The First 5 Things You MUST do When Starting a New Business

Hi Friend!

Today I am walking you through the FIRST FIVE things you MUST do when starting a new business.

These are the 5 things you should do first, in order… when creating your new business. These steps will most likely surprise you and won’t be the five things you had on your current to-do list.

Spoiler: Building a profitable online business doesn’t start with a website, freebie, or even a product. Gasp!

Come find out how to build a sustainable business on a foundation of stone that will withstand the test of time. A business that will and organically scale and grow God’s way. I pray this blesses you!

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

(00:00):
Hey, friend! Welcome to today’s episode! We’re going to be going through the first five, today. These are the first five things to start with when launching a new brand or business, because I know one of the most confusing and overwhelming seats to sit in is where do I start? What do I actually do first here?

(00:19):
Like there’s 27 million things that are going to make this a reality, but I don’t know which are the most important. And I don’t know what my order of ops is. So problem solved. Today’s episode is going to give you everything you need to do in order. I’m super excited for this. I can’t wait to help you go through your first five.

(01:38):
Now, before we go into the first five, I want you to know that I actually have a complete business blueprint for you that’s going to take you through, I’m trying to find how many steps this has, 13 steps of building your brand new business from scratch, and it takes you through step-by-step order of operations for doing this.

(02:02):
So if you guys want to follow along with me today, just go to completebusinessblueprint.com, this is totally free. It’s a gift for all of you. And it has clickable links in every single step that will take you through a tutorial of each step so that you can figure out how to complete that step before you move to step two. And it’s just super legit, guys. It has bonus podcast episodes linked around every single step of the process, and it just takes out all the overwhelm.

(02:35):
Head to completebusinessblueprint.com. Today I’m actually going to take you through the first five things that you must do. So, number one, the very first thing is pray. Like, can we just have a moment real quick, the level of surrender that it takes to leave whatever you’re doing or to start something totally new is going to go against everything that you believe that you are.

(03:05):
It’s going to challenge your comfort zone in ways that you do not know. And it’s going to have you feel in some type of way about yourself. You’re going to be like, am I equipped? Will anyone even look at me? listen to me? Will anyone ever buy this thing or work with me? You’re going to have so many questions and limiting beliefs that pop up. And that’s exactly what the enemy wants.

(03:28):
If he takes you out, he wins and you’re not here listen to this on purpose because you want to continue sitting where you sit, you have goals and you have dreams and you have a God vision in your heart for where you’re trying to go. And you’re just trying to execute.

(03:41):
But I will tell you that this is going to be the hardest thing that you will ever do when it comes to using your gifts for God’s glory. Starting a business is not for the faint of heart. I’m going to ask you right now to armor up, right now, before you ever go to a Google search bar and try to figure out how to do weird things. I know, I’ve been you, I know we’ve got to armor up, you know, armor up with the armor of God, pray over this endeavor. Pray for strength and resiliency.

(04:14):
Pray that the Lord remove any distraction from your life or any voices that are going to come in and try to shut this down. Before it even gets started, that you will have holy spirit leading your choices and your voice as you step forward to create this, because I’m going to tell you right now, it’s gonna get hard before it gets easy. It’s going to be rough before you can experience the fruit. You know, you’re going to pull weeds in the garden before you get to experience the Rose Bush. That was weird. Love me.

(04:46):
Number two. The second thing you must do, this is this number two. I didn’t say go buy your website. I didn’t say this. Is so important, guys, that you follow this step-by-step. Number two is brand clarity. Right here at step two is know exactly what you’re creating.

(05:09):
One of the biggest mistakes I ever made in this journey was trying to create the thing that I was going to sell before I did these other 15 things, you know, and today I’m going through the first five and you guys will get the rest of the business play by play in the Complete Business Blueprint. But I was trying to get to the end result. I was jumping to chapter 10 before I wrote chapter one in the book of this business.

