Analyze Your Previous Efforts as an Entrepreneur

When you become an entrepreneur, you have a strong desire to succeed. If the desire to succeed was all that was needed, then the world be filled with nothing but success stories.

But desire alone wonít keep you from failing and you may have experienced countless failures on your entrepreneurial journey. What you need to do is to take a step back and look at what youíve been doing that hasnít worked for you.

Once you can identify whatís not working and what youíre struggling with, you can then find success by making changes. You need to understand whatís gone wrong despite your best efforts.

Fear of Failure

Did you know that itís not failure that keeps people from trying? The world is full of examples of people who failed multiple times and yet ultimately found success. Thereís something worse than failing – and thatís fear of failure because often, fear of failure keeps you from even trying anything at all.

There are some solid reasons behind having a fear of failure. No one disputes that. You might be hesitant to put yourself out there because youíre afraid that people are going to laugh at you or your business idea.

Remember that people laughed at Henry Ford, too – and yet he became a well-known success story. You might be concerned that youíll end up failing and be humiliated. There are countless numbers of online success stories.

There are gurus everywhere online who share their failures with their mailing list and talk about it on their website. They do this because failure was part of the journey, it wasnít the end of the journey.

You can overcome a fear of failure by learning to recognize it for what it is. Failure is never the end unless you give up. Itís a stepping stone that many people have walked on to reach the success that they dream of having.

Sometimes a fear of failure comes because weíre afraid to make mistakes. But making mistakes is how you reach your goals – simply because youíre not perfect. Thereís yet to be a single fail-proof human being on the Earth.

Instead of fearing failure, embrace it. Use it as something that you can learn from. Cut off the negative sound byte in your mind. This is what plays in your head telling you that youíre right to be afraid of failure, that youíre not good enough, that youíre not smart enough, that youíre not talented enough, or not educated enough.

Itís this sound byte that has a loop so that it will play on forever as long as you allow it. Negative thoughts of what you canít accomplish become reality. Kick the glass-is-empty mindset to the curb and replace it with one thatís optimistic.

If you canít bring yourself to say that youíll succeed, then simply say youíre willing to try. Thatís all it takes. One step forward. Identify what it is about the fear of failure thatís holding you back.

Is it the scorn of others? The thought of pouring your heart into something and not making it a reality? Fear has been identified as False Evidence Appearing Real. We often have a habit of creating worst case scenarios in our minds that never come to fruition. Let go of the fear of failure and go after what you want.

Frustration with Technical Tasks

Itís easy to get frustrated when you come across a technical task that you donít know how to do. When youíre ready to move forward and get stuck by a lack of know-how, it can start that negative chatter running through your head again.

But keep in mind that no one has all of the knowledge they need to do everything. None of us are born knowing what we need to do. We learn as we grow and the same holds true when it comes to being an entrepreneur.

You might not know how to set up a blog and if youíve never done it before, itís understandable that you wouldnít know how to get started. But in todayís age, the Internet gives us a world of knowledge right at our fingertips.

If you donít know how to set up a blog, you can pull up a video on how to do it and then follow the instructions step by step until youíre finished. Some people already know how to build a blog, but they donít know how to set up call-to-action buttons or how to add a shopping cart.

All of this type of information can easily be found in video tutorials. You can take the time to go through the video and pause it at each step as you implement the task. And there are hundreds of videos out there that address every technical task question you might have.

You can also join entrepreneurial forums and post a question when you need help with a specific task. Many of these forums are filled with people who have already traveled the path that youíre now on. These people freely share the knowledge that they have with others.

If youíre trying to work with software and canít quite grasp it, you can also look this up with videos. You can also go to a search engine, type in the name of the software and add the word manual after it.

There are often PDF manuals for software available that will walk you through whatever it is that you need to do. Youíll learn as you go along. Months down the road, youíll be amazed at what youíve learned and then youíll be in a position to help someone else when they have a question about a task.

But keep in mind that there will always be a technical task that you might not know how to do because learning should never stop when youíre an entrepreneur. You want your business to succeed and that means growth.

Any time thereís growth with a business, there will be new things you have to handle. Give technical tasks a shot and if you get stuck, you can also go on a marketing forum and simply ask a very specific question telling people where you got stuck, so they can help.

Complacency Issues

Youíve heard the story about how if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, heíll jump right out. But if you put a frog in water and slowly turn up the heat, heíll boil to death. While this is a myth, itís also a metaphor for life and shines the light on how you need to take charge to prevent complacency from setting in.

Complacency means that youíre content with where youíre at in life and with what youíre doing. Youíve found your comfort zone and youíre sticking with it. Being complacent is not a good thing because what it does is keep you stuck exactly where you are.

