5 Lessons from my first year as a business owner
2023 was my first official year of being a full-time artist, author, and business owner- and it was simultaneously fulfilling, challenging, and expansive all at once. I encountered God’s love and the gentle guidance of the universe in ways I could never imagine, and that laid the foundation for the excitement I feel about 2024. Here are a few lessons I learned from my first year as a creative entrepreneur!
I have to upgrade my identity
When you decide to register a business and share it with the world, you have to step into the identity of a CEO, a founder, someone who runs sh*t. Period.
It took time to craft that identity for myself in a way that is authentic to me, my mission for what I want to do, and the kind of clients that I want to work with.
It took time, but it was necessary.
It becomes quite hard to run a company when you're still thinking of yourself as subordinate to somebody else. Running a company means answering to yourself, while holding yourself accountable to mitigate your blind spots and curtail your weaknesses. So, you have to start thinking like a CEO. Start thinking with foresight and build your business framework in ways where you can expand, and eventually outsource some of the work to other people who are aligned with your mission.
Upgrading your sense of identity sets up the foundation and lays the groundwork for your business to blossom. It's very important, and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise
Time is an asset in my control.
Time is a vital asset and I learned to treat it as such. Not in a way where I worried about running out of it, but instead shifting my consciousness to embrace the potential of any given moment. Changing my mind to view my time as an asset completely in my control revolutionized how I was prioritizing work, and how I was spending my days. I had to deprogram my mind from wasting time in the ways that I did to be considered “busy” or “productive” in past corporate roles.I realized that I didn’t have to take on pointless meetings and busy work like I did when I was a marketing manager.
No tea, no shade, but I realized corporate America had done a number on my ideas about what it means to actually be productive. A lot of it is meetings, meetings, meetings,and not actually creating anything. Just meeting to talk about what needs to be done, and getting stressed when it’s not done so scheduling a meeting to discuss the plan to get things done.
But with entrepreneurship you have to create a lot of these deliverables by yourself and do so consistently–without the allure of meetings to serve as an excusable distraction. You have to consistently keep showing up. Keep writing copy. Keep editing videos. Keep doing this. Keep doing that. And yeah, you can take breaks, but you have to use your time wisely and treat it as an asset in your control. It’s the only way to move the needle forward.
I can be flexible when defining my target audience
While defining and understanding my target audience, I learned to also be open and flexible in understanding that target audiences can ebb and flow.
So with my company, it's primarily focused on African women because I am an African woman. So, helping and inspiring other African women across the diaspora has always been my passion. It is embedded in my company’s name, Alaere, which is an Ijaw word–my mom's maiden tongue. This company was inspired by her and the Nigerian women I look up to in my life. So it's really all about African women, and I’m not shying away from that.
Does this mean, however, that only African woman can benefit from my work? No,it doesn’t! And I've actually learned that a lot of people from different cultures benefit from what I'm talking about in Force of Nature, because we're all humans, you know? We all go through various seasons in our life and need to honor divine feminine energy in our lives so we can align with the earth’s natural rhythms of expansion.
And even though I have my target audience in mind, it does not mean that I close off opportunities to reach other women- or people in general. I still create content that anyone can benefit from, like how to publish your first book, how to be a business minded artist. These are all resources that anyone can source inspiration from.
Yes, I still have that avatar in my head of who I'm speaking to, but that just helps ensure that I am bringing value in a direct way.
This tip also extends to the idea of an ideal client. It took time and flexibility to understand that the clients who would receive the most value from my services (and be able to pay me what I’m worth) were not necessarily who I initially thought they would be. So I had to be open to sharing my expertise in new spaces, and I’m glad I did so!
Consistency is the main ingredient for success
Show up.Everyday. That’s it, that’s the recipe. You have to maintain consistency even when profits are not immediately pouring into your bank account. The money always comes, but if you are not consistently building a solid foundation, many things will slip through the cracks.
There were times when everything seemed bleak af (and that’s putting things lightly) but then I’d pray to God for strength, keep persevering, and then something magical would happen. Now, I can look back on 2023 and be like “whoa, I accomplished a lot last year!” I secured a major client, I did a book signing in a different city, I gave a book talk at an Ivy League University, I launched my first art collection and sold my art to new collectors, I grew my Youtube channel. That's all pretty cool stuff! But if I had focused on “how much money did I make in this quarter” and things of that nature, I wouldn’t have lasted even close to a year as a business owner. Consistency matters because it will lead you to success, and it all compounds on top of each other. How consistent you are is going to be a big thing, and it will begin to serve as an upgraded method of gauging your success. You just have to keep showing up to the task and believe you will make it.
I found new metrics of success that fit who I want to be
Ultimately, finding different metrics of success beyond money is what kept me sane. Because if I only considered the monetary figures as indication of my business’s potential, I would have become discouraged in the first month! I began to view consistency, my follow-through, brand recognition, my impact, and other foundational essentials as metrics of success for where I am now. And I know they will ultimately lead to the financial metrics I’m working towards.But I had to give myself grace while being a beginner at something challenging. The first year of any business endeavor requires a steadfast mind, one that believes the big visions will come to fruition in due time. To have made it to a year like this is a huge accomplishment in itself and I learned to honor that as something worth celebrating.
These are just a handful of the many lessons that my first year of entrepreneurship taught me. I was raised by two entrepreneurs who ingrained in me the importance of self-belief, radical faith, and purpose-driven tenacity. Building my own company from scratch has always been a dream of mine, and I’m blessed to exist in a time where it’s a reality.
If you want to learn more about some of the lessons I took from this journey into creative entrepreneurship, then be sure to listen to the first episode of the Alaere Academy Podcast- “How to Become a Business Minded Artist.” I also recently filmed a youtube video talking about how I was able to publish my first book, and ultimately embody the confidence to venture into creative entrepreneurship full time. I’ve linked it below!
I think especially as women, becoming business owners and creating a profitable framework around our gifts and passions is a great way of protecting our financial agency and building legacies in a patriarchal, capitalist society. Alaere Lifestyle will continue to exist as a platform that emboldens young women leaders in the arts, academia, and business. So stay tuned for more educational and enriching content coming your way!
xx,
Odemi