Yvonne Heimann [00:00:00]:
In today's episode I want to talk about the two worst business advices I have ever gotten and this episode was actually triggered influenced by a most recent book launch and said business coach has been all over podcasts and I came across a specific short form video that was talking about one of those main issues. So I want to talk about two actually number one worst business advice I have ever gotten is do not follow your passion. Don't turn your passion into a product. Now hear me out. Hear me out because yes I do understand where that person came from and her perception behind this and the knowledge and the realization that led them to say don't build a business in your passion is the way they perceive quote passion. Because if you are a if you're an entrepreneur chances are you on some level ADHD you on some level on the spectrum. Which means there is a good chance that you are multi passionate. One day you like doing jewelry, the other day you like hiking, the other day you go supping and your "passion" changes.
Yvonne Heimann [00:01:53]:
So with that yes, if that's what you perceive your passion to be, she is right. However, with that blank statement of don't build a business on your passion you are ruling out people that go deeper than just my daily interest and you are telling them they shouldn't turn it into a business. Now here's the thing where it literally crushed me, where it took all the energies out of me not wanting to run my business. Nothing. Because I am a really passionate person. I get passionate about my clients results, about them saving time. I am passionate about what I do. Now that passion is not just a daily liking and a hobby.
Yvonne Heimann [00:02:57]:
What I do, what I do with Ask Yvi, no matter if that is ClickUp templates, if that is automations and videos on YouTube, if that is working with corporations or national sports associations that teaching and saving you time, saving you effort, saving you resources, helping you work on that intersection of technology and humans and bringing them together and really helping entrepreneurs and corporations grow their business. I'm passionate about it. I will literally spend a whole weekend on figuring out an automation just to continuously save you five minutes every single day. I am freaking passionate about it. I to tell you how passionate I am about it. I just got off a discovery call with happens to be a German company where the discovery call ended up being an hour because I dove so deep into their business and how I can get them out of their day to day admin stuff. How we can automate things, how we structure things, how what we are building fits with the rest of the company, how we can get team buy in and when they were bringing up struggles and things, I was literally sitting there already starting to grin because I'm like oh I can save them time there and I can automate this and I can do this. It is a deep seated passion.
Yvonne Heimann [00:04:31]:
So what happened when that business mentor of mine said do not build a business on your passion is initially I took it as the truth because again we know especially as adhd how easily and fast that so called passion can change. And I was looking at my business and I'm like I shouldn't be doing the business I'm doing. I'm actually enjoying it. And that's where I started to ask more questions where I had to coach myself and dive deeper into is this just an everyday liking? Am I gonna burn my whole business down in a week? Like I've been doing this since oh my God. ClickUp Specific 2018 I've always thought this way. It literally took me years to realize that other people don't see the world like I do because see patterns and processes and time savings and automations everywhere. So I dug deeper into that business advice of don't build a business on your passion. And I said fuck it because and here's the advantage of build your business on your deep seated passion.
Yvonne Heimann [00:06:06]:
The passion that's part of your personality. I don't ever work, don't get me wrong, that can be a downside. I love what I do. I can spend 24/7 on the computer and working and doing and no, that's not just productivity procrastination. I love finding solutions, finding automations, doing all the things. Work for me is never just work, it is impact, it is, it fuels me. It's like a Tesla recharging in the sun. They should get some panels on the top whole nother story.
Yvonne Heimann [00:06:49]:
Me doing my work and being passionate about it and having built my business based on my passion is what drives me, it is what keeps me going. So now the statement of don't build a business on your passion because you're going to burn it down in a year actually is what drives me as long as it's done right. Now that one statement now also brings another problem and actually comes into the second worst business advice I've ever gotten. I have multiple passions and that's where a problem can come in right when you're doing too much because they big business advice out there is one funnel, one offer, one target market often enough, one social media platform to sell it. So the second worst business advice I've ever gotten is focus on one thing only. Now, if you have listened to my solo, solo episodes, you know that I never look at things just in black and white. So let's examine the statement of one offer only focus on one thing. There's an advantage to that.
