Every now and then I stumble across some wisdom that I think can help my readers succeed. The wisdom I’d like to share with you comes from an unlikely place, a TV show. Especially since TV is something that stifles many moonlighting entrepreneurs I’ve talked to. Though I’ll save that rant for another issue on another day.
Two weeks ago I was watching an episode of Hard Knocks on HBO. If you don’t know, Hard Knocks is a documentary that follows the NY Jets through NFL training camp. During the episode one of the coaches gave a speech to his players that I believe will help many of you. The speech went something like this…
“One day a man walked into a store where the devil was having a moving sale. There were big discounts on everything so the man asked the devil what his best selling item was. The devil answered, “discouragement”. The devil continued to say when someone has discouragement all of his tools work against them.”
I think this very speech is also true for aspiring entrepreneurs. Discouragement can kill your entire business. If you become discouraged you lose the focus you need and the desire to work. It’s the number one thing that stops people in their tracks before they even start. I’ll unfortunately see this happen with some of my customers.
Maybe this has happened to you. You purchase a program on making money with your own business. When this happens you’re very excited about your prospects. Though when the course comes there is something that gets you discouraged. Maybe it’s the perceived time commitment or having to learn something new. Often times these are unnecessary fears that lead to discouragement. Especially since everything great in life requires a time commitment and learning something new. This applies to not just business, but also parenting, relationships, hobbies, and just about anything else you can think of.
Whenever you start and try something new there is going to be a learning curve. You can’t expect to become a master over night. Often times when looking at the mountain it’s easy to become discouraged. Though we can create smaller hills from that mountain. You do this by creating smaller goals to motivate you and create accomplishment points to be proud of.
For example let’s say you are trying to start your own online business. There are dozens of things you’ll have to do. Like setting up your domain, website, auto-responders, merchant accounts, sales copy, getting email names, and most importantly getting customers. Thinking about all that starting from square one can be extremely discouraging.
So let’s overcome discouragement by focusing on one obstacle at a time. If you’re starting out you can focus this week on the steps to selecting and purchasing your appropriate domain name. After that you can spend the next two weeks focusing on setting up a blog. From there you keep moving onto bigger and bigger steps.
After each mini accomplishment you’ll begin to feel a sense of pride and ENCOURAGEMENT. When you feel the discouraging thoughts creeping in take a moment to make them disappear. You can do this by taking a deep breath and remembering Rome was not built in a day.
There will be stumbling blocks along the way. Instead of looking at each stumbling block as a reason to get discouraged look at it as a step on a ladder. Each step you climb up brings you closer to your goal. When you look at it this way hitting stumbling blocks means you’re getting closer. You’ve reached the next step.
Until Next Time…
Ethan Warrick
Editor & CE
