An extremely high percentage of business owners give up their dreams of having their own, successful, business within a year after they started. Some manage to keep on struggling till at least 5 years, but eventually these struggling owners throw in the towel too.
There are a lot of reasons why, but what I am surprised about is that the reason isn’t always about the money. There are an entire list of reason. You are probably struggling with one or more of them.
Like overwhelm. “I have so many things to do, I don’t know where to start.”
Or fear, which results in not getting out there or not enough. “I look terrible, I am not making a video”. Or “I got a terrible review. I hate that”
Or imposter syndrome. “There are so many people out there who are way better than I am. That’s the reason why I can’t find clients”.
And these are only 3 of many.
What are you struggling with??
Comment below.
How can you prevent all of this?
You can’t. Simple as that. You will certainly run into them. All of them.
What is more important is how you handle them. How you overcome them. How you overcome your fear. How you get rid of your overwhelm.
So the question is more, what do you do to get over all these temporarily problems? Yes, temporarily, because if you let them become permanently you certainly can give up your business right away.
1. Start with your Mission and your Vision.
These two are extremely important. They show you every day why you are doing what you do and where you want to end. What your goals are.
I like to say, read them every morning, so you are motivated to keep going.
My mission is to help as many entrepreneurs as possible to get a successful business, to earn enough money to create at least a reasonable life for themselves and their family. Just so that they don’t need to go back to their old job. And that they have a legacy to leave behind for their children or be able to sell their business and create an good retirement fund.
I see myself teaching a group of people, discussing a weekly topic and helping to implement them into their business. I see my clients grow and happy to be part of this group.
This keeps me going when I start doubting myself.
2. Create an end goal and focus for a month or a week.
Work towards an end goal, which you need to finish at the end of the month. Or week if it is a small goal.
Don’t make it easy for yourself by creating an easy goal and use the entire month to finish it. You won’t help yourself or your business when you do that.
Cut this goal in small steps. Every week you finish 1 to 3 steps. Not more! And it won’t be a disaster if you can’t finish them all. You can only do as much as you can do.
Every day you make a to-do list of what you have to do to complete that week’s task.
And you also make an not-to-do list. Yes, you read it right. A NOT-to-do list. This will prevent that you get sidetracked by doing minor things you don’t need to do and which only takes time away from the important stuff.
Focus on this one goal for one month to create an habit.
Examples are:
- Write a blog post once a week and create a post for your social media platforms 3 times that week, all referring and linked to that post.
- Do a live video about your business 3 times a week. Give them some information about how your product helped a customer or how a customers loved your cookies. Tell a story. Something funny what happened to you. It doesn’t even have to be about your business. By doing video’s your customers learn to know you, who you are as a person. People buy sooner from someone they know, then from a complete stranger with the same product.
- Create a newsletter.
- Set up follow-up emails, 2 emails every week, which you can send out when someone became a customer.
3. Get help.
Almost all the business owners who just started their business are trying to do everything by their selves. Yes, I am guilty too. Nobody is perfect.
I created my own website, created my webinars, created courses, set up emails, created all my social media posts. the list went on and on. And everything together took me away from building my list and getting clients.
My general comment was “I don’t have the money to have some one else do it” Sounds familiar??
Funny thing is, if you spend a small amount of money to hire some one to take care of your email a few hours a week, you have these few hours extra time. And I bet that your time will bring in way more money.
For example if you pay a virtual assistant $20 a hour and you use her for 5 hours a week, it will cost you one hundred bucks. If you can use these 5 hours to bring in a new client and you can sell this client your product or service for $200, isn’t that worth the payment of this v.a.?
And it would probably saves you a lot of time and frustration too, because you don’t have always the expertise they have. So they can do twice as much as you can do in the same time!!
4. Get an coach
I know. I am only saying this because I am a coach. But no, that’s not the reason.
A coach can come in all forms and disciplines. Google “coach” and there is an endless list of different kind of coaches, all focused on their own small discipline. Life coach. Sport coach. Success coach. Yes, business coach.
But a coach can also be a good friend. Or your spouse. Or a complete stranger who is part of the same club as you are. A coach can be free. A coach can be payed for.
Most important is that this coach keeps you accountable. Keeps you motivated. Keeps you going. Pushes you when you need to be pushed. Helps you through the tough times when you need that help.
What do I do?
I don’t really see myself as a coach. I see myself as a teacher. I always loved to teach.
And love to help others to stay focused and motivated.
More like the high school teacher, then a modern day business coach. End goal is probably the same though.
I also follow my own e-learning program to help entrepreneurs to build their business step by step. To see them and their business grow and become successful. That make this e-learning special. You are kind of in the classroom and you have an assignment every week.
Baudina
I hope this blog post was useful. Although I only touched the tip of the iceberg, I hope it helps you to start change yourself and your business a little bit for the good. If you are interest in more information about my program just follow this link.
If you like to chat a bit about your business, you can use the messenger or email (I will respond as soon as possible) or my contact form or even make an appointment for a short chat by following this link.
Hope to hear from you soon!!