Cracking the Code: The True Story of Entrepreneurial Success |EP168

Episode 168

Ever wondered why your entrepreneurial journey feels more like a rollercoaster rather than the smooth ride you see others bragging about? Well, brace yourself for an episode that cracks open the truth about the so-called overnight success in the business world. I’m your host, Dona Eade, and together we’re going to debunk the myths, highlight the importance of a clear core message, and explore why most entrepreneurs face a tough grind in the initial two years, even in the digital space. We’ll also be tackling how to navigate through these rough waters and still come out on top.

As we progress, we'll venture into the realms of scaling, garnering clarity, and understanding the power of a well-defined 'why' in your business journey. We'll discuss how having systems and processes can help you avoid the dreaded burnout and why your unique contribution to the business world is so crucial. So, prepare for a candid and enlightening conversation that tackles the realities of entrepreneurship, and remember, your journey may be messy, but it’s one worth doing in my opinion. Grab a cuppa of your favourite beverage, and let's do it.

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Entrepreneurial Fallacy
• 15:09 Scaling and Clarity in Business
• 18:53 Find Your Why in Business

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:33

You're listening to the Mindset in Action podcast, bringing you the map to grow and streamline your business in 2023. I'm your host, dona Eade, your go-to gal for all things podcasting, planning and productivity and I'll be bringing you all that plus Mindset Goodness from experts with knowledge to share. Let's make 2023 the year of success in your business. Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a long time making it or breed a graph. Welcome back to the podcast. Everyone, I am so excited to have you here today to talk about a topic that may well be right up your street, because if you are somebody who is fed up with seeing all of these overnight successes and feeling, maybe, like you haven't quite made it right or you're doing something wrong in your business because you're not as successful as XYZ, then this is definitely going to be an episode you want to listen to, because we are talking about the entrepreneurial fallacy. Today. We're going to be breaking it down into three distinct phases the initial struggle yes, I said struggle operations, and learning and scaling. So these are the things that we're going to be looking at today, and we're also going to address the misconceptions surrounding failure rates in the business space, in the online space and shedding some light on the importance of having a clear core message and target audience. So let's jump into that first one. So the first phase of business is the hot mess phase. You've got to embrace the hot mess and a lot of people, and I'm just going to sort of pause before we jump into that and let you know what I see going on a lot, especially in the online space, and what I see is a lot of people telling you that they have got the answer, that they have the magic key that is going to unlock your business success, and what they do is they give you lots of testimonials from customers who have had fantastic time with them and have succeeded and created the business of their dreams, are having amazing months, revenue wise, client wise, student wise and they're just growing and it's all fantastic.

Speaker 1: 3:03

What you don't see in those instances is the number of clients and students of that person who haven't succeeded and haven't created that revenue that they wanted, and that is fair enough. You know, we all want to talk about our successes more than our failures, and when it comes to being somebody who is providing something in the business sense of teaching something, it is down to the individuals to implement the work and actually do it, and so you are not completely in control as the teacher, as the guide on how successful somebody is or isn't with it. It is down to that individual to take what they've learned and run with it. So we can't hold these people accountable, as it were, for misinformation or anything like that, because of course they're going to talk about the successes that people have had, because that is what they were training them for and those are the people who have got it. Now, this isn't to say that everybody who is not mentioned in those testimonials failed, and it is not to say that all of those people that aren't mentioned are not going to succeed at some point. But at the time the person was asking for testimonials and success stories, it's the ones that we all hear about that come to light.

Speaker 1: 4:25

But there is a distinct difference between these people who have what is seemingly looks like an overnight success and the majority of people that take these courses or do these programs and things like that, and I think it's really important to understand that just because it doesn't initially work for you or you're not seeing these big results that other people are seeing straight away, don't assume that that means that it has failed for you, and I think a lot of people see all of those successes and they think, okay, so once I've done this, I'm going to be like that, and it isn't true. It doesn't happen for the majority of people something to bear in mind. Okay, so, embracing the hot mess, so we're going to get real now. This is what it really looks like to set up in business, and even those people that you see, that you may be, aspire to be like the big wigs in the space that you are in. These people went through that phase, and I sometimes feel like some of them have got so far away from that phase that they don't really remember what it was like or how they felt in those moments. But here it is. The first two years are your hot mess years. This is the excitement phase. This is where you get to start this new adventure, and what happens is this adventure suddenly starts losing its shine, and it often fades quickly when faced with the harsh realities of those early stages of business. Now let's think about it practically, and most of you have already started your business, so you know what these years look like.