(05:34):
So brand clarity is step two and you guys know that I teach something if you’ve been hanging around with me for very long now called the five tier brand map. And this five tier brand map goes through the root of who you are. So like, what are you actually called to do. Then from there you plug in and you pull out the I help statement, the tagline of your business, the title of your business, the pillars of your business and the avatar.

(06:07):
And then the sixth one is description, which is, I mean, you’re going to have to do that, but you don’t have to do that in step two. So at this point, this is really where a lot of you do need some help because it’s really easy to have a direction of where you’re going, but you’ve got to lock in the entire brand map before you start creating stuff, because otherwise you’re talking to everybody.

(06:29):
Otherwise, you’re kind of sure, maybe what you’re doing, you’re like, I just could help everybody. It’s great. No, it’s not great. If you want to be successful, you have to have a niche. Here me. And if you want to scale, you have to have a micro niche. And if you want to grow faster and you want to actually start making some profit here, you must have this five tier brand map locked and loaded.

(06:49):
And lucky for you, I have a free workshop that goes through and explains the four pillars of getting brand. It’s my four tier clarity framework. And I have a free workshop that you can head to right now. If you don’t know what your brand clarity is, freeclarityworkshop.com. And then of course I have tons of live coaching episodes here on the show for you. You also will get, I believe like three to five bonus trainings inside of the Complete Business Blueprint that will help you on step two.

(07:28):
So let’s go to number three. The third thing, the third step that you must go through once you’ve completed the five tier brand map is vision and goals. Look, if you don’t have a big picture vision of your future life, you are not going to be motivated to do the hard things like getting to the end result, having a fruitful business, making impact and income that comes after like the actual hard work.

(08:00):
So what I recommend you do is create a God led vision statement of your life that you write this out in present tense, you explain in detail what your life would look like and feel like, and be like one year from today. And the more vivid you are with this God led vision statement, the more your subconscious mind will rally against you.

(08:20):
Look, this is not some new age garbage. I’m not here for that. This is partnering with Holy Spirit to create a vision of what God wants for your life, so that you can begin to take action towards realizing that. I’ve been doing this for nine years, every time I sit down to do it, I pray over that sheet of paper over that notebook, Lord, help me, show me where you’re trying to take me, show me what you have in store for this business.

(08:49):
Show me what I missing, help me to create this vision of a God led life, of what it’s like to really step up into this work that you have for me. What is the fruit on the other side of this hard work? And, every time I’ve gotten Holy Spirit downloads that I can jot down into this vision statement. And for nine years, those vision statements, they’ve become a reality in my life.

(09:15):
And it gives me something tactical and real to hold onto as I wake up every day and I monotonously do the same thing over and over because consistency is one of the biggest secrets to your breakthrough, and it’s going to be super important. You’re gonna see that when I get to step five of what you’re going to do. So you create this God led vision statement.

(09:39):
And then the next step is to actually take that big vision that’s one year from now and you reverse engineer it. So you’re going to break that big vision down into quarterly goals. And then those quarterly goals, you’re going to break down into weekly goals, and you’re going to break those down into daily goals.

(09:59):
So you have some, and this is going to change, and you’re not going to know all the pieces of how you’re going to get there, but you’re going to at least know what you should be beginning to focus on. And then the how, you can get it by hanging out with me.

(10:11):
I give you, guys, all the house and if you end up liking The Stef Gass business model, my business model actually takes you three to six months to completely get through and to have everything that I have in this business set up for you based on what you do.

(10:29):
And it doesn’t matter if you are a business coach or a macro coach, or you have a product, maybe you have a journal or a devotional that you’re creating, or maybe, you are a homeschool mom and you teach other women how to homeschool, or maybe you are a relationship mentor. Like it does not matter what you do. You can get through The Stef Gass business model in about six months, as far as creating all the things.

