According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, on average, 30% of businesses fail by the end of their second year.
Half will close their doors by the end of the fifth year.
And after year 10, only about a third of those will remain.
Ask any of them WHY they failed and you’ll get a mix of answers.
“I didn’t have enough money coming in to keep going.”
“They just didn’t want our products anymore.”
“I was overwhelmed by all the legal requirements and couldn’t keep up.”
“Competition made it hard to continue being profitable so we had to throw in the towel.”
“I didn’t have the right software.”
Etc.
While all those may be accurate from their perspective, there often is a missing piece that many of them fail to see.
A Lack of “Mental Toughness”
The ability to push past failures and remain positive and competitive while also being mentally ready for whatever challenges come your way.
Now, you can’t just walk into a store or visit Amazon and buy mental toughness like you could software, products, supplies, or equipment for your business.
Like your body’s muscles, mental toughness is something that has to be intentionally developed over time.
And as you gain more mental toughness, you are no longer worried about all the challenges or “reasons” why you could fail.
Failing is just part of business. You learn to adapt, you learn to find solutions to the problems, and you learn to thrive even when the “climate”, “external circumstances”, or even everyone else says “it can’t be done”.
What can you do to improve your mental toughness for business?
Put special focus and attention on developing the following three strengths…
Strength #1 – Fortitude
Fortitude refers to having courage or strength in the face of adversity or difficulty.
In business you are going to be faced with an abundance of problems and “hard things”.
You will have to decide which market to provide value to.
What products to create.
How to create them.
How to communicate the value of the products to your market.
How to pivot or adjust if the market does not buy your products.
And a thousand and one other decisions that each come with their own set of problems, difficulties, and uncertainty.
If you don’t have fortitude, as soon as something “difficult” shows up in your path, you will shy away from it, avoid it, or just not do it and eventually your business will fail.
This turns into a learned behavior of…
“I won’t take it on if it’s difficult”
Instead, flip the script.
“If it’s difficult, I’ll take it on”
If you’ve been debating starting a blog, creating a new product, launching an existing product, or going into a new market, or anything else that you consider difficult…
Pick one difficult thing for this week and make a decision to take it on.
Yes, it may have problems, uncertainties, and you may even have to do some hard things.
Do them anyway.
Then, next week, pick a new difficult thing to take on, and do it.
Soon enough you’ll wake up one morning, look at yourself in the mirror, and see that you’ve developed quite a bit of fortitude “muscle”.
Strength #2 – Perseverance
Perseverance is being persistent in doing something on an ongoing basis regardless of the obstacles in the way.
If you start a new blog from scratch, you may not have an audience of readers right away and therefore will not get feedback on your content immediately. You might feel like you are writing to “no one” or that you are just wasting your time because no one is reading it.
If you create a new product, you may need to test multiple versions of the product before you land on one that customers are satisfied with and don’t refund. You may need to test multiple approaches in how you promote and sell your product before you start getting buyers. Initially, you may not get any buyers or feedback on your product at all and you’ll feel like you’re not making any progress. Does that mean you should give up on your product?
The key to get over these and many similar obstacles is to be perseverant.
Focus on the process and learn as you go.
Is no one reading your blog? Focus on being consistent with your content schedule. Whether you are doing it daily or weekly, just do it. You’ll learn which type of content gets traction and which doesn’t and with time, and adjustments made based on your learnings, the readers will come.
Is no one buying your product? Focus on consistently testing new selling strategies. Get on a schedule and commit to testing X number of approaches per day/week/month/quarter etc. With time you’ll find something that works to get buyers or you’ll discover that what you need is a new product in general.
In which area of your business can you be more perseverant?
Focus on the process.
Decide which part of it you can do on a consistent basis, set your schedule, and start doing it no matter what.
Next…
Strength #3 – Resilience
Resilience is your ability to bounce back or recover from setbacks or failures.
In business it’s not a matter of IF you’ll fail but WHEN.
The market you decided on may not be the right one for you.
The product you decided to create may not be what the market wants to buy.
You may do a fantastic job of selling the product but when customers actually use it, a majority of them don’t like it and ask for a refund.
You may find that advertising to a particular group of people can get very expensive and you may have a hard time recouping your advertising costs right away.
Resilience being able to bounce back from these setbacks or failures and just try again.
What have you failed at in the past that you’ve given up on?
Perhaps it’s time to try again.
Faced with a problem you can’t seem to get past?
Analyze the situation, brainstorm possible reasons why it’s not going the way you want it, make adjustments or changes to how you might go about solving the problem and simply try again.
The more you try again the more resilient you’ll become.
Learn to develop these three areas, fortitude, perseverance, and resilience, and you’ll be an unstoppable powerhouse when it comes to starting & growing your business. Sure there will be problems but you will gladly take them on because you know that one way or another you will succeed.
Want to start or grow your digital business? Click here to join my free email newsletter.
See you next week!
-Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx
.
.
.
P.S. Have an E-book or Course you want to sell? Here’s a couple of ways I can help you…
W4 Ad Guide – Learn how to write an effective ad to get buyers of your digital product no matter your writing, sales, or marketing ability.
Sales Page Architect – Learn about an amazingly simple yet effective approach for getting daily sales of your digital products — even if you’re not a marketer and have little to no sales skills.