Speaker 1: 6:11

How do I set up a website? Do I even need a website? What about my socials? I can't get my handle on all the same platforms. I can't. I don't know what SEO is. How do I plug this thing into that thing and make it work on my website? Like? All of these questions start coming up. That's on top of. How do I get clients? Where are they hanging out? Who do I need to talk to? Do I need to be going to in-person networking or can I find them on social? How are other people getting all of these people to come and listen to a class that they're doing? You know, all of these questions are running around in your mind and you feel like you're running in circles chasing your own tail.

Speaker 1: 6:56

Things show that a majority of entrepreneurs struggle during the first two years of business. A majority guys of people struggle in their first two years. So when you look at it, when you look at these sort of programs that you might take that help you with setting up your business or doing a particular thing within your business, look at how many people are actually doing that with you, and often, especially with these online courses, it could be thousands of people. Yet the people who are selling you this course, talk about the same 10 testimonials again and again, and again. Okay, so I've heard that, because I went through one program twice. In effect, I went through the launch process of a program twice and I heard the person who was running the program talk about the same people time and time again, because these are the cream of the crop, these are the people that just had the you know.

Speaker 1: 8:02

They always say you know results not typical. You know, these are the people, these are the outliers, the ones that just happen to hit it in the right place and have these amazing results. This isn't happening for everyone. Everyone else is in the weeds, getting sticky and not understanding how this works, and struggling. And I think we can often feel real alone when we're just seeing these success stories, which can be really, really sad, because a lot of people will then stop doing their business because they think, oh, I'm not as good as they are and I didn't have success straight away, so I can't be good enough to do this. And that is a real shame, because I totally believe that what Marie Folio says is true and that there is something unique inside all of us that other people need to know.

Speaker 1: 8:53

So it's essential to understand that success rarely comes overnight. It really doesn't, guys, and as much as we see it sort of put in our faces day in, day out that these people have had this success, et cetera, it doesn't happen overnight. Persistence and determination are crucial during this phase, because if you don't have it, then the likelihood is this is as far as you're gonna get. You go through this hot mess for two years and then you go back to a day job because it's just too hard. You can't see the end of the tunnel, there's no light there at all and you just don't know how you would even find that light. And that is really sad because, like I said, there is so much in you that other people need to know about. And so if you can make it to the second phase, you are already beating so many people out and I want you to celebrate that. So, if you are two years or more in business, you like, raise a glass now, whatever it is you're drinking water, tea, gin, I don't care raise your glass, toast yourself and say do you know what? Well done, well done me, because I made it.

Speaker 1: 10:04

Okay, made it into the second two years of business, which again isn't this you know necessarily this like success explosion, which, again, I think a lot of people hear how long these success stories have been in business and think hang on a minute, I've been doing this for three years and I'm still not there yet. And you've been at it for three months and you're getting multiple thousands of dollars into your account, multiple thousands of pounds into your account already. How is this possible? This isn't fair and I think sometimes this is where we actually need to put our blinkers on. So, as much as it is important to sort of keep an eye on the lay of the land, I think a lot of the times we allow our focus to be drawn in that direction, and in a negative light as well. So it's just us focusing on what we are lacking instead of what we are doing, and when we focus on the lack, when we focus on the negative, we bring more of that to us. So when you see people outside of your peripheral vision having what you want, having those successes that you want, I want you to just put the blinkers back on and focus on what you're doing and how far you have come, because at this stage we're already two years in. We're doing the thing. It's happening. It's gonna happen for us if we just keep moving forward and making progress.

Speaker 1: 11:37

So, after surviving those initial challenges, entrepreneurs begin to gain a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, and this might be where you decide to start outsourcing some things. So you know things that you really just you know they're not your strength and they take up way too much of your time. Outsource look into it, guys. I think a lot of people are scared that outsourcing is just a huge expense that they can't afford. But when you can get that time back to make money, then actually it becomes much more affordable when you look at it that way. So just take a look at what it is that you're doing and how you might be able to outsource some of those things that you just don't enjoy and take up a lot of your time. This is the part where you're going to be getting to the nitty gritty of your operations, fine tuning those processes so that you can get better productivity out of yourself by taking less time to do things.

