Small Business Owner: How To Fail At Running Your Business

We often read and hear about on-line small business owners and their ‘overnight successes’.

…especially when someone is trying to sell their latest product or when someone is promoting someone else’s product as an affiliate.

They often tell you how much income they are making…TODAY.

And their income today may be true.

But they VERY RARELY tell you how long it took for them to get to that stage.

It took me 3 years of part-time hours working on my own on-line business and today…I do make a living. I do make a decent income to live a comfortable life.

But was it an overnight success?

Of course not!

When we read and hear about on-line small business owners and their ‘overnight successes’, we think, “Wow…they make it seem so easy”.

And it can be…albeit not overnight.

In this short blog expert series I’m going to discuss why people fail at running a successful small business.

Here’s the first reason:

Being Overwhelmed

To run a successful on-line small business there is a huge amount of information to know and understand.

And all that information can be found on-line.

You’ve read all these different blog posts, downloaded loads of free reports…perhaps even purchased a few e-guides or courses (which are now collecting dust on your hard drive or book shelf).

And before you know it…you are overwhelmed.

It’s so easy to become overwhelmed…and I’ve been there!

I’ve invested thousands of dollars in courses, mentors, e-book…all sorts.

Some excellent, some not so good and I have to admit…some I’ve never even looked at!

Yep…I have courses and guides on my PC hard drive that I’ve never even opened.

You may find that hard to believe or you may even empathise with me. I’m sure I am not alone.

Why have I never opened them?

I like the look of the product or guide, buy it and think…I’ll look at it later.

…and never do.

The action to look at them goes to the bottom of the priority list.

But I haven’t purchased any major courses or guides for a while that I haven’t used.

I learned from my mistakes.

All the courses that I have collecting dust must be at least over 2 years old…so am I ever going to look at them?

I doubt it. I just need to spend an afternoon going through them.

In fact, while writing this post…I’m made a task to complete this week. Look at the courses / e-guides I’ve not opened and either delete or use them.

When you become overwhelmed you also become stressed and take less action. You just don’t know what to do next.

The best advice I can give is…

1. Get a white board

2. Write down on the white board what you are going to do today and every other day this week

3. Tick off the actions as you go

Now one of the actions could be ‘learn more about SEO’. That’s fine…learn about it…than add some actions on some of the days to implement what you have learned.

So don’t just learn…learn…and learn some more.

Learning is great…but take action on your new found learning.

In the next post, we shall discuss, one of the biggest issues facing the modern small business owner…look out for it!

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What do you think about ‘being overwhelmed’?

Please share your views in the comments below.