Posted by JuJuan Buford @JSBUFORD
I know there are a number of people reading this whose initial response will be, why write about, talk about, or focus on the negative or the opposite of what our desired outcomes are as entrepreneurs? I certainly did, but these types of discussions are necessary because being successful more than anything else is often determined by the things you don’t do, the errors in judgment you don’t make, or the traps you don’t allow yourself to fall in, rather than the things you do.
And I wish someone would have really sat me down with me and mapped out the potholes, mental errors, and dumbapple decisions that could either blow up or seriously curtail my best-laid plans when I was younger. And to be balanced I wish I was more receptive, less sure in my youthful ignorance, more aware of my frailties, and more introspective of my feelings rather than being reliant upon my intellectual veracity. Being able and willing to take the time to question your behaviors, and observe if they can stand up to some fact-checking is invaluable. At the end of the day, if you want better results, asking better questions is the answer.
#1. Not Willing to Do the Hard
You’ve scheduled an open house or private business reception to launch your endeavor, and rather than picking up the phone and calling people, you’d rather send a gazillion text messages and turn your Facebook or social media page into an advertising billboard.
Your business mentor or someone who has achieved more than you as an entrepreneur in the particular endeavor you’ve chosen to invest your time, money, and sweat equity in provides you with a script that has produced a lineage of success stories, and you decide you want to wing it because you’re so brilliant or your people are somehow different than the other billion-plus people on the planet earth. The winning formula doesn’t apply in your case because somehow, the one hundred people you know are from Venus, and everyone else on the planet is from Mars.
You haven’t studied the playbook. Nor attended even two minutes of training. And you decide to commandeer a vehicle - let’s say a plane for example - for the first time, that can travel 660 mph and you’ve never run faster than 26 mph. This isn’t Hollywood. People rise to their level of training, not solely their level of desire.
#2. Not Understanding the Game You’re Playing
When you’re first starting out the goal is to inform everyone with a pulse about what you’re doing, because to quote Grant Cardone, your greatest enemy in business is obscurity. Your objective is to at minimum introduce your business to at least 100 people within the first week of launching. Especially, if you’re new to entrepreneurship or you haven’t amassed years of successful sales experience, resist the urge to run out and attempt to convince everyone about why your product or service offerings without assistance. Amateurs sale and professionals sort.
In other words, the bag is creating a tribe of people who trust you, believe in you, and are willing to tell other people about you. The bag is creating 100+ brand advocates who are willing to speak favorably of you in the marketplace. If people see value in your product and or services, are comfortable with the tone and how they are being introduced, and are able to leave with a good feeling in their spirit (whether they patronized you or not) about your mission and purpose, you've won. Remember, if your value proposition is real and it truly solves a problem, people will patronize you.
Most people have 100+ contacts in their phones. What's more valuable? Would you rather have them as a client, or be introduced to another 100+ people in a very favorable way? Of course, we want both, but you have to choose.
Once again, the goal is not to go out and try to convince your family, friends, and neighbors to support what you’re doing. Your #1 responsibility is simply to extend an invitation to people and give them the opportunity to learn about your product or services under favorable circumstances that allows them to make an educated decision. What are favorable circumstances?
#1. Allow your support team to help you invite and introduce your business to the public. Lean on the experience and know-how of successful entrepreneurs around you. Established professionals and entrepreneurs already know what objections to anticipate, and how to address them before they have a chance to germinate in the listener's mind.
The key here is to earn as you learn. Take notes, and ask questions following presentations to understand not only what is being said, but why. This is how you accelerate your learning curve.
#2. Give your prospects an opportunity to receive 100% of the information, as opposed to 50% from your limited perspective initially. By the way, your people know you are new to this. Most thinking, prudent people aren’t going to invest their hard-earned currency in someone that isn't proven. You want them to make a decision based upon their belief in the value proposition and the business model, not you. Else you will have to continually convince them to remain steadfast to a commitment they are not emotionally and mentally rooted in.
#3. Be enthusiastic about your endeavor, and if you can’t find that loving feeling, borrow it from your leadership. No one is going to be more thrilled than you about your entrepreneurial journey, and people make positive buying decisions at their height of need, hunger, or excitement.
#3. Failing to Understand that Entrepreneurship is Skilled Trade
If you’re still reading this article, it means you’ve at least finished middle school, have matriculated through high school, and more than likely attended some college. Meaning, you’ve participated in a directed learning environment for a minimum of 8 to 12 years, to gain employment at a job that doesn’t provide you the opportunity to live the life of satisfaction you desire for yourself and or your family.
If you’ve worked at Starbucks, McDonald's, Microsoft, or any kind of well-established organization with a proven business model, you had to attend some type of orientation, and participate in some type of training regimen before you deemed worthy of pouring the coffee, greeting the guests, or coding the software.
If you’ve worked a job or jobs for at least two, five, or ten years, working on average 40 hours a week and said job hasn’t transformed into an asset that can provide the income required to live the life of satisfaction you desire for you and your family….
For the purposes of this discussion, we are going to define an asset as a thing that generates revenues whether you get up and slam the nail, twist the screwdriver, or pull the lever or not.
Why would you expect that you’re going to build a business asset without giving 100% of your effort, whether it be on a spare time or part-time basis (ten hours a week); including time for ongoing education?
#4. You Have to Be Willing to Become the Person That Can Achieve Your Goals.
You’ve been trained from your first wail as a baby to conform to a set of carefully constructed norms and expectations that are all designed to keep you existing in a state of conformity, following lockstep in a narrative or soundtrack that ensures that you follow a performative script keeping you in the good graces of your peers, subordinates, and superiors.
Except there are no peers, subordinates, or superiors, it’s really just you. You and your dreams. You and your expectations. You and the soundtrack in your mind that informs you about yourself.
And while it is natural and a good thing to be empathetic to those around you. You’re in the entrepreneurship game now.
“We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.” - Warren Buffet
In other words, don’t run with the crowd. In investing, the winners are typically doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing. It’s not much different with entrepreneurship. Successful entrepreneurs stand at the end of the horizon at the world’s edge allowing us to see things first. We identify the arbitrage first. We curate and deliver the solutions to the problems or people's appetites better, more conveniently, and more often than not, first.
You’re going to have to buck over 157,680 hours of programming. It’s not going to be comfortable. There will be hunger pains. There will be headaches. There will be emotional strains. Eyes that have been conditioned in the dark hurt when used in the light.
You’re current thinking, learning, and ability have brought you to the place where you stand now. If you want different outputs, you’ll need to deposit different inputs into your life. You’ll have to become someone different or be OK with the alternative.
Here’s a huge insight. Never diss those who were there from the beginning, just learn to distance yourself from those who don’t aspire to have the things you desire and aren’t willing to pay the price you’ve committed to. And to quote the sage of Omaha again.
“It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction.” - Warren Buffet
#entrepreneurshipisempowerment #smallbizarchitect #smallbizarchitecture #nextoppsocial
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JuJuan Buford is a CEO, Co Founder serial entrepreneur, writer, and public speaker. JuJuan started his career in the banking and investment advisory industry, and transitioned into business ownership and is enjoying entrepreneurial success in multiple industries: business coaching, real estate wholesaling, direct selling, business technical assistance provider, ghost writing, and publishing.
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