Building an online business (or any business for that matter) is a science, not an art. Or at least it should be. Now before you start reaching for your bunsen burner (you do have one of those, right? ;-0), let me explain what I mean by this.
Scientific progress occurs as a result of trial, error and analysis. Theories are tested, and those that work go on to develop further towards an accepted truth, whilst those that are proven wrong just die.
What works is kept, what doesn’t is ditched.
This is how you need to think in your business life. If you want to progress that is.
Your ultimate aim for your online business should be to produce a well-oiled machine that brings you maximum reward (not always entirely financial) for the minimum use of your resources.
The only way you can truly achieve this is by taking a scientific approach, and removing yourself from the emotions that you have probably attached to your business.
Here’s the key:
* If a product isn’t working, change it.
* If a marketing technique isn’t working, change it.
* If your whole business isn’t working, change it!
Don’t dilly dally. Just do it.
It takes strength of character to admit when you’re wrong, or when something isn’t working. But it’s an important skill you need to develop.
It’ll save you a lot of money and time in the long run. It will also mean that your business, and your self, is constantly evolving. Evolution is our natural state after all.
Fear Of the F Word
We naturally fear failure. I say naturally, but in actual fact it’s something that our society has programmed into us.
If we failed at school we were given a big fat ‘F’ or a dirty red ‘X‘. For some reason we’re taught that it’s wrong to fail. We’re made to feel negative emotions.
Those negative attachments stay with us way beyond the school yard.
Fear of Failure is utter crap.
Unless you fail you cannot possibly improve or grow. You just end up in stagnation. A situation that a huge number of us find ourselves in at some stage in our lives, if not most of it!
We’d rather trudge along in mediocrity than risk trying something that stands a chance of failure.
The truth is that the most successful business people fail. All the time! Over and over again. Read any biography of a celebrity business person and you start to realise this.
So, how do they end up successful?
Because they have bounce-back-ability!
They don’t let their failures define them. They don’t give up. And they certainly don’t let failure hold them back.
For every failure, they go on to create an even greater success story.
In fact, they see all failures as opportunities. They understand that if they screwed up big time, then naturally there is a big time success waiting around the corner for them.
It’s like Yin and Yang. Light and dark. Good and bad. Negative and positive. Success and failure.
You can’t have one without the other.
Know this.
You WILL fail.
Sometimes your failures will be small, sometimes they’ll be big. But they will happen.
Here are my tips for dealing with failure when it happens:
1. Trust your intuition. As soon as you realise something isn’t working, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! And that goes for life in general, as well as in business.
2. Don’t dwell on things that you could have, would have or should have done. It’s gone. It’s happened. And there is nothing you can do about it. Focus on the now, always.
3. Contemplate every failure you have, big or small. Turn that failure on it’s head and give it a positive spin. What have you gained from that failure? Every failure has a positive slant. It’s a natural law.