Speaker 1: 12:38

So it is really important that we are looking at all the different aspects of our business in this stage and how they're currently running, and is there a better way. So we're looking at all of those operations. We're looking at how our nurture sequence is working. Is it working? Are people engaging with those emails? If not, are we tweaking them? Are we looking at our open rates of our emails? Are we looking at how many people are landing on our website? You know when was the last time you checked your Google analytics? Because they recently changed guys, and if you've missed it, then you have been missing out on stats for the last month. So I would definitely go over and check that. That is all still working.

Speaker 1: 13:22

But do you make a point of going in once a month and checking your numbers? Checking your numbers isn't just about what's in the bank. It's about your website numbers. It's about your email open rates. It's about your social media stats. All of these numbers give you data points to know whether you are moving forward, whether you're stagnating or whether you are going backwards, and oftentimes, if you're not growing, you're actually going backwards. So there isn't really. You know. The stagnating is if you're just going up a few numbers each month. That's kind of your treading water. It's a little bit like money in that respect. You know, if you put 500 in your account and it doesn't gain any interest in a year, then actually you've lost money. You know it's that kind of thing with your data for your business. So you need to be making sure that those numbers are increasing, that they're going in the right direction for what you want.

Speaker 1: 14:21

And then also self-discovery learning about what's working for you in this business. Learning what is changing about you, because I can tell you from my point of view being in business now for three years the person who started in business in 2020 is different to the person who sits in front of this microphone today. So what are you finding within your business journey? How is it affecting you? On a personal level? This phase is all about discovering what you're good at and aligning your business and strategies accordingly. So it's a great part of your business and it's a great place to be.

Speaker 1: 15:09

But again, there's gonna be struggles, there's gonna be teething issues because you're tweaking things. In this stage, you're saying, okay, well, I've got everything set up, but now I need to tweak it to make sure that it's actually doing what I need it to be doing. And this may be the time where you actually realise that some things aren't working and you have to let them go, which is what happened with me. So the next few years, when you're in the next realm this is the realm that we all wanna get to, but you can't get there without those first two phases is the journey of scaling, and this is where you've got everything in place. It's working, and it doesn't mean that you don't tweak it ever again, because everything needs tweaking continually but you've got everything to a working system and you've got people coming in. You've got customers coming in on a regular basis. You've got a regular income coming in. So now it's about scaling and improving. In my opinion, we always need to be improving, we always need to be learning so you're able to do things on a bigger scale because you've got all of those processes in place. This is where you're gonna see those jumps in income. It's gonna be a great time. I can't wait to get there, but it's gonna be a great time.

Speaker 1: 16:27

And the thing is is these phases happen. It doesn't matter who you are in business, it's just the amount of time they take. That can be different for some people. So you have those outliers, like I said earlier, that will skip through these really, really quickly. Sometimes they will skip through them so quickly that they end up falling backwards on them because they haven't got those processes set up well enough to withstand the scaling that they're doing. So that's something else to just be mindful of, because you hear these success stories and some of the people that I've heard have done like follow-ups with their students to see where they are after that initial success and you see them talk about their continued success or how they had to change things, and so there is always changes happening. But then there will be other people that have this initial burst of success but they didn't have the systems in place to withstand that level of success and they actually fall backwards and sometimes fall off completely because they get too overwhelmed by it. So there is definitely an advantage to growing slowly, and I know sometimes we all want it right now, this minute, please. I want that success, but sometimes it is just worth taking that time.

Speaker 1: 17:51

So the next thing I wanted to talk about was the importance of clarity, dividing your purpose and your audience. So the reason many entrepreneurs fail is because they lack a clear vision of how they can truly help their target audience, and we're always banging on this show about your why, but it's because it is so, so integral to you being able to be the best you in your business. If you haven't got a clear vision for who it is that you help and how you help them and why they need that help, you're going to struggle to get the message across to the right people and therefore you're gonna struggle getting customers in and therefore you're gonna struggle getting revenue in and sustaining your business. So it's really important to know who it is that you are talking to and how you can truly help them. Understanding that core message is essential for your long-term success, and that is why you will hear me talk about your why again and again and again on this show, because it is so important.

