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What My Business Looks Like Now vs. 2017

Attorney turned entrepreneur Sam Vander Wielen sitting at a table with her laptop and a glass of iced coffee. She is wearing a striped tee, has shoulder length brown hair and is smiling.

Hey love! What’s your typical day look like? I don’t know about you, but sometimes I still love to read those old-school blog posts showing what people do day-to-day. How they eat, move, work — it’s all so fun to see!

People ask me, “so what exactly do you do? How do you spend your days?

I spend my days so differently now than when I started my business back in 2017. Today, I thought I’d share a bit about that change in case you want to do the same in your own business.

When I started helping coaches/creatives legally protect their businesses in 2017, I’d left the law firm 1 year earlier and had been running my own wellness coaching practice.

lawyer for creative entrepreneurs | What My Business Looks Like Now vs. 2017
September 2016 photoshoot with my wellness coaching business 😉

I was so nervous when I  shut down my health coaching business and gave the legal templates business a run. And it definitely wasn’t easy or risk-free.

I’d already spent all my ‘start up’ money I’d saved on my coaching business. I’d even dipped into our personal savings to try to make entrepreneurship work.  My family depended on my salary too — and I was seriously running out of time.

I couldn’t help but think, “what if I put all of what I have left and this thing doesn’t work? What if it never takes off?

But I wanted to be an entrepreneur so badly that something told me just go for it — but to give it my all.

So I got to work.

I followed all of my own steps to get started I teach you in my free Legally Legit Guide, built my own website (yes, the same website I have today!), wrote 12 legal templates and recorded How-To Video Tutorials for them, and started “marketing my business” online.

podcast guest contracts | What My Business Looks Like Now vs. 2017
June 2017 – recording my How-To Video Tutorials that come with all of my legal templates.

I made my first sale to an internet stranger within 3 hours of making my website live.

The first few months of revenue ranged from, “wow! I can’t believe I’m doing this!” to “oh sh*t, oh sh*t!” to “….this is nice and all, but it’s not going to cut it.”

But those first few months of running my legal business were â€‹really tough. I was working like a nut and I had no clue where or when revenue was coming in.

And my marketing strategy had me beat.

Back then, “marketing” my business meant:

  • stalking Facebook and Instagram to respond to every and any comment about anything legal, going directly for the sale.
  • saying “yes” to every podcast, guest post, Facebook live Q&A, no matter the ‘audience size’ of the person on the other end.
  • using nearly every call to action to encourage people to book a free Legal Checkup call*, even if they’d never heard of me, knew what I did or got any value from me yet
  • getting on the phone with all 1,000+ of them — even the ones who’d open with, “I’m not interested in what you have to offer, I just thought I could pick your brain for 20 minutes.” [insert eye roll]

It definitely wasn’t the best strategy or one I could’ve kept up much longer. But I do remember thinking how cool it was that at least I was hustling and it was working.

My first handwritten thank you note that I sent to every new client
My first handwritten thank you note that I sent to every new client

I’m actually going to give you really different advice than you might hear from other online entrepreneurs, so grab a pen + paper ; )

Sometimes I think hustle periods (as I call them!) are 100% necessary and a growing pain of starting and building your own business.

Hustle doesn’t have = bad, scary, sad, stressful. Hustle also doesn’t have to be forever. But the work you put in during your hustle period will pay off sooner than later.

I needed that hustle period and I needed to learn from the 1,000+ people I spoke to in my free Legal Checkup calls*. 

Was it the most scaleable, picturesque version of entrepreneurship or the life I envisioned? Heck no!

But the people I spoke to in my free Legal Checkup calls and met on podcasts and lives are some of the biggest referral sources to my business today.

The info and experienced I gained in talking with (and more importantly, listening to) that many people led me to being able to build the very different looking business I have today.

You know what was the best, most life changing thing I came up with because of that hustle period?

The Ultimate Bundle:

My signature program that gives you 10 legal templates AND 23+ premium video trainings to learn how to protect + grow your business.

Here’s how:

1. Pay Attention

I paid attention to the questions I got asked over and over and thought about what else my clients really needed to know besides just getting a contract/website policy from me. I knew there was something I could create that could change their businesses and lives, but that they didn’t even know they needed.

So when people kept asking…

“how can I protect my content from copycats?”

“what’s my website need to be legally legit?”

“what’s the difference between an LLC and sole proprietorship?”

“how do I comply with GDPR?”

“what do I need to know to legally protect myself working with clients online?”

…I’d think, “can I create a training for that?”

and,

2. Dream Big

I knew things needed to be different and my business couldn’t be reliant on 1:1 sales or small transactions forever.

So thanks to that hustle period of my own, I came up with the best legal program for online coaches, creatives and consultants. ?

But I never would’ve reached that point without the hustle.

I see the hustle get demonized left and right — and that criticism definitely has its place.

But I had to hustle to build the foundation and systems that got me to a place today where I don’t have to hustle, because the business is hustling for me.

So here’s what I’d love you to leave with today:

  1. If you’re in hustle mode right now, that’s OK. Just make sure you’re hustling to build a solid foundation, and not just spinning your wheels.
  2. Seek mentorship when you need it, but also know it’s OK to NOT be in a coaching program, buy another course, etc. and just get done to DOING IT.
  3. If you focus on building a long-term business — one that’s legally legit, has only 1-2 offers, and that provides supreme services + customer service — your business will hustle FOR you sooner than later.

What’s your 1 takeaway from this post? Are you seeing your business or your season of life any differently?

Leave me a comment below and let me know! ??

**Free Legal Checkup Calls are no longer active as of 2020

xo,

 

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  1. I am definitely pre-hustle mode. Just threading systems together now before I launch. I actually look forward to hustling for a bit, as it will get me out there in the world. However, it was really good to hear you say that Hustle Mode isn’t forever and it’s definitely not sustainable – that will help me focus on making sure my content and offers are simple and strategic so that I don’t have to work outside the box for too long to get rewards.

  2. I whole-heartedly agree about the importance of building a solid foundation for your business. I learned this lesson the hard way. I wanted to build my blog so fast that I cranked out content (even if it wasn’t that good) just so I had ‘something’ to show. Over the past 6 months I’ve gone over my entire blog, tidying up blog posts, enhancing SEO + making the entire site user-friendly and on-brand, and WOW what a difference! Not only am I so much more proud to put my name on my blog, but I have more visitors (because hello? SEO is kind of a big deal!) + women who are willing to engage with my brand. Moving forward I’m much more intentional with the type of content I create- I am very appreciative of learning this lesson because of the mistakes I made early on!

  3. Thanks so much for sharing!! I\’m a new health coach and I oscillate between thinking I need to hustle and then thinking well shoot I need to not hustle and take care of myself, walk the talk. But there really is a time and place for hustling, and it may sound crazy, but I feel like it\’s such a damning act now that I really needed the permission and proof of concept to really go after it right now. That\’s what my business needs from me to succeed right now, because I\’m definitely resonating with that \”oh sh*t, oh sh*t\” mindset lately. This NEEDS to work.

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