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My $3000 false start – how to build the right online business, right from the start.

I confess I’m a bit of a geek. If I want to figure out how to do something, the answer in my head is always “find a course”.

When I first got started online, I signed up for courses about building connections, starting a blog that matters, podcasting for beginners, Facebook marketing, starting a revolution… the list goes on. Most of the courses went unfinished, as the realities of trying to build a business around a young family sucked up all my available time.

I even went to Sydney, Australia, for an automate your business course. I knew I wasn’t quite ready, but it would be just the motivation I needed to bust through those mental blocks.

Or so I thought.

Minutes before I got on the plane, I got a call about a big work opportunity that blew all my plans in the air. If I built my website as planned, this new customer probably wouldn’t see me as the right fit. Suddenly I was floundering, unsure in which direction to move my business.

The weekend was a humiliating experience. While the others were crafting pitch perfect email auto-responders, I couldn’t even come up with a tag line. Every time the presenter referred to the “expert writer” in the room, a small part of me wanted to curl up and die.

This uncertainty went on for months. I didn’t know how to marry the seemingly contradictory aspects of my work experience, into a cohesive online presence.

Still I pushed forward. My developers put together a gorgeous website, but everything was so conservative, it left me cold. Instead of developing a credible online presence and a leveragable business, I was developing an online brochure.

I was trying to please everyone, and in the end appealing to no-one.

That’s when my mastermind group called me out.

With their insight, I realised that some aspects of my business were akin to my “day job” – interesting work, but not my passion. I already had work flowing through those channels, so why would I build a website to attract more?

I needed to create a pipeline to enhance the flow of the work I really loved.

I needed to create a business that would support my ultimate life vision.

For me, that meant creating a business that is truly location independent. A business where I get to work creatively with inspired entrepreneurs. A business with the potential for passive income streams.

So I gave myself permission to build my website solely around the work I loved. Instead of worrying about how my existing clients would view my website, I began weighing every decision by how it would contribute to my big, beautiful long-term goals.

That’s how Christine Sheehy and Co was born. And just like that, the desire and the motivation to complete all those courses came rushing back.

I realised that sometimes signing up for a course was me handing over responsibility for aspects of my business I had not yet owned. I wanted the course to give me the answers, when in fact the answers lay within me.

I needed to get clarity before I could make progress.

Now that I’m in my sweet spot, I’m optimistic that the $3,000 I spent on courses over the last year or two has not been wasted. Now that I know where I’m going, I’m learning every day and loving every minute.

So ‘fess up, entrepreneurs. How long did it take you to get clear on your online business? And how many unnecessary courses and info products did you purchase along the way?

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