My Mistakes

The other day I read a post from a friend about his biggest mistakes. It inspired me to think about my biggest business mistakes for 3 reasons:

• If I can help you avoid the same mistakes, that would be awesome.
• It’s fun to see how things are in spite of all these mistakes.
• Hopefully you’ll see that you can screw up a lot and still build the business you want.

So here they are in no particular order:

• Not putting in the work to get great at paid traffic. [I’m ok, but not nearly where I should be and I’d remedying that now.]

• Saying ‘Yes’ to too many things. [There are plenty of good opportunities…but they’re not all the right opportunities.]

• Overvaluing the things I’m not passionate about in business so overpaying to fill that void. [Things like accounting and project management are very important, but they’re not things you give up equity to address.]

• Not investing for my kids or my retirement early enough. [Even when I didn’t have much money I should have done more because I had to play a lot of catch up.]

• Not following my gut soon enough when it was time to change. [Twice I’ve felt like it was time to make a big career move about a year before I actually pulled the trigger…I should have moved faster.]

• Not focusing on my Ideal Business a little sooner. [I focused more on ‘big’ than ‘Ideal.’]

• Thinking too small.

• Stepping back from going out and speaking & networking at events that weren’t mine for a couple of years. [Those are always high ROI events for me and I didn’t spend enough time on them for about a 30 month span.]

• Not supporting my clients, students, Masterminders or Franchisees that went into fitness business coaching soon enough. [Now it’s one of the things that I’m most proud of.]

• Not spending more time on Holly’s business.

• Allowing myself to get pulled away from playing to my strengths from time to time.

• Not sharing enough stories in copy or marketing. [When I do the message is better and it’s more well received.]

• Occasionally letting my competitive side get the best of me.

• Working with too many people who weren’t a good fit. [Now I only do MM Groups or Private Consulting with people who I really enjoy.]

• Getting pulled away from coaching. [Now virtually everything I offer has a coaching component.]

• Not working with baseball in some way sooner. [Now I’ve got a couple clients who are ‘baseball guys’ and look forward to keeping that as a segment of who I work with. I really enjoy it so it should be there.]

• Taking too long to figure out who my Perfect Clients are.

• Getting pulled away from my vision.

• The times I’ve not been part of a MM group. [I always thrive when I’m around top level peers.]

• Letting businesses become bloated. [Now it’s all about what you keep…not what you gross.]

• Not always writing my ‘best’ copy. [I look back now and see sales letter that I know I could have increased conversions on by 25% if I would have put more time into them.]

• Spreading myself too thin…which led, in part, to #20. [I’ve owned over 20 businesses in fitness in 11 years. I’m hindsight that’s too many:) ]

• Not doing enough with upsells. [I’ve only done about 40% of what I should have and could have done with them knowing what I know now.]

• Going through periods where I didn’t spend enough time with the people I care about most outside of Holly, Tyler and Alex.

And Finally…

Settling for things being ok. I started a business to have the income, impact and lifestyle I wanted…that’s why I left coaching. So I could be more ‘in control’ of that. But from time to time I settled for things doing ‘ok’ in business [by the standards of what I want] because I had an awesome family, earned a nice income and had accomplished more than I originally thought I could when I went into business in the first place.

Now I know better.

You can build your Ideal Business, but It’s not going to happen without getting clear about what it is and settling for nothing less than getting there.

Hopefully these mistakes of mine will help you avoid some of your own 🙂