How to Start a Sustainable Business with Raelyn Tan
We continue featuring fellow moms and empowered women who had the courage to start their own business.
This time we are please to have Raelyn Tan, an inspiring woman who helps ambitious bloggers and online entrepreneurs grow their audience, build their list and make monetize their blogs.
Q. When and why did you decide to start your online venture? What inspired you?
It all started over 10 years ago. When I was 14, I started a fashion blog selling clothing to teenage girls. Through blogging, social media (actually, just Facebook), and what I now view as rudimentary email marketing, I grew my business online. I have always been fascinated with the idea that I can run a business while staying at home, right from my laptop!
I’ve been plugged into the online world ever since. Along the way, I went to business school and spent many years honing my digital marketing skills. I was constantly on a lookout for digital marketing tips, and fervently wrote about SEO, traffic generation, affiliate marketing, as I needed a platform to organize my thoughts… which resulted in the birth of my current website.
Q. Please share your biggest struggles at the start. How did you overcome them?
There were many big struggles, but one big one was having to work alone. People don’t talk about this enough – it can get really lonely when you’re typing at your computer all day for an extended period of time.
It’s all fun and games for a few months but to make it sustainable, you need to engineer your day such that you actually have at least a couple of conversations every day. I go to my local Starbucks and the white noise helps a lot. Also, keep your family close and put in more effort to communicate with them!
Q. What ONE most important lesson did you learn when starting your business?
Personally, to keep a good eye on your expenses. It could be tempting to focus on the cool exciting stuff like how you can make more sales or creating more awesome content.
This is especially important if you do not like to handle finances or play with numbers. However, a sustainable business is one that spends within its means. It is important to record all your expenses properly so that you know exactly what you are spending on, and what can be cut from your budget next month. I run an extremely lean business that focuses on profits over revenue, and it did not happen by accident.
Q. What would you have done differently if you were to start now?
Nothing, I believe in the process as much as the end result. If I had to say something, it would probably be to invest in paid ads right at the start and to not be afraid of investing more into acquiring new leads and customers instead of only relying on blogging and organic traffic to grow my business.
I would have grown a lot faster because there is a certain limit to how much content you can crank out per day. That being said, if someone new started running ads without knowing what they were doing, it would not be wise because you will be wasting money when you haven’t even had the basics down yet (e.g. enough content to build credibility, or having a proven product or service to sell that works).
Q. How can our readers connect to you online
I help online entrepreneurs build profitable blogs and businesses at raelyntan.com. If you need more subscribers, do download my free traffic and list building cheatsheet too!