(10:51):
And then it’s just this consistency game I say over and over again. If y’all hang out with some of my students that have been around for a while, or you head to the community, they’re going to tell you. Stef says more of the same head down, more of the same. Like I am so serious about pouring into the foundations of your business so that you can build a house on a foundation of stone.

(11:13):
Your house is going to withstand the storms. Your house is going to withstand a tornado and your house is going to withstand the market changing, the fluctuations in market price in it like your business is a home. And you’ve got to set it up on a foundation of stone, which is everything I’m teaching you right now in these five steps.

(11:30):
So step four is to create a system of management. So you’re going to have these goals and you’re going to have created an actual actionable step-by-step kind of high level plan of what you should do. And then you’re going to stare at that and be like, but how do I actually do that? So I actually highly recommend, partnering a task management system. I use a Asana with a paper planner so that you can begin to utilize a activity and time blocking in your business from day one.

(12:05):
It’s super important that you know what to actually plan into your day and that what you’re actually doing in that a activity time, and that time block is a activity like it’s going to be income producing. I think that’s one of the hardest things is like, what is income producing when I’m starting this business?

(12:23):
So when you guys open up your Complete Business Blueprint, you’re going to have two bonus trainings. They’re totally free that tell you how to time block and how to create this organization within your business. But what I really want you to do here is think about what are the three to five things that you were committed to doing on a weekly basis that help you get to the goals, the daily and weekly goals that you wrote down in step three. So we call it the top three over here.

(12:57):
What are the top three, every day and then every week that build into creating these goals in your business and figuring out early how to stay organized, because let me tell you something, your business is only going to grow, and it’s only going to get bigger aand more confusing.

(13:15):
So if you can really lock in a system of time management in, a system of productivity early, it’s going to save your life. So for example, I use Asana for my business and you, guys, can just have the free Asana. That’s great. And you can create in the tasks section some tasks cards. So let me tell you the tasks that I’ve created that really helped me stay super organized on a day-to-day basis. So I have the urgent task board and then each task is actually ordered by highest priority to lowest priority.

(13:52):
And this board is obviously going to be my first board that I open every single day as I’m operating my business because it’s urgent. It’s the urgent board. The next board in my Asana tasks is daily. And this is going to be the daily things that I’m doing in my business. Then I have the weekly tasks and that has its own board. And those are again in priority from highest priority to lowest.

(14:16):
Then I have monthly as its own board. What am I doing on a monthly basis. Then I have quarterly. Then the next one I have is special / future projects. And then the next board I have is podcast episode ideas. So as you move forward into step five, this may be a good board for you. Then I have an important dates task board, because there’s certain things in your business that you’re going to need to keep track of.

(14:44):
And you don’t want to have to keep rewriting them in a paper planner and then forget next year. So you need to know what are the important recurring dates that I need to be aware of. And then I have a brain dump board. So this is just for like random thoughts that I have not yet organized. So these are all of the tasks that are sitting here in my Asana.

(15:02):
And then these tasks get moved over into my paper planner because that’s overwhelming. You’re looking at your Asana project management system and you’re like, wow, like I have a lot of things to do. For example, you’re going to go to completebusinessblueprint.com. You’re going to download my thing.

(15:21):
You’re going to write in all 13 steps into your task system. And you’re going to take those 13 steps and you’re going to break down the how based on my trainings that I have for you in there into the quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily. And that’s going to feel like a huge project. You’re going to be like, oh, I can’t do that. No, you can’t do that.

(15:40):
But guess what you can do, you can start with the urgent tasks and you can start with today’s task. And then you can pull that over into your paper planner so that that’s all you see is this week’s priorities. Otherwise for me, at least, I’m like, just tell me what the next step is. You know, like tell me what step one is before I look up at step two.

(15:59):
And I’m going to tell you right now, that’s going to save your life because I know so many of you, depending on your personality type, you’re like, but I have to know A through Z before I can start with A. No, you don’t. You need to know A and you need to do A, and then you can move to B. Freedom, permission to just go step-by-step.

