I’ve failed 3 businesses in 6 months, made numerous mistakes and got invaluable learnings and experiences. In this series named “Failed to Succeed”, I will adress all my mistakes and learnings from my failed buinesses.
And I am making this with the intention of making notes for myself and visualizing my learnings but also share these experiences, so that anyone interested can benefit from it.
These are—again—my own humble experiences and learnings and own trues and falses.
First Attempt: “SMMA” The Bubble
I wanted to start out immediately. After I got to know the “SMMA the Greatest”, I picked the easiest service created an offer and got to the outreach. So, I ended up learning the followings from my first business journey:
1. Baseless promises won’t get you anywhere:
You have to convince your lead/ prospect about your capability and profession through references.
My learning for the future
Show some reference from your work and give them some security and make your self reliable.
2. You have to give FIRST:
The even worse thing I’ve done is: I tried to charge them high ticket money as they accepted my offer. I had no reference, I had no clue to prove them my “profession”. After reading the book “Dotcom Secrets” I truly saw the issue here, the first step of the value ladder was obviously missing. “It’s how we’re wired as humans: to seek more value from the places that we’ve already received it from.” – Russell Brunson
My learning for the future
Provide so much free and quality value first, so your lead falls in love with your service and wants to get it at all costs, use it as reference for the next.
3. Make them feel stupid to say “No”:
First two mistakes both have to do sth. with this one.
I indeed had a terrible offer, where I haven’t given any guarantee, any security or any definite destination I claimed to bring them to. I just said “I will manage your social media and make your more visible” which had no aspect of any uniqueness and was commoditized at its maximum, which is already been doing by low ticket freelancers or by in-house employees.
Your offer has to provide so much value and be designed so good, that your prospect feels stupid in case they reject it. You can read the book “100$ Million Offer” to learn how to build an exceptionally good offer.
My learning for the future
Master the book “100$ Million Offer” and build a unique and exceptional offer.
4. You are just a random dude without Social Proof:
As I was cold calling all my prospects and making them promises how I will help them make more revenue and boost their visibility with the right marketing, most of them hung up due to the reasons above but the ones who actually were interested asked for one main thing: a website or a social media page where they check up my existence and offer. And as I indicated that I don’t have any, they immediately lost their interest too.
My learning for the future
Create a website and social media platforms (related to your business), and preferably create Content related to your business/ service/ product that provides reliability.
5. Don’t Rush it with false intentions:
I have rushed the whole process and wanted to start making money as quickly as possible. But I have realized the reality of this journey being “a marathon and not a sprint” later. Everything is a process, you have to the time it requires. We will address this in the book review of “The Concise Mastery” by Robert Greene more detailed, but you basically have to avoid all your false intentions, mostly the desire for money and start by identifying your inclinations, strengths and interest and select a SINGLE skill you want to master. As Steve Jobs says, you won’t have the motivation to keep going and overcome impediments if you aren’t actually passionate about your thing but just are determined for money. You will eventually quit.
My learning for the future
Pick the best skill for you—your strengths, inclinations, interests, desire, passion and stay loyal to the process of mastering it.
6. You have to be convinced about your own offer:
This is pretty much related to the fact above.
I switched back and forth between facebook ads and social media management as my service, because I haven’t mastered and so didn’t really like neither of them and wasn’t sure which one to offer—which one would “work”. It’s mainly because I had simply skipped the process of mastering a skill and directly jumped into the selling part.
How was I supposed to convince someone else about my promise while I wasn’t sure and convinced myself?
My learning for the future
Convince yourself first about the value you are offering. The single way to achieve this is to become a Master at your thing
7. Start immediately, shift your time from consuming to creating:
Don’t let this contradict the “don‘t rush it with false inclinations” part, but after identifying the “What”, one has to get immediately to work and start the “trial and error” process. The earlier, the better.
I’ve unfortunately wasted to much time with Youtube “How To” videos seeking the “best piece of content and advice that will suddenly enlighten me”, despite knowing the “what” already.
My learning for the future
Get directly to work after identifying the “What” without any delay. Begin to create, reduce the consumption.
8. Don’t get manipulated or guided by the internet “gurus”:
This is arguably the most costly mistake and most crucial learning of me. All the mistakes and learnings above are somehow related to this.
Don’t get me wrong, internet is a great discovery of humanity and you have to use every bit of opportunity of it to improve yourself. But the worst thing you can do is to get manipulated by gurus who claim to have achieved all this you are dreaming of—which might be and usually is true and fine—but eventually trying to convince you to buy their 997$ course and so make their money.
As someone who is a big fan of the concept of exchanging money for value and to be able to reach unlimited knowledge assets in the online world and who actively have been purchasing online courses and assets to improve, I have realized the harsh reality that some to many “gurus” abuse this hunger and curiosity of people—like me— for learning, skill acquisition and self improving with unfulfilling content and absurd prices which make them rather a good scammer than a mentor or expert.
So, for me, the best way to eliminate this is to buy skill/ process oriented courses and assets—which are mostly way more affordable—instead of result oriented courses.
For example you want to start out a B2B Content Creation Agency, than buy a course where you can learn how to record a video, how to create and manage content or buy video editing assets, then a course about marketing and sales, then maybe statistics about your desired market, competitors and ideal customer profile, then maybe another course about firm and tax policies and another about comm and leadership skills afterwards. The list goes on.
But sure stay away from the “HoW tO sTaRt a ConTent CREation AgeNCy thAt wiLL maKE yOU 10K/moNth wiTHin 90 dAys” all in one course. There might be exceptions but most of them are trying to fool you.
Except for courses, also be selective about the content you are consuming, and generally think twice about advices before applying them. I made all the mistakes above mainly because I have lacked such a filtering system.
My learning for the future
Invest in your skills and the process—not in a promised outcome. Filter advices in your own mind and take your time to think about a solution, yourself.
Here is a quick view of my learnings from my first ever business journey:
- Show some reference from your work.
- Provide free and quality value first.
- Build a unique and exceptional offer.
- Create a website and social media platforms—build up social proof
- Pick the suited skill for you—consider your strengths, inclinations and interests
- Convince yourself first about the value you are promising to give
- Begin to create, reduce the consumption.
- Invest in your skills and the process & filter advices in your logic