Yvonne Heimann [00:08:18]:
There definitely is an advantage to that because it makes you focus on that one offer, the one process behind it, the one target market whose problem you are solving. It makes life easier. You are building something, you are polishing it. You are testing the revitations. You are clear on your messaging. There is definitely a big advantage to just building one product, just selling one product, just doing one thing. The problem comes in number one. I'm a manifesting generator and I get bored doing the same thing over and over and over again.
Yvonne Heimann [00:09:07]:
Now, that doesn't mean that I get bored implementing ClickUp, that I get bored automation, because every single client, even though the processes behind the scenes are often similar, the application is different, the build is different, the personalities involved is different. So for me, building up ClickUp is not the same thing over and over again. I need that challenge. I am not a robot. I. I can't do the same thing over and over and over again. It does not work for me. Now, my energy is also different, meaning at some points I am more creative ideation.
Yvonne Heimann [00:09:49]:
I love being on camera than I have other times. And a lot of us women know this. I have other times where I'm not creative. I refuse to be on camera. I just want to hibernate and process and think and do these kind of things. And I go through these different phases, which now means that if I only do one product, one offer, first of all, it's going to be the same thing over and over again. And I have a problem with that. Second of all, how am I going to fit that into that energy wave that's happening for me? And third, said business coach that was advertising one offer, they had a point where they have enough money in their bank account where they can put a push out there and sell something and it sells out.
Yvonne Heimann [00:10:51]:
How many of us can do that? How many of us can do a 100K launch right now without even having to think about it? You can just sell it because your name recognition is that way. The other question is, how many of us actually have the financial resources to be able to survive? If for whatever reason that offer doesn't sell anymore, you might say, how would that happen? It's never going to happen. You've seen Covid, how many businesses had to pivot and make things work in Covid. Not only that, that focus on one thing often is like focus on one offer, one target market, one social media platform. Facebook just recently took down a multitude of huge Facebook groups. 100k+ Facebook can decide to cut you off, Instagram can decide to cut you off, TikTok can decide to turn off your account. What then? So the combination of my personality simply not working with just one offer as well as me not taking the risk of losing one income stream and on a real life basis for anybody that is not a major influencer and doesn't have a huge bank account, focusing on one thing and one thing only in your business is a problem and you also not generating your own clients. So here's the solution.
Yvonne Heimann [00:12:37]:
Yes, for marketing you want to be able to tell the story. So you don't want to be a ClickUp consultant and karaoke trainer. I don't know. Heck, maybe you become a ClickUp consultant for karaoke trainers. Who knows? You want to build different offers that build up on each other. Meaning you are creating your own VIP clients. You are offering a string of solutions at specific points of the problem. So for example, if you look on our website, we have a lot of ClickUp templates, we have a lot of ClickUp specific and process specific resources, some free, some at a low payment.
Yvonne Heimann [00:13:31]:
This is my solution for people that are starting out in this process implementing simple systems to increase their impact and income. You got to start somewhere. I know where you need to start. Here are the resources and because you are taking care mostly of yourself, we have cheap solutions for you. The next step in that process is okay, I'm ready to work with you but I can't afford one on one. There's the membership. The membership you get to come in, you get to talk to me in a group setting. It is way cheaper than my one on one.
Yvonne Heimann [00:14:09]:
Then I have my one on one offers for you to get one on one time. One on one help for me to be in your business and help you implement those simple systems. You don't have to have one offer to tell the story, one offer to build a business. Now you actually and what happens with this? It's where would you start to be able to pay the bills? You need to start with one on one clients because that's about the money you need to bring in to even be able to pay your bills. Because when you start with low, yeah there is a lot of processes and systems out there that gonna tell you how to build a low budget offer and market it but there's a lot of testing in there, there is a lot of language cleanup and you need to really learn how to sell without being on camera. That takes a lot of time and effort to get that knowledge, to get that set up, to get that build. The fastest and easiest way to make money is one on one, right? So what do you do when you run your one on one? You have a quick little sales call, you have instant feedback if your sales pitch works or not. So you are starting with that and with that you are starting to collect the knowledge of the full sales funnel, of the full client growth that you need and what you are creating in your one on ones.
