According to a report by smalbiztrends:
- A bit more than 50 percent of small businesses fail in the first four years.
- 46 percent of businesses fail due to incompetence
Based on my own personal experience with servicing small businesses at my agency, consulting agency owners, and being apart of the digital marketing industry…
Giving up is the top business and growth killer.
“I need more clients!”
“What are you doing to try and get more clients?”
All it takes to succeed, most of the time, is a little bit of effort and persistence. Regardless of what you’re trying to do.
You’re going to want to give up, in fact, most will. 90% of the battle is showing up.
When you stop your acquisition efforts, you aren’t going to get clients. when you stop going to the gym and sticking to a diet you’re not going to lose weight.
Show Up
The biggest difference I see in people who “made it” and those that didn’t, is that those who “made it” didn’t give up.
If you keep sending cold emails, stick to your workout & diet routine, keep up with your studies, etc. You’ll eventually see some level of success. Those that give up will never “make it”.
Sure, there’s a lot to be said about optimizing what you’re doing in order to get better results, but it doesn’t matter how optimized what you’re doing is if you’re not putting in the effort to see results in the first place.
If you focus too much on writing the best email copy, the perfect diet or workout routine, or different studying methods, you’re going to be spreading yourself too thin, you’ll want to give up even sooner because of how much extra work you’re putting in without any result.
Create A Habit
If you make a habit out of whatever you’re doing, it becomes a lot easier to do.
Start by creating a measurable result.
You’re not trying to get 10 clients, you’re not trying to lose 30 pounds, and you’re not trying to become fluent in Spanish.
Those are the goals you’ll achieve from sticking to your habit via a measurable result.
Your measurable result is whatever you need to do on a daily basis to reach your goal. By doing the same thing every day, you’ll eventually create a habit.
You’re not trying to get 10 clients, you’re sending 20 cold emails a day.
You’re not trying to lose 30 pounds, you’re going to the gym for 30 minutes a day and eating whatever your diet entails every day.
You’re not trying to be fluent in Spanish, you’re studying for an hour and reading the next chapter in your book.
The focus goes away from the goal and to the daily task. Find satisfaction in the measurable result and it becomes even easier to do and stick to.
I suggest doing whatever your measurable result is first every day.
If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long. (source)
Optimize For Results
Once you know your measurable result, and create a habit out of it, then you can worry about optimizing what you’re doing in order to get better results.
A/B testing new campaigns, new offers, researching different diets and workout routines, etc.
Creating a habit will greatly reduce your chances of giving up and improves the chances of success. Optimizing your habit will improve the result you get.
Expect To Fail
Not overall, but in the short-term.
Expect to have months where you don’t lose weight or times where you even gain weight.
Expect to have people tell you that cold emailing doesn’t work, to get endless “no”’s, or even some very angry & vulgar responses.
If you think it’s going to be easy, it’s not. And you’re going to be pretty disappointed when you figure out that reality later.
For every person that does 10 cold calls and gets a client, there’s someone else that had to do 100.
If you keep at it, create a habit, and optimize for results, you will see success.