The Failed Entrepreneur
So you wanna be in business for yourself do ya'?
Start an online business huh?
You are going to read a lot of content with plenty of 'experts' telling you exactly what to do, how to do it....And usually followed by a pitch of some sort. I thought it would be a fun little exercise to give you my own piece of advice here.
But rather than tell you what to do, I'm going to share some of my more epic failures in online businesses. I'll use myself as the example, so this is not being aimed at anyone but yours truly. And at my own expense, I hope you get some value from it. This is going to be painful for me at times to do some self reflection, but at the end of the day I think it'll be almost comical to laugh at some of y more epic collapses over the past 20 plus years of building online businesses.
Let's dive in....
Failure #1 - Being A Know It All
So Jongo used to be quite a success online! And back then, Jongo thought he knew it all. Literally, if you even started to question anything I said I would get rude and abrasive. I knew it all! Why? Because look at how much money I was making!!!
Here's what that did to my business...It alienated most of my community. A bunch of customers just gave up coming around and doing business with me, all because they didn't want to be around someone so rude and egotistical.
What I learned was this...You don't know half of what you think you know. Be humble. Shut up and learn from everyone you can!
Failure #2 - Relying Too Much On Others
This may seem odd, because we're supposed to build teams and be a part of something bigger than just ourselves...And I agree. However here's my failures with this, I partnered with some people in my career that weren't as invested in our businesses and I was. Even though we all 'owned' the same products and services, it was much easier for them to step away.
Which meant for me, being in survival mode. And when you are just trying to survive, you cannot thrive. Your business suffers, your customers feel ignored and things just go south real quick. I was never a web designer, so when I lost my partner that was...My creatives suffered. I was not a developer, so when I lost my partner that was...My development suffered.
It's VERY important to build teams around you that are dedicated as much as you are for the long run. And even when things go rough, they all see it through! You can never expect everyone to love your business as much as you do.
Failure #3 - Wasting Time
I spent a lot of my time as a 'successful entrepreneur' doing nothing to grow myself personally. I literally, spent all my free time either drinking, hanging out with friends, or clicking around social media.
I went to bed whenever I felt like it, slept in until noon most days and had zero schedule. Why did I need one right? I was a success...No need to be disciplined!
Guess what I'm paying for these days lol. You have 1440 minutes a day, use them VERY wisely and don't waste a second.
Failure #4 - Not Learning New Skills
What? Didn't you read every book every printed about online businesses? Sure, but that doesn't mean I was learning what I really needed to. While the industry I was in was growing and maturing, I stayed in my comfort zone. I never dove into everything I should have, to grow with my industry.
Instead, I stayed in what I knew, never really pushed myself and refused to see the writing on the wall. So sure, I had a ton of book knowledge...But not a lot of new practical knowledge.
Failure #5 - I Stopped Growing My Network
When I was at the peak of my success, I was attending live offline events...All the time! But then I once again....Got comfortable. And with that, I stopped going to offline events. Stopped shaking hands with people that would have and could have really helped my businesses.
I was an island. I didn't need anyone else! But when you are building any kind of online business, who you know is very important. Especially in affiliate marketing, which I was in. And I'm not sure how I didn't see this as it was happening...My income literally stopped growing, the moment I stopped growing my network!
Oh wow, I could go on and on because let's be honest....If you have tried to build an online business, you'll have a list of failures that you could write a book about. But the point of this post is that, failures don't define you! They actually help you grow, even if it's years after the fact.
You learn from your mistakes. You adjust! And you keep growing and building.
Because the greatest failure of them all, would be....Giving up!
I hope this was of value for you on your journey!
Love these thoughts.
I’ve started a few businesses through my life. I think all of them I relied too much on others. I got left in the dust holding a business I didn’t know how to run without them.