Yvonne Heimann [00:15:42]:
You start turning into workbooks and into courses and into templates and all the things and you start building up that safety net of you potentially losing one on one clients. Just about a year ago, that's what happened to me. Just about a year ago, I don't even know two influencer contracts stopped. Some of my major affiliate programs changed their payout schedule and I didn't have it written down that it was supposed to be lifetime. So I lost that one on one clients just gone. There's a multi. There is a multitude of external influences that, that led to this collection of things changing and me losing everything. Now I didn't fully lose everything fortunately because I didn't just focus on one income stream.
Yvonne Heimann [00:16:44]:
Yes, I lost multiple income streams all at the same time, but I still had some left too. Didn't have planned out and build up the savings as I wish I would have. Don't get me wrong, I'm still digging myself out of that one. However, if I would have had only one stream of income, I don't know if I would be here today. So with that, when you are getting blank statement advice like only focus on one offer. Don't build your business on your passion. Ask questions. And this is side note just because the conversation is taking us there, this is where AI really comes in.
Yvonne Heimann [00:17:36]:
A lot of coaches over the last years and I paid way too much to learn which coaches those are, have been great at giving you the systems and the processes, what worked for them. Cool. Awesome. You know what, I can get that anyway. I can go ask AI and it can tell me everything. However, having somebody in your corner and AI is not there yet. We are working on an AI that will help you do these things, but a real coach and I think this is where they, where the coaching and consulting market is going to change over the next few years is going to be being able to connect those systems and processes and what's working in the industry with you, your personality and the human involved in all of this and being able to ask the right questions. I had it so much where I stepped into a room because I admired that person.
Yvonne Heimann [00:18:39]:
I followed how they grew their business, what they've done, and I wanted to learn from them and they just gave me what worked for them rather than asking the question and the right questions to help me figure out how I can take their processes and systems and what worked for them and apply to me and my personality. So with that, I invite you to really question expert advice that is out there. A multimillion dollar company is going to tell you what works for them at that point. Ask them how they started out in that specific example of just one product. Want to take a bet? That specific coach that was talking about that, I guarantee you they didn't start with one product, they didn't start with one offer. They started with a collection and tested things and tried things and built their systems. And looking at them right now, they don't even just have one offer. I looked it up online again, they have a multitude of offers.
Yvonne Heimann [00:19:56]:
So ask the questions, dig deeper. Ask for what purpose? Or ask for specificity, meaning what specifically do you mean by that? How do you perceive this? Why are you saying this? So that you get the information and you start seeing the connections of why they teach that, why they say that, and if you agree with it, so that you can decide if you want to implement this or not. Now, my last year has been quite a personal journey. I am somebody, nobody of us gets unscathed out of childhood, right? And I am somebody that looks a lot for external validation still to this point, and I know it and, and I recognize it when I do it. So with that, I had quite a lot of coaches and mentors in my life to get that external validation to tell me what to do. I have moments where like, can you just tell me what the fuck to do? This is not working. Just tell me what I need to do, which is my bonus problem. Seriously, there's my worst, worst business advice ever.
Yvonne Heimann [00:21:25]:
Let somebody else tell you what to do. No, ask them what worked for them, ask for the specifics and then figure out how you can make this work for you, for your personality, for your business. Always ask questions. And when you look for a coach, look at the way they ask questions. Somebody telling you what to do. You can't just go to AI and AI is going to tell you what to do. If you want a real coach, somebody that really works with you, they need to ask the better questions and not put it into your court. Coming in to work with a coach, we often don't know the questions to ask.
Yvonne Heimann [00:22:14]:
We don't know what we don't know. So any coach that tells you you just gotta ask better questions, tell them to go fuck off, they have been there, they have done it, they hopefully have some kind of education for inter human connection and conversation and they should know which questions you, which questions they need to ask for you to get to find the right path for you. Yes, you still have the same responsibility, you still need to ask questions, you still got to do the work. But sometimes we as being coached, don't know what we don't know, which means we don't know what questions to ask. So really find yourself a coach that goes both ways, that puts you in the driver's seat and holds you accountable and your personal responsibility while also asking good questions and not just talking at you. And with that, we had a little bit of a rant episode today because man, this black and white thinking, because it's working for me, it has to work for you, is annoying the living heck out of me. And I wanted to talk about it. So jump in the comment section, reply, let me know what is some of your worst business advice you have ever gotten.
Yvonne Heimann [00:23:39]:
I want to know. And I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.