5 things I learned from my first year in business
Thoughtful Communications is celebrating its first milestone: One year in business! Celebrating success as a speechwriter is a weird one because the whole deal is that you don’t take the credit for your work. But running a business is a little bit different to speechwriting, so I wanted to mark this moment and share a few of the things I’ve learned from my first year of solopreneurship.
You have to put yourself out there
This sounds obvious, right? If you start a business you need to be prepared to market and advertise it, otherwise your potential customers won’t know you exist or what you sell. But as a speechwriter I’m used to being behind the scenes, so it felt really uncomfortable to write a newsletter and speak at conferences in my own voice. If that was bad, using my voice to ask people to buy my services was awkward as hell! But I’ve got better at it with practice, and learned that it’s unavoidable if I want this business to be a long-term concern.
2. My finance background helped
The scariest thing about walking away from a corporate job was leaving behind the financial security. A salary that dropped into my account every two weeks, a 401k match, and an annual bonus are all things I valued a lot. Before making the big leap to running my own company, I saved up several months of living expenses and put some financial goals in place. Having spent most of my career in financial services, I knew I needed expert advice for the other pieces. I worked with a CPA and financial advisor to figure out the best structure for my business and set up a retirement plan. I’ve since started working with a bookkeeper too and having a team on my side who are much better at numbers than I am is a major stress relief.
3. Collaboration is better as a solopreneur
It’s easy to think about speechwriters and solopreneurs as lone wolves. But when I reflect on the past year, it’s been the collaborations that have been the highlights. Creating The Friendly Ghost podcast with Joe from N2 Comms and Jody from Roulette Productions, running a public speaking program with Rose King, and launching the Executive Communications Masterclass with Sharon McIntosh were major highlights. When you collaborate as an entrepreneur there’s no politics or sharp elbows, just really cool, smart people building really cool, smart things together.
4. There are lots of different business models
In my last two corporate roles I ran a speechwriting course for anyone who wanted to learn more about how to write a speech and I loved it. Lots of speechwriters who go solo dive straight into consulting. But I really wanted to keep running training courses after I left the corporate world. It’s hard work putting them together and takes a lot longer than I expected to build webpages and figure out payments, but it’s been my favourite thing about running a business and I hope to do a lot more of them in the future.
5. Celebrating success is essential!
Whether you’re thinking about starting your own independent venture or not, it’s so important that speechwriters celebrate their successes. It’s easy to keep your head down and move from one project to the next without taking a moment to look up and say to yourself: I did that! If you’re an in-house speechwriter, it’s easy to wait for your boss or your principal to tell you you’re doing a good job and they may not always remember. I decided to treat myself to a new watch to celebrate this first milestone. If you just wrote an awesome speech or saved a town hall script from disaster, buy yourself a little treat for all your hard work.
