Top Challenges I See with Entertainment Entrepreneurs: Part II

Top Challenges I See with Entertainment Entrepreneurs: Part II

Last week, I wrote about a top challenge that I see in most entertainment entrepreneurs. You can read about the first challenge HERE 

As entertainment entrepreneurs, we are used to making magic happen on a dime. We can turn a piece of donated fabric into a ball gown or hustle our booties off to post flyers all over town or take outdated equipment and make our final project a masterpiece. 

We’re used to having limited resources and making the most of a less than desirable situation. 

This scrappy nature is a huge asset when we don’t have any other choice, but this hustle mindset can actually get in the way of our success. 

You know the old adage, “it takes money to make money,” right? 

Well, I hate to say it, but it’s true. 

Our ability to take the cheapest option or settle for scraps can actually hold us back. 

Investing in the growth of your business and of yourself is an absolutely essential element of success. It will be impossible to scale your business without making certain investments, like advertising and marketing, staffing, and even coaching, consulting, or courses. 

I’ll never forget when I made what felt like a huge investment at the time . . . it was a $72 stylus pad that I bought to draw a poster for my web series with. I was broke and didn’t want to pay someone else to design it, so I bought this stylus pad and decided to do it myself. 

Turns out I don’t have a knack for poster design, but that investment was what started my very first business, Curious Custom Coloring Books. 

Since then I’ve developed a growth mindset and have seen the value of investing in areas that will expand my business. That DIY mindset helped me out a lot when I first started, but it held me back in the long run. 

The best piece of business advice I ever received was to start outsourcing parts of my business...parts that felt like only I could possibly do (there’s that DIY mindset creeping in). But when I was doing everything it meant that I could only have a few clients at a time, and when I started outsourcing the number of clients I could take on became almost infinite. 

Investing in outsourcing was the reason my business went from $16/yr to $150k/yr and growing. 

This fear of investing has kept many of my clients from making more money for years. For example, I have a client who has a successful online business and she was afraid to invest more heavily in advertising even though she had a great ROAS (return on ad spend). I told her to increase her spend and with much back and forth, she agreed to take the big leap. She spent more money promoting her last launch than ever before and do you know what happened? She nearly tripled her sales! 

If you want to scale your business to six or seven figures, you have to invest.

Here’s the list of areas that I invest in almost without hesitation at this point: 

• Staffing (outsource or hire help for anything you’re not an expert in or don’t enjoy doing)
• Education (continue to develop your most valuable skills)
• Advertising (if it’s working, throw gas on the fame)
• Investing (save for retirement even in small amounts!) 

I wish I’d started investing in myself much sooner than I did. I would have had a lot more success a lot faster, and who knows where I would be right now if I had.