6 reasons why you haven’t started your business… Yet.
Goldup | Session 1
Last Saturday, I’ve kick-started Goldup’s first class. I welcomed 20 women willing to learn how to launch their own profitable online business to The Family’s house in Berlin. For this very special session, Goldies came from everywhere — from Berlin to Toulouse, from Munich to Prague, and even Qatar!
As the head of this BADASS program, I’d like to share what happened using 6 very simple observations. After all, 6 is our lucky number ;)
1. Anything new is at first seen as ridiculous, then dangerous… But finally, it becomes obvious
Courage is required to decide to start something new. That’s why the very 1st thing I told my first class of Goldies was: BRAVO.
Goldup is a pilot program with no track record. This means that all of them decided to trust me without any kind of reviews or reassurances. Ok, Goldup is backed by The Family, a solid infrastructure used to accompany many startups, but still: Goldup isn’t about building a startup.
Goldup deals with any online business, scalable or not. We believe anyone can earn money quickly if they focus on selling something people want. And we believe this can be the starting point for any woman that wants to become an entrepreneur. That’s why we put dropshipping and e-commerce at the centre of our program.
Being able to jump on board with just a little bit of information, being able to take the risk, is the kind of behaviour an entrepreneur needs. I also said Bravo because they’ll need some encouragement. Like any other entrepreneur, they’ll have to go through the 3 main stages of building something new:
- First — your friends will think you’re ridiculous,
- Then — they’ll think you’re putting yourself at risk, it’s dangerous
- But finally — once you have proven you can make money, they’ll accept it
2. You don’t think you can make money independently, but you will
If you struggle when you need to sell something, or with the idea of raising the price of your product, or you start sweating when you need to ask for a pay raise… Then money is most certainly a problem for you.
Most of us stress when it comes to money. It’s not something we are used to deal with. It’s taboo. We’re often afraid of being seen as greedy…
Especially as women, we ought to be good girls. And we all suffer from it: for those who don’t come from entrepreneurial families, in the collective unconsciousness, capitalism goes along with tycoons exploiting others and forgetting their humanity.
So let’s be honest: 1/ we put moral judgments on money and 2/ by refusing to be greedy like Scrooge McDuck, we think being broke is the only other option.
Well, times have changed. With the Internet, capitalism is no longer the game a tiny group of tycoons. Anyone can become an entrepreneur. Besides, the Internet is female. It’s about touching people, connecting. But in order to really create value, you:
- Think — with your head
- Care — with your heart
- Do — with your hands
- And you put passion into it — go with your gut
What do you realize? You’re using your mind, but also your body. And making money allows you to take care of your body and mind. I’m talking about the basic needs - eating, sleeping, but more generally, about freeing your mind from the material concerns of your daily life. By making money, you allow yourself to set a virtuous and independent circle.
Once you’ve understood this, think of an amount: “How much would I be happy to generate to cover my daily cost of living?” And your very 1st goal is here. You’re on your way to be responsible, to be free.
3. You want to save the world; save yourself first
Most of my dreams when I was a little girl were about improving the lives of others. I wanted to become president because for me that was the only way to do so. I’ve always dreamt about creating things, but with one imperative: how can it make a great impact on the lives of others?
I’m an idealist, and I don’t want to stop being one. The thing is, I tend to see this trait in all my (girl) friends too. And I can’t prevent myself from thinking that actually, we might be putting a little more pressure on our shoulders than is needed…
This way of thinking often leads to choosing to check the heart box first: working in NGOs or anything labelled as “good”. But the very beginning of a business isn’t aimed at being “good”: it requires selling, adjusting and keeping on doing it until the thing grows. It sounds simple, but it’s hard to overcome our ego, that inner voice asking me to make an impact.
- Imagine that someone asks you: “So, what do you do?”
- You: “I’m selling toilet paper! Cool toilet paper, with beautiful illustrations.”
If you can do that, you have ALL my respect. Because it shows that you don’t care what people think, you’re just enjoying it because you know that if it makes you happy, you can make other people happy. One thing I’ve learned so far is that you can’t make other people happy if you are not already happy yourself. And this eventually contributes to making the world a better place.
4. Nothing is permanent, everything changes all the time
So, Goldup teaches you to sell toilet paper? Ha!… Yes and no. Yes, because it makes you see that you can sell anything; no, because what you build today will not be what you do for the rest of your life.
My goal is simply to show the Goldies how biases and preconceived notions sometimes prevent us from learning new things, how the judgment of others always seems to matter too much, and how nothing we do should be seen as written in stone. It’s not because you’ve learnt how to sell a product that you’ll sell that product eternally.
The most important thing is to start looking at business as a stairway: each step is a new thing and you need to take the 1st step to move up to the next floor. Most of all, you’ve got to trust in yourself more.
5. You think you need to know how to code to get the hacker mindset
Most of the goldies have never launched a landing page or website before. They will do just that next Saturday. Tons of tools are accessible to build websites without being a geek. Canva saves my life, Shopify is my true love, Pinterest my inspiration, and Mixmax my engine. Of course, we’ll get to play with those tools, but first, we have to get the hacker mindset.
We named it Goldup for a reason. It’s a hold-up, by Girls. We’re gonna grab the money and take back our legitimate share of the cake. How? By observing which e-commerce boutiques are a success. There are tons of ways to get the results of great online shops. Once you know which ones are a real success, then you observe, you learn and you copy — and of course, you add your own personal touch.
There is nothing bad in copying: you are learning! Every famous painter learnt by copying a famous masterpiece. One of my favourite books explains it much better than me: Steal like an Artist. Besides, we already said we’re gonna try not to be stuck in being good girls… So let’s learn how to get rid of that judgmental inner voice.
We’re a group of young entrepreneurs helping each other out. Each of us will share tips and feedback, in real life and on our Slack group. But there is also one thing that we know and keep in mind: Google is our best friend. And we are learning how to learn. Anything we wanna know has been written, somewhere, online.
The magic of being surrounded by Goldmothers and The Family team is that we can go quicker and have more context, examples, and use cases.
6. You’re afraid to ask for help? Get over yourself!
One of our Goldmothers came to share her own experience in building a brand — Barbara Zeiss, founder of Emerald. What I personally loved about her testimonial is that she was able to open up the real story, the behind-the-scenes of her business, it was PRECIOUS and so INSPIRATIONAL. Instantly, I saw the goldies relaxing a bit, letting go of a certain pressure… They started asking tons of questions. And that’s essential, this is the key to growing: asking for help.
Yesterday, I was listening to my favourite podcast of the moment and I heard Douglas Rushkoff explain that problem of this new modern world is not that people are not willing to help anymore, people are just not willing to be helped. Dignity, honour, defiance… Will I owe you something after you helped me? In my opinion, it’s something that is also very attached to our issues with money…
That’s it for this 1st session. Thank you for reading through to the end :)
If you’ve read these lines, it’s maybe because you’d like to start your own business, right?
Let me know how I can help: marine@goldup.co
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