(16:17):
And trust me, I’ve done this before PS and I’ve helped a thousand students at this point, go through my courses. I’ve helped 500 people launch super successful shows, guys, I have dozens of people who are making over 10 K months from The Stef Gass business model. And they just started with A – what do I do first? You pray.

(16:43):
So anyways, you’re going to do that. And for a paper planner, I definitely recommend the Horatio products. My friend, Polly, is incredible. Her planners are amazing. They have a scripture in them. They are so entrepreneurial focused. So they work so well. They have a to do list in there. They have a scripture, your day at a glance, your weekly intentions, it has your quarterly heart check. It has your praise report every month in here.

(17:10):
Like this is the best planner. Just stop. Don’t even shop for other planners because you will love this one. I promise you so you guys can actually save 10% off of any order by going to bit.ly/stef10horacio and then put in the code, STEF10 at checkout, best planner ever. Just trust me.

(17:46):
Next step. The last thing you need to do in the first five is begin your long form content. Please hear me because I know this is really confusing for you because a lot of coaches are telling you, you first have to have your Instagram. No, do your website first, wait, you need a full out like branding revamp.

(18:07):
Hold on. You need to, you know, set up your tax accountants and all that, that you need to have legal, like, hold on. If you don’t even have long form content, you don’t even have an audience. You’re not beginning to build something. You’re not serving anyone, which means you’re probably not going to make any money, like real money.

(18:26):
You’re going to, maybe you could sell 10 things to the 10 people that you know, really well or the small amount of people that are already trusting you. But I’m talking about a sustainable evergreen, organic forever business built on a foundation of what? stone. Guess what the stone is? Do you guys want to know what the stone is? Wanna know? Do you have any guesses? It starts with a P, I’ll wait, it’s fine. podcast.

(18:55):
Guys, the foundation of stone in your business is your podcast. Now, if you’re like, I don’t want a podcast. Your other choice is our blog, which is slow as molasses. I’m sorry, not sorry. I really it’s just slower period. And that’s okay if you love that, but it’s just going to be slower or there’s video, but there is a lot more competition in the video space right now, because you’re going to get into YouTube, which is also kind of a slow grow.

(19:22):
You have a lot more competition and it’s a lot more work. Because you have to use video, audio or written. So what I teach is podcasting, audio, obviously, because I’m sitting here in my comfies right now, I am makeupless and loving my life, drinking a LaCroix, recording this episode. And it’s the best thing ever. I can pause this. If my kiddos need something, it’s only going to take me 25 minutes.

(19:48):
I’m going to be done. I’m going to go play a board game with my family. Like that is life. Why long form content, which is number five, before everything else for all these other pieces of building the business? Because you’ve got to start serving before you start selling, because you have to start generating trust before you can go out into the world and start building funnels and start optimizing a perfect website and start understanding how to market here and market there.

(20:14):
Just start serving first because as you serve and you get consistent with your show over the month one, month two, now we can begin to build these other pieces of your home like, yes, don’t worry, within my Complete Business Blueprint, we do go through all the other steps, like a freebie and optin, a landing page, email system, weekly email, nurture, website, promotion strategy, business structure, as in your LLC and all those pieces, monetization.

(20:49):
We go through all those steps, but they do not come before your podcast. Please hear me on this. It’s so important that you begin serving before you try to scale, that you begin to actually build an audience and get your content into the world so that SEO and those amazing titles can start working for you. And you can just show up behind the mic and bless people with whatever it is that you’re going to do.

(21:19):
You have to have long form content that is non negotiable. So those are the five things you must start with when beginning your online business. Let’s recap one, pray, surrender. Like let’s get in the prayer closet and really mean it and really pour out our hearts and really partner with Holy Spirit on this journey.

