Thursday 17 November 2016

Assessing your startup - where you have been, where you are now and where you are going

This is my moment to look both backwards and forwards in my startup journey. For those that have been with me from the start you will know how my journey has gone. For everyone else I will give you a short recap-

  • The idea was to start an estate agency in the town where I live
  • As I set about getting things in place I decided that I needed a residual income
  • I started writing
  • I blogged and I wrote my own eBooks
  • From there I found freelance writing
  • I started writing for others in my spare time
  • I then abandoned plans for the estate agency and became a full-time writer

This has been the journey of a few years summed up in a few bullets points so there have been highs and lows but this is the basic timeline that has brought me to here. Writing is now my life, so as well as this blog I write several others for myself. I write my own books still and publish them on the Amazon Kindle store.I write for other people. And I write whatever comes my way-
  • I ghostwrite books for people
  • I write marketing materials for people
  • I write the content for websites
  • I write social media post on behalf of companies
  • I write customer brochures
  • I write business plans
I pretty much write what people need, with the exceptions of school work and reviews.From this my business has grown and I will use this blog to briefly outline where I am today and where I think I will be over the next 6 to 9 months.

Currently

I have two websites that give me an internet presence. They can be found here-



They let the world know that I exists and along with my social media presence are the outward face of my business. They give me access to customers and also give customers the opportunity to check out what I am and what I do before they get in touch.


A lot of my work comes from existing relationships that have come from varied sources and developed over the years. I work for people all over the United Kingdom, and indeed the world, on a regular basis and write for certain people month in, month out.

A great source of business is going to be the BNI networking chapter that I have joined. It is going to break all records as the biggest group to launch in the UK and Ireland and is doing this at lightning pace. I am very proud to be a part of the group and I look forward to being able to give my fellow chapter members a lot of business from my contacts in the future.

The future

I am growing at a much faster rate than I expected at all. The business is flowing and I am being asked more and more to help people with their writing, especially content writing for businesses. I can see a pint in the future 6 to 9 months where I will be looking for someone to help with the writing and join me. I haven't got through Christmas and January yet as my first year of full-time trading so I don't know how quiet it might go. But I am quietly confident that this will be more than I can produce fr myself in the not-too-distant future.


My new novel is being written now and I am around a third of the way through the writing process. It does tens to take a back seat when I am working hard for other people but the idea is to have it ready to be published in the early part of the new year and be generating sales from then.It will be the first fiction book I have written for myself and I am really looking forward to seeing it out there and marketing it. I think it will make a splash.

This has helped me as I have been writing to clear my mind and look to the future. I suggest that if you are looking for a bit of clarity in your startup business right now then you go through a similar exercise. It allows you to focus on what is important and where you want to take your business.