When youíre complacent, you donít try to learn and improve your skills or your business. You donít aim for growth and you donít try new things that can help your success. What happens then is that it can become easy to lose your purpose for your business.

It can also be easy for a lack of inner leadership to develop and things just fall by the wayside. The problem that arises most often when people reach a level of complacency is that they donít want to make the effort to do anything to change their lot in life, but they want to bring in more money.

Complacency and the desire to make more money arenít compatible. If you want more money, you donít get to be satisfied with the status quo. Since money isnít going to rush toward you when youíre complacent, you have to do something about it.

You have to be proactive. You have to do something to change your mindset so you develop a hunger for success. What this means is that you have to gain more knowledge.

When youíve reached a certain skillset, nothing is ever going to change if you donít level up. You have to learn new things and you need to do it consistently to keep on growing and earning money.

That means that youíre going to have to put more effort into your business. Some people think that once theyíve reached a certain level in business, it will always stay that way.

They think theyíll always make the money and that the money will just grow without them having to do anything to make that happen. Thatís not true. Money is brought in based on your efforts, so itís time to adopt new habits of learning and trying new ideas.

Envy of the Competition

When youíre resentful that your competition has what youíd like to have, or accomplishes what youíd like to do, thatís envy. While it can be natural at times to feel envious, when you envy the competition, you can end up doing a lot of harm to yourself if you donít let it go.

Envy arises because we worry about the entrepreneurial experts. Theyíre so polished. They know just what to say. Hundreds, if not thousands of people seem to hang on to their every word.

Every idea they churn out seems to turn into a money maker and when you see these experts and their booming business, you resent that you donít have that, too. But what youíre not realizing is that no expertís success story was readymade.

They didnít simply get up one morning and put on an aura of success. They build their success just like everyone else does. A piece at a time. When you look at an expert, you donít see the rough road they walked to get where they are.

You donít see the times when they struggled. Or the times they were afraid. You donít see when they worried about the next move or the money flow. You donít know what they went through to get where they are.

When you envy the competition, what happens is youíre setting yourself up in the comparison game and no one ever wins that. Itís played on a concept where there will always be someone whoís better in business than you are.

But there will also be someone whoís worse than you. Comparison is a measuring stick that will ensure that you come up short. Itís the key to berating yourself and it creates low self esteem.

You might not realize that when most people compare themselves to the competition, they never choose to compare themselves to someone whoís failing. They always choose the experts – the huge success stories.

What you need to realize is that how they become a success isnít the exact same business model thatís going to work for you anyway. If you do compare yourself to the competition, only do it to create the determination to be better than they are and not to make yourself afraid or to feel bad about yourself.

You donít want to become a lemming and follow whatever the competition is doing. There are enough lemmings. Enough carbon copies. Choose to be an original and bring whatís unique about yourself and your business to the masses.

When you do that, when you choose to create a business thatís all you and youíll find your own success story. Youíll become the person that others look to with envy because youíve followed (and achieved) your dreams.

Overloaded with Excitement Over Options

In todayís world, when you start a business, it can be easy to become overloaded with excitement. It happens often because there are countless options available. One of the things that entrepreneurs have to be on guard against is shiny new object syndrome.

This is what happens when there are so many ideas that you want to try them, all so you hop from one idea to the next. It always feels like the newest idea is going to be great.

We find a new technique, new software, new tools and we chase after them. The beginning of something is always exciting because it holds the promise of success. Itís what weíve always been waiting for – this new idea or tool – so we have to do it or have it.

The problem with so many options is that it can cause you take off down various paths and end up preventing you from actually accomplishing anything at all. Itís a lack of attention and focus that can derail your business if youíre not careful.

Because when youíre chasing the newest idea, youíre not spending time on your business. Youíre not focusing on the things that matter with it. When you experience shiny new object syndrome, it can make you a jack of all trades and a master of none.

Youíre so busy chasing whatever is new and comes along that you donít complete the tasks that you should do in order to make your business a success. So what happens is you lose time and money on things that are wrong for your business.

You can get caught up in information overload, too – just like you can with shiny new object syndrome. When you have information overload, thereís too much data for you to take it all in.

Itís hard to know what to process and how to make a choice when thereís too much information. If you have shiny new object syndrome, you might be able to start a hundred projects, but you wonít follow through with any of them.

Youíll end up getting about halfway done and then something new will come along and off you go again. With information overload, you can end up feeling paralyzed and unsure of what decisions to make, so in the end, you donít make a decision at all.

You can stop both of these from happening. With shiny new object syndrome, when something new comes along, always ask yourself if you have something that needs to be finished.

If thereís something waiting for you to work on, donít get involved in another project until the other one is completed. With information overload, only take in the information you need to complete your task. Focus on one portion of information at a time. Remember that itís better to do one thing well than to do a dozen things poorly.