(21:41):
Number two, having absolute brand clarity. You’re going to get that by going through my five tier brand map, you can take my free workshop at freeclarityworkshop.com or you can head straight into Clarify Your Calling, which is my course, stefaniegass.com/courses. But you must have brand clarity like period. That is absolutely a must.

(22:04):
Number three, you have a God led vision. You’ve created a God-centered vision statement for your life, one year from now, which you reverse engineered into annual quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily goals. Step four, you’ve set up a system of management to stay organized and to know what the heck you’re doing when, because again, this business will just keep growing away from you. So let’s get organized from the beginning. I wish I could have taken my own advice here because like I just got organized like a few months ago. I’m not kidding.

(22:32):
Ask my team. It’s fine, guys. See, it’s not too late to grow. Let me just tell you something. This is not going to be perfect, but you are going to learn as you go and you’re going to grow as you go, keyword, here is ‘go’. You’re taking massive action. You are doing your best. You are trying and you are failing forward and you’re showing up for what this thing is that God’s calling you.

(22:55):
Even though you don’t have every single house, even though it feels scary, your comfort zone is always calling you home. But we ain’t going home. We’re building a brand new house on a foundation of stone, like our old apartment that’s for sale because we’ve got places to go. We’ve got people to see, we got to grab this, we have big audacious God-sized goals.

(23:17):
So that system of management’s going to truly help you. I love Asana, just my favorite, but you can, whatever there’s a hundred to choose from. And then partnering that with a paper planning system for time-blocking. Horatio printing is my absolute favorite, the code is STEF10 at checkout. And that link is bit.ly/stef10horacio.

(23:37):
And then number five, the fifth step is long form content. Obviously, if you hang out with me for too long, you will have a podcast. I’m going to make you, you’re going like, oh my gosh, this is like, what I should do. Why is she making me do this? But hear me, this is way easier. I actually saved 12 to 15 hours a week because I don’t mark it on social anymore.

(24:02):
My team just shares a graphic, like it’s so easy. I don’t ever do reels. I don’t ever have to do TikToks. We post up easy, simple stuff of repurposing the podcast, like to my blog or to Pinterest and it drives traffic. I have 600,000 downloads on the show and I never touched, any type of paid marketing at all until two months ago, like I was able to grow this podcast to 600,000 downloads, 100% organically.

(24:29):
And I can teach you how to do that. I was able to build a half a million dollar business organically just from my podcast. That’s why it step five. That’s why it comes before all these other pieces of your house. We’ve got to do the foundational stuff first. So if you guys are ready and you’re at step five, obviously I have Podcast Pro University, which is my podcasting course and that’s at stefaniegass.com/courses.

(24:56):
Or if you’re like, oh my gosh, I don’t even know. I have about a million podcasting episodes here on the show for you that you can begin with. We actually have a podcast catalog. That’s free. We have so many free resources to help you, guys, through this process over in my student community. And you can come grab the catalog and like binge all the podcast related episodes.

(25:15):
I have had people tell me I was able to launch without you. I’m like, well, that’s not really good. Come take PPU. But like there’s so much free stuff for you to at least get started. And my free community is that stefgasscommunity.com. I know so many links in this one. Love me. Anyway, there you go. These are the first five things that you guys must do when you are starting your brand new business.

(25:40):
And again, if you want to grab that, if you’re like, what did you say? You said a million things today. Just go to completebusinessblueprint.com and grab my free step-by-step tutorial. How to actually do this whole thing, step-by-step and I just pray that God would bless you with vision and a confident heart as you set out to create this, that He would remove all distractions.

(26:02):
That he would bless you with adequate time and space that you would be on heaven’s timeline for your business, that you would have the right mentors in your life, the right resources, support from your family and friends to help you make this dream an absolute reality. And I just asked God to partner with you on this journey and to give you and gift you everything you need to create God’s dream so that you can go into the world and use your gifts for his glory. In Jesus’ name. Amen. I’ll see you guys back next week. God bless.