3 Common Mistakes that First Time Entrepreneurs Make

Entrepreneurship comes with a punch in the mouth. Can you take it? Entrepreneurship is not easy. Whatever you want to start that has value and can bring you value is hard to achieve. It is hard because nothing valuable comes easy. There will be many mistakes made, there will be many failures and you as an entrepreneur learn and grow from these failures and mistakes.

There are 3 common mistakes that I’d like to address here that almost all first time entrepreneurs make in their journey:

1) They put all their thoughts and efforts in their product and service

It is important to give value to what you are offering. But putting so much time in the product and service takes you away from putting time for yourself. You as an entrepreneur should come ahead of your product. The mind and soul behind your business determines the quality of it. If you want to have a high quality product or service you have to have high quality standards for yourself too.

Read as much as you can. Gain knowledge in the field you are working in. Get to know the customers. See how you can help them as a human. Work on the values you can offer through your product or service. Learn about leadership. Learn about persuasion. Learn how habits form and how you as an entrepreneur can form right habits that will push you through this rough path.

You have to make every cell of your body and mind work for you to achieve your goal. This is not achievable unless you work on it. Even if you have the best product or service and you don’t work on yourself as an entrepreneur, you will give up. You will get distracted. You will be pushed away and you will fall and you won’t be able to get up and continue.

You are the one forming your future’s success.  Look at yourself and see if you have the characteristics of the successful person you are imagining in the next one, two, three, or 10 years time. See what is lacking and work on those. Instead of putting so much time refining and elaborating your idea, work on yourself first and do other things on the side. Learn as much as you can, grow as a human, be kind to people, always be ready to give a helping hand, listen to successful people, share your knowledge… If you want to become rich, you have to ask others for money. But first you have to make yourself care about them.

2) They give up

Giving up is another common mistake that first time entrepreneurs make. I mentioned that it is not easy to achieve your goal if it is something valuable. You have to give up many things to get what you want from life. This journey is hard but it is joyful as well. Don’t give up when you hear a no for an answer. Don’t give up when you see no sells. Don’t give up when you see no return on the time your are investing.

First of all there are and will be returns on every action you take towards your goal. It is just that we will choose to only see what we want to see. We don’t see the amount of experience we are gaining with each step. You will learn, refine, and act again accordingly. If you believe in your idea you have to be persistent and have patience.

Jack Ma founder of Alibaba says many times in his presentations that he didn’t have any sells on Alibaba for months when they started it. They had to put their own products online, they had to buy them themselves, and they repeated this until they found real  sellers and buyers. It requires patience. As an entrepreneur we have to learn how to become patient no matter how hard it is. Especially these days with the existence of social media and instant feedback, likes and comments, that are making us impatient human beings who need to see quick responses or they will give up.

3) They want to make everyone happy

Steve jobs says it right. “If you want to make everyone happy don’t be a leader. Sell ice cream.” It is true. Your product or service should have a niche target market.

You have to make your target narrow to be able to get attention. Sometimes the people closest to you might say your idea is not good enough and you have to make changes to it. If you believe in it, if you see potentials in it, don’t change it. Don’t listen to those who are saying you have to make your market bigger. Stick to your idea, your market becomes big for you. People will find you for who you are. If you think there are people that their opinion would affect yours, don’t share your idea with them. Start your business, get some results and when it is performing to the level that you are confident about it, then you can tell them.

There are many other things I like to talk about from my experience. There are many things I want to tell all first time entrepreneurs. But I will bring this post to the end by just telling you this; you deserve to live your dream life. There is nothing more valuable in this world than trying to achieve what you want to become in this world.

If you are here reading this post it means you have realized you want to make a change. This is the first step and the most important one. I know what you are going through; all the questions, the excitements, and disappointments that come on your way. I totally understand it. There won’t be a stop to it. You will learn how to deal with your emotions as you grow in this journey.

Entrepreneurship is sailing in the sea of emotions. There will be sunny sky and calm sea, there will be storms as well. You will learn how to deal and sail like an expert. But you have to step into the sea to be able to learn and become a successful sailor. Don’t worry about anything. I want to give you the courage to step in. Take a deep breathe and know that you will only face things that you can handle.

Start making changes to your life now. Tomorrow is too late. Decide today and use every second of your life, changing every cell of your body and mind towards achieving your goal. You should become the success you want to see in the future. When you, your mind, body, and beliefs become that success no matter what you do, it will be successful.

Cheers to all of the first time entrepreneurs who are wayyy ahead of many people in life by deciding to change their life for themselves and others.

