Why do so many small business owners struggle?

Spending scarce money and time on marketing with Facebook ads. Ads that don’t bring in any prospects let alone actual clients.

Countless hours invested in social media updates and blogging with nothing to show.

Spending 80% of your precious time trying to figure it out instead of 80% of your time taking action.

It’s not for a lack of hard work and effort.

The truth is, your marketing, and business, should be simple and easy. 

So let’s take a look at the top 3 reasons people struggle in business.

Not Setting Clear Goals

The first thing you need to do is get clear on exactly where you are now.

What does your lead flow look like right now? A drought with no leads, maybe a trickle of unpredictable leads?

How many clients do you have each week?

What are your monthly sales?

How many prospects do you have on your email list?

Now if you could wave a magic wand where would your business be in 90 days time?

How many new leads do you want in 90 days time?

How many prospects do you want on your email list?

How many clients do you want each week?

What is your monthly sales goal?

Take control and establish a clear path for the next 90 days that will take you towards your longer term goals.

Focus every decision you make, everything you do, on how you can reach your 90 day goals.

Otherwise you are just going to drift aimlessly in the tide.

You will always be in reactive mode, often frustrated and overwhelmed. Feeling hopeless because you are a victim of what happens to you, with no idea where your next clients are going to come form.

Information Overload

The second reason most small business owners fail is because of marketing information overload.

Most of us approach marketing like we are drinking from a fire hose, drowning in information. Consuming blogs, podcasts, courses, ebooks, tools, software, listening to the gurus, going to seminars. All we’re doing is collecting more stuff that only adds to our anxiety or frustration.

How many sets of notes from seminars do you have that you haven’t looked at since the day your wrote them?

How many unwatched online courses, unread books, unwatched DVDs?

Want to be successful? Become a producer, an action taker.

Most small businesses have a limited amount of time and money. You need to spend that time putting in place the simple things that are going to make all the difference in the world.

Not dabbling in networking, social media, blogging, Facebook or SEO.  Focus on doing the right things in the right order.

Implement 10% of what you already know, instead of continually searching for the right tactic, and you could be incredibly successful.

Stop searching and consuming, spending money and time on things that don’t work or that you don’t need to be doing right now. Set clear goals and shift the way you look at growing your business to a much more simple model. Don’t keep overcomplicating it.

Lack of Clear Strategy

The third reason most people fail in business is a lack of a clear strategy.

Strategy to get from point a to point b or to achieve specific tasks.

At it’s simplest, a strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.

If I dropped you off in a junk yard, and said hey, go and pick up all the pieces required to make a running automobile. Put them together and drive that car out of there do you think you’d be able to do that?

Well that’s why this is not your fault.

There’s literally not a route to take to grow your business.

If you want to be a doctor, lawyer, personal trainer, chef, there’s usually a path. Go to this school. Get qualified. You might do an internship and then you go about your way in that profession, goal accomplished.

Everybody else has a strategy except for you the entrepreneur. You’re on an island trying to figure it out and the truth is that it could take 10X longer than it should. If you ever get there.

This is why so many people struggle at best, or fail.

When you follow a strategy framework, it provides a straight line from point a to point b.

You wear so many hats as a business owner. When you do have time to focus ON your business you have to spend that time fruitfully.

You need to follow a strategy.

It’s like having the combination to a safe. Imagine trying to hack into a Wells Fargo safe with a pickaxe. Now imagine you have a clear strategy. How much simpler is life – you turn a dial, left, right, left three times and it opens up a huge door on those small hinges?

That’s what strategies do. They take your business and marketing from a puzzle to a clear path where you know exactly what step to take next.