A colleague and I recently got into the discussion of why so many businesses fail.
There are several reasons of course, ranging from:
- expecting full-time+ results while truly working less than part-time hours to
- lack of follow-up, assuming that everyone will immediately buy or not at all to
- poor systems, both operational and marketing to
- trying to be a jack of all trades, etc.
But there’s one which I believe overrides all the others. One which isn’t really seen or acknowledged until it’s over, until the curtain comes down and you’re either getting a job or retiring.
That one?
Stepping over pennies to attempt to get to the dollars
Ignoring all the little things you can do in your business that, in total, add up to consistent revenue and profits. On their own however, none are very exciting or awe-inspiring.
A simple example:
The online-based business owner who wants to host a group program and charge $997 or more for it despite having a list that’s “less-than-actively-engaged”. Seeing what others are doing and attempting the same, her marketing campaign goes bust and she’s lucky to have registered 1 client.
I could go into all the reasons why her campaign failed, but that’s not important here.
What is important is that the exact same business owner could have spread the information from her $997 program out into a membership program that she charged under $50/month for and likely gotten several signups.
9 times out of 10, the sum of the smaller actions/campaigns outperforms the results of the larger one. . .and with a whole lot less time, energy and resources, but it’s not sexy so fewer business owners do it.
What if you were to pick one revenue-generating activity to focus on this week? What if I challenged you to go make $50 – $100 that you otherwise would not have had? How would you do it?
And then what if you multiplied that action?
How different would your life look?