 

 

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Top 7 strategies to convert your Website Visitors to your Paying Customers

Psychology is the base of many things we do in life. When doing business draw your strategies around how people think and make decisions. Read experiments, and learn about human’s decision making habits. Don’t think you know the answers. Sometimes the results are unexpected and totally different from what you think. Psychology helps you become creative. It helps you come up with interesting strategies to convert someone who just came on your site to browse, an actual paying customer/client.

Countless studies in Psychology, Sociology, Economics, and Political Science have shown that humans are not rational decision makers. This is because our decision making is influenced by our life’s experience and how we have developed our habits and how our mind is evolved over many years to provide us with survival advantages.

There are many ways and I am sure endless points, hints, and experiments online and in books about human’s decision making habits. But here are top 8 motivating factors that can help you make more money by converting your site visitors to your paying customers.

  1. Safety
  2. Surprise
  3. Status
  4. Scarcity
  5. Certainty
  6. Similarity
  7. Sympathy
  8. Selfishness

Safety:

You need to see how your website/product/service helps your potential clients with the risks they might face. In other words you have to mention what they will lose by not contacting you. Keep in mind that fear by itself might have an opposite effect. Your advertising campaigns, or content of your website should inform potential customers the threats that your product or service can alleviate followed by precise and clear steps they can take to reduce the danger. If they need to buy your product in order to do that, you have to mention step by step how your product reduces the risk and how it will help them. Let’ say you are a dentist, you can mention the danger of not having regular dental checkups and then mention how you solve those problems and eliminate the risks your clients might face if they don’t do their checkups. You need to educate them about the risks and give them your solution.

Surprise:

You need to make your website stand out. Don’t copy other sites. You can get ideas, but it is not recommended to copy others. You have to make your site unique in your market. Your brand, the message on your site, your services have to be unique. Think and find what is unique about you and your business. How you are different from your competitors? What makes you a better option? Make sure you show these on your site. Don’t worry if you can’t satisfy everyone. You have to be unique in order to attract your target market. Seth Godin says it right: “Beware of false averages. Some people like really spicy food. Some people like bland food. Building a restaurant around sorta spicy food doesn’t make either group happy”

Status:

Humans seek status and social power. Your website should show how your product or service is connected to your client’s desire for status. You have probably felt that after buying some of your favorite brands, you feel rich and great. You could probably get the same thing cheaper from another brand but the desire for status in you make it totally rational to spend more on a brand that gives you the luxuries feeling. So if you want you can relate and show how coming to you and using your product or service is more luxury than your competitors. How having your brand brings pride and sense of satisfaction. Humans desire for status makes you earn more on things you could offer for less.

Scarcity:

This is how you can make your potential customers to act soon. Scarcity often makes things more valuable. Let them know what would happen if they delay contacting you or buying your product or services. This can be different for each type of business. For businesses related to health and law, you can mention what health and monetary risks your potential clients will face by lack of action or delay in action.  If you are selling products, you can have great offers that will end soon if your potential customers don’t act soon.  Make sure the negative consequences of failing to act quickly.

Certainty:

Don’t confuse your website visitors with having too many options on your site. Make sure you are clear about your products and services. Your website should be easy to browse for visitors and they have to find what they are looking for easily. Depending on what you are offering you can write step by step and clear messages on what would happen if a visitor does a certain activity on your site. You can have Q&A page. Answer their questions. Make it crystal clear for them. If you want them to fill a form, make sure you are mentioning clearly what would happen when they hit submit button. Making videos, posting photos, answering questions and having chat boxes on your website will help greatly with certainty.

Similarity:

Make sure your website and brand is consistent. Consistency gives a sense of trust to your potential customers. This consistency should be through layout, images, language, feel and tone. Make sure your site is consistent in look with your social profiles. Use the same logo, language, theme, and colors.

Sympathy:

This is where you can gain your potential customers’ trust and make them like you. Use images and language that shows how approachable and trustworthy you are. Write content that addresses your potential customers’ core concerns. Let them know that you understand them. If you are offering something expensive and you have financing option for those that can’t pay at once, let them know. Do research and see what your potential customer’s main problems are when making a decision on your product and service. Let them know that you understand and how you can solve their problem.

Selfishness:

It is tempting to think of ourselves when we want to start a business. We think what is in it for us. When you think this way and build your business around this idea it makes it bring you nothing. People don’t come to you to give you their money because they think you deserve to live better. They come to you, so you can solve their problem. They spend money to make their own life easier and better. They spend money on your products to give them a sense of satisfaction. Visitors to your website will not take action if they don’t see their needs are met. You have to show your website visitors that you care about them and that you are here to help them. This can be done through educational content, customer care pages, answering questions, and replying quickly to emails.

Having these 8 points in mind and applying them to your website will help you greatly with converting your Website Visitors to your Paying Customers.

 

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