Speaker 1: 18:53

And the thing is, is your why can change over time? So you might start off helping people, do one thing, and then things change. You grow, the business evolves and you end up helping people with something else, but if you haven't actually sat down at that point and gone, okay, so why am I doing this? Why is this change coming about? What do I now need to focus on? Who is the person that I am helping? Is it the same people I was helping before? They're just at a different stage. Is it a different audience entirely? Let's take a look at it. You will end up falling victim to that same issue of not being clear on your message, not talking to the right people, not pulling the right people towards you and not getting that revenue or success that you deserve.

Speaker 1: 19:38

So it is often said that a high percentage of businesses fail within the first three years, but I believe these numbers get even higher when it comes to online businesses in the online space, and that's because of this allure what I've been talking about already this quick success in the digital world and it can lead to some really unrealistic expectations and premature surrender, and I feel like that is something that I have seen time and time again in my journey when I have been taking part in courses and programs. I absolutely love to learn. It is like my biggest joy in life is to learn something new, and I really enjoy getting into the nitty gritty of things and learning. But while I'm doing that, I'm seeing lots of people having these major successes and, like I said at the beginning, when you see all this success around you in a quick space of time, you often can feel that you're not good enough, that you're not doing it right that you're missing something, that there's just an element and if you could just find what that one little thing is, that you could have that success too. And it's not the case. Oftentimes it is just a fluke that they're having such a quick success.

Speaker 1: 20:59

But when we see it and it is put in front of our faces again and again and again as encouragement of what is possible, it can often have the adverse effect of making us feel like there's no point in me trying because I'm never gonna be able to get there. Or you come to the end of it and you realize there's no point in me trying because they're already there and I haven't even got to X yet. And so it's a double-edged sword and it depends on the type of person you are, which is why I say sometimes this is a great thing and sometimes it's a bad thing, because it depends on who you are. If you're somebody who can see others' success and you can take that and internalize it into motivation for you to get there, that's great. But if you're somebody who sees other's success, in that time and you think I can't do that, it starts this negative self-talk that can really be to the detriment of your own success. That could be just a couple of months further down the line, for all we know.

Speaker 1: 22:04

You know, because it's that image, and it was Catherine, my health, my vitality coach put up the picture of the guy digging for diamonds. You know the two guys building tunnels under the earth and one of them gives up and you can see that he's just a foot away from the diamonds and the other guy continues to keep digging. And I think oftentimes in business that is exactly what happens. Is we dig, dig, dig and we're putting so much heart and soul into it, but we're seeing all these other people have success and we just haven't seen it yet. And it can be really easy to go. This obviously isn't for me and we turn around just at that wrong moment, just a foot before the diamonds fall, and the thing is is you don't know that it's coming, you can't, you can't know until it gets there. So it's really important again, this is another reason why it's really important to have your why front and center. Why are you doing this? Why do you want to be successful at this and keeping that at the forefront of your mind rather than looking at what other people are doing? So there we have it, guys.

Speaker 1: 23:10

The entrepreneurial fallacy perpetuates this myth of overnight success, which can discourage aspiring business owners and us that are not quite where we want to be in our business and have been doing it for a while, thinking you know when's it going to work for me, when's that big, our heart moment going to happen? It can be really, really detrimental to everything our business, our mental health, our family life when we are looking at all of this success being thrown at us left, right and center and we're not seeing it for ourselves. But the other thing that that does, guys, is it detracts from your successes. Just this week, this podcast hit the top 40 in the entrepreneurial category for Great Britain. That is a big deal, but I downplayed it because I didn't think it was that big a deal.

