The Emotional Stages Of Building Your Home Business

You finally did it. After weeks, or months, or even years of planning, learning, and preparing, you finally launched your home business. You are excited to share the fruits of your hard work with the world. It is like being pregnant, you can hardly wait to see the baby and share the baby with the world. Your business is like another baby in your life. You built your website and so you launch…and all you hear is crickets.

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Well, maybe not right at first, for the first month you get the curiosity seekers. Those who are just curious as to what you are actually doing but not really interested in it. But they definitely help your website analytics.

Then you roll into the next weeks and months, and those analytics that looked so promising now make you want to cry.

Let’s Talk Reality When it comes to Starting a Home Business

Wouldn’t it be nice if you launched a project and overnight it took off? I’m sure you’ve heard those stories and hope lightning will strike you. I read this recently and decided it was worth including in this post: Few things labeled an overnight success actually are.

You are free to let out a frustrated sigh and maybe even a tear or two. Let’s be honest, you want your business to be an overnight success. You’ve put so much time, effort, and energy into. It needs to be successful so you can validate your efforts.

Time spent on your business means that your time wasn’t spent in other places. You may be doing all the heavy lifting, but your family has also made sacrifices so you can start a home business. Everyone around you is affected by your brilliant home business idea. So there is a lot at stake. More than just your time and effort.

Starting a Home Business is Hard Work

I know you already know this because you’ve probably already started your business. But sometimes you just need to be reminded that this is the natural process. And, rarely, very rarely is any business an overnight success.

It took Pixar approximately nine years to be successful. This doesn’t count all the years before the official founding of Pixar when the creators were working on a computer that could handle digital animation. You can read more about that story in Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull. Sidenote, this is a really good book. Especially, if you need to read a story about maintaining stamina in business.

You probably hear this a lot, my husband tells me at least once a day…be patient with your home business. It takes time to build. But really who has time for that. Like seriously, I’ve already spent years that nobody knows about building this thing. I’ve already been patient and you are asking me to keep being patient. Seriously, are you for real?

The Emotional Stages of Starting a Home Business

Starting a home business or any business for that matter is a highly emotional endeavor. You are putting yourself out there like never before, and failure or success is totally up to you. No pressure, right? Here are the emotional stages of starting a business or blog from my expert but unscientific opinion.

Idea

You start with a great idea. You’ve examined all the angles, learned what you need to learn, and committed to go all in. It is exciting and scary at the same time. Nipping at your heels is the little voice asking, “But what if this fails?” You banish the voice to the far-reaches of your mind because ain’t nobody got time for that.

Launch

Total and complete excitement. You’ve worked hard at growing this baby. You nurtured it and gave your time and energy to it. No one knows (except maybe your family) the tears, the long nights and early mornings, the stress, and emotional investment put into your idea. You built your website, wrote posts, created YouTube and Podcast shows. Now it is time to share it with the world. So you do and people are interested in seeing what you are doing…at first.

Drip…Drip…Drip

Imagine holding a cup under a faucet and trying to fill it up one drip at a time. Drip…drip…drip…drip. At this rate you will be standing there forever just waiting for the cup to get any water. This is what this stage can feel like. The curiosity seekers moved on and now you need to find the people who are going to turn into supporters and fans. They may be people you know or people you’ve only met online. This is the hardest part of starting a home business.

You read the books, like Marketing Made Simple, Start with Why, How to Make a Living with Your Writing, The Mental Game of Writing, Atomic Habits, and oh so many more. The classes about marketing and finding your tribe were watched. You are more than prepared to take the world by storm. But it still feels like you are throwing spaghetti at the wall hoping something will stick. And it is a lot of work.

This is probably the hardest stage because nobody likes waiting. So let me remind us all of this one very important lesson: Few things are actually an overnight success.

Baby Steps

You keep being consistent and reminding people of your services or product. Not in a pushy salesy way, but in a helpful, I understand the problems you are facing, kind of way. And you get a new subscriber, or a new follower. And, yes, it is ok to get excited because you got one click on your affiliate link. Yes, someone is reading your stuff and actually clicking through. Slowly, very slowly, they share with their friends, and now you get 2 followers a week. And then 3…

Snowball Effect

This is the idea of a snowball gathering more snow and momentum as it keeps rolling down the hill. Like something you would see in a Peanuts movie. I am pretty sure Woodstock and his bird friends were caught in one of these snowballs a time or two. This idea works the same in business, the more people you reach the more momentum you gain. As you are gaining more clients and customers, they will share it with the their friends. The snowball effect is now happening with your marketing and you are getting more clients.

This is the emotional roller coaster of starting a business. Excitement then frustration then excitement then frustration then…you get the idea.

Maintaining and Growing

You get to shift gears now and really focus on your existing clients and supporters. Your at a point where you can really assess your marketing strategies and keep   nurturing subscribers and followers. You are past the “throwing spaghetti at the wall stage” and can focus on new products and services. Yes, you did it!

4 Lessons to Help you be Patient (sort of) Building Your Home Business

All of the emotional stages mentioned above require one virtue that I am terrible at…patience. Who has time to be patient? Like, really, I need to see my business take off because I’ve already been patient building it…now I need to continue to be patient? Collective scream anyone?

Here are some reminders when it comes to being patient while building your home business. I am reminding myself of all these as I am writing.

Everything takes work

I am convinced, at this point, that part of your success can be contributed to just outlasting the other guy or other mom. There is a meme on social media of two guys digging to find gold, and one turns back right before he reaches the treasure. Sometimes you just need to keep digging and keep going, even when all you see is dirt.

Your idea needs to be nurtured

Ideas are really like babies. There is the pregnancy (you working on your idea), then birth (launch), and then nurture (everything you do to grow your business). Just like raising a kid, your business will go through stages and changes, and sometimes be downright frustrating. But through it all, your job is to make sure it is raised properly.

You can’t just launch your business, do nothing with it, and hope people find you. It requires marketing, spending time with it, and investing your time and money into it.

Are you even ready to handle instant success

This is a very honest question to ask yourself. When you are just starting out there are so many things that you are still learning. Can you really handle instant success? Or would it completely overwhelm your current systems and processes?

We all want to go from 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds, but this may actually hurt your business more than help. As you grow there will be things your learn along the way and processes you start to implement that will enable you to handle a larger audience.

Grow into your business

It is usually better to grow into your role then to be dumped into it. Growing allows you to make plans, learn specific skills to help you, and hire people as needed. It is a more natural process to manage your business. And it also means you are better equipped to handle whatever comes your way.

Conclusion

Whoa! You made it to the end and that was a lot. I know building a home business is hard work and sometimes it helps just to hear that you aren’t the only one struggling with the emotions involved. Stick with it, you can do it!

Have you experienced these emotions building your business? Are there other emotions that you’ve experienced as well? Tell us in the comments below, what helped you.