people should do to start being more proactive on some of these things?

TB: Look at your business from 30 feet above. 

Where’s your traffic coming?

Where’s your leads?

How are you taking your revenue and where is it going?

Is it co-mingling with your personal things?

Is it all going on the same credit card?

Are you paying your quarterly taxes?

Are you set up as a business?

Listen, I know not everybody starts that way, but are you putting yourself out there where you are creating that liability?

Also, not being dependent on just one revenue stream. I absolutely believe in having multiple streams of income, but with focus! A lot of people will be so out of focus trying too many different things, dabbling everywhere, and succeeding nowhere.

When I say multiple streams of income, have a plan. Know what your business plan is and how your business is structured. Mine’s a little bit different. It’s not the norm and I like it that way, but I know exactly how it is. We can pivot at any time and we can learn more about ourselves. We can have people *honestly and lovingly* give us that kick in the booty so that we can figure out what’s working and what’s not. You can’t change unless you know what to change.

Constantly stay in that mindset of abundance, curiosity, and creativity. You absolutely possess the ability to learn anything that you need to be that phenomenal business owner.