Speaker 1: 24:15

And it really upsets me to think about how I minimize my own successes because I don't think they're as good as somebody else's successes. And that is the sort of downside sort of seeing all of this success thrown at you is that oftentimes you won't want to shout about your successes because you feel like you're just adding to it. And oftentimes we don't even see our successes as the successes that they are because they're not as big as or they're not as good as, and I think it's really important that we take time in our business to reflect and look at where we've come, how far we've come, what it is that we have achieved, because for me I mean I did put it all out on my social media, so you might have seen it recently that I put it out and screenshot it and told everybody that Simon Bartlett diary of a CEO was number one and I capped out the top 40. So we topped and tailed, which I thought was really cool. I thought it was really cool, but for a PR perspective, I thought, oh, this is good for PR, this is good for me to put out for PR purposes.

Speaker 1: 25:25

But I wasn't sitting there thinking. I didn't stop and think, oh my God, that's actually a really great chart place to be at. When you look at it, it is good and I should be celebrating it. And in that first instance, I was excited for the fact that I had something that was quite cool to share with people. But I didn't see it as a success in the way that others did, because I had plenty of people reaching out to me telling me wow, that's amazing how fantastic that's, so cool, and I hadn't really given myself the permission to see it as a big success for me, and it is. So I think it's really important that we stop and look at our own successes in our business, because we are having successes all the time, these micro successes that are gonna lead us to these bigger successes. And the thing is is I want you to sort of look at it this way if you are building your business slowly, if you have had those hot mess years, if you're stuck in the operation years right now, first, I'm with you. Second, you are growing something on a fantastically stable foundation. You are making your successes on the back of your failures, because if you are like me, then you have had a number of failures so far already.

Speaker 1: 26:51

You know, for me it was my podcast name to start with. It was the business I originally set up. You know, these were all things that have failed in some sort of way and I don't necessarily see them as failures. I think they were very important parts of my journey and I think they were very important for the people that I helped when I was doing it. You know we have this community and it was helping people. So it wasn't a failure. It just didn't bring the success that I needed in the way that I needed it and I had to change it. So there are failures that we are making along the way and they are building us a strong foundation.

Speaker 1: 27:33

I would just imagine it as like you're starting to build a house and if you've ever been around a building when it's being built I basically grew up on a building site, because my dad took our house back to bricks and rebuilt it. But when you're doing a foundation, you kind of dig into the ground and then you start building the bricks up and one of the things that they do is add a lot of aggregate, which is, like, you know, rocks and broken bricks and stuff to the ground, and then they lay a concrete slab, and the reason they do that is because it creates more structure and more stability. And I always feel like this is what it's like in business we're building up this wall and then it goes wrong, so we just knock it all down and we just knock it all into the center of the hole, and then we come back and we start building up the wall again and we knock it down, and there are. A number of times these outside walls of our house get knocked down into the center and create this rubble that we're then pouring this operational section over, this learning and self-development operational section. These the concrete that we pour over it and it gets set and then it's solid and then we can start building, scaling our business, and it's gonna be on a firm foundation.

Speaker 1: 28:51

So I hope you liked that analogy, I quite liked that. But that is how I see it and I don't want you to feel like less than because you're seeing all of these quote unquote overnight successes. Now there are those overnight successes and then there are also the people who have been building their business for the last 10 years and they're the ones that are teaching us. They're the ones that are telling us this is how you do it. This is how you do it without doing all the things that I had to do and fail and learn, but at the end of the day, it still took them 10 years to get to where they are.

Speaker 1: 29:22

So us expecting to be where they are just because they're helping us to not make some of the mistakes they made is probably gonna set us up for heartache and failure in that first instance, because we all have to make mistakes. So even if we don't make their mistakes, we're gonna make our own mistakes, because that is how we learn. It is literally what happens. How many times have you told your children you know, don't do that, trust me. You know, I've been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, don't do it. And they still go ahead. And they do it because they have to learn by their own mistakes and it doesn't change as you become an adult.

Speaker 1: 29:59

We are all children, really, at heart. In everything that we do, we're all starting from a place of being that baby, with no information on it. So we have to learn, we have to make our own mistakes and we have to grow at our own pace. So don't compare your step two to somebody else's step 20. Okay, guys, that is it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it has made you realize that perhaps you have a few more successes to shout about than you thought you had. Please feel free to share your thoughts on this episode with me over on social. I am at Donut underscore Eid underscore on Instagram. That's where I hang out the most and I hope to see you in the next episode. Bye for now Such a beautiful harvest.