!PIZZA
Yeah man, I've been trying to recover for almost 6 years now because of my trust I put into others. My own fault though, live and learn lol
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STOPThank you for being so open in this article. I just realized that I have been doing same thing too. Especially the aspect of building my network. I tell myself that I am an introvert thus shy away from networking which is one thing a business needs to survive.
I will work on myself for my business sake.
Your business will thank you! Nothing better than investing in yourself and personal growth.
this hits so close to home, man. fuck you for making me emotional. also, good shit for owning it. now you can truly grow.
lol my bad man. but yeah it's important to do some self checks on our journeys. we can learn from the mistakes.
big facts. never stop growing & learning.
Yes, network maintenance is a must.
Also, knowing when to battle vs when to bite your tongue, can catch you off guard.
I used to find that customers can be fickle - and the motivations for their changing can be irrational.
But, you also gain customers irrationally, or with biased logic, too.
You always have to be ready to present your boxing stance, with your boxing dance, when engaging with people.
But you also need to gauge when you are being taken advantage of & being conditioned is a must.
I found running a business was fine for the most part.
The fatiguing part was when I was mentally fatigued or physically stretched to the point of just having had enough.
I read now the notes I made about growing my business back then.
I cannot even remember writing them. But, for that version of me, he was very hungry and was resilient.
And I think if they dont feel valued or appreciated, they wont make any noise...They will just leave for another competitor.
One of my "stories" about customer loyalty, was when I had saved a customer >$150,000 by recommending different products and maintained their stock levels when they were in between staff. She was arguing with me, one day, that one of my products was $3 more than my competitor.
I said to her, "If we went to a cafe right now, would you buy me a coffee?"
She replied, "Yes, of course." .. then there was a pause... "oh, I see." she said.
She was arguing over the price of a coffee, dug her heels in, and fortunately she had the forsight to appreciate the situation.
At least there's an opportunity to speak for yourself on such occassions.
Most times, however, a customer will just leave without a conversation of any type.
Yay! 🤗
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Thanks for the article! It's a great reminder and kinda wake up call.
Scheduling and growing the network is so damn important - and also maintain it. Used to never network. Realized networking helps - got quiet a network, which felt awesome. But stopped maintain it - here we go again :D
Thanks for the reminder!
!PIZZA
I can relate to some of the points. But for me my connection with internet, computers has made me more money. People and outdoor facing jobs never worked for me.So I am kind of forever desk job guy lol. And moonlighting entrepreneur haha. It's refreshing to be reminded on some of the lessons :)
Those are some good lessons. I never started a business but I do think it can be applied to everything to an extent. Even Hive can be treated like a business to an extent and we can't become complacent.
Yeah Man! We all made some fuck-ups on the way :) there is no failures, only lessons. Life goes on. All Best Jongo!
Thanks for sharing your experience with us Jongo. I have also had my fair share of failures in business. It is never as easy as people make it seem. It takes true passion and commitment to grow any business. This much I have learnt.
While doing a business with someone, even with your brother, you could face some difficulities. I think it would be better to examine how your partner works, what they have done before, how they to handle with a crisis time.
Reviewing this reminds me that I have made one of these mistakes at some point. Especially the first in my tender youth.
At first I was about crying 😭
You actually got me
Failures are a big part of the process in building an online business. Most of the lists you've made here are relatable, as I've experienced them at some point in my journey. Not learning new skills hit hard.
These are powerful and hard-learned lessons for anyone who might take the same path, at least in part. We don't have to be super-successful to repeat some of the mistakes you described there. Unfortunately, life is full of hard lessons, and most people rarely listen to others and need to bang their heads against the wall themselves before they learn something.
We have to be strong for ourselves if we want to have a business and such a thing will prevent us from relying on others
Cuando te refieres que eras una isla, lo mismo me pasa a mi hay que darse a conocer y compartir e interpelaciones con otros usuarios de la red ..
Interesting stuff. I have always wondered how legitimate those self help things like you talked about at the beginning are. They just seem too good to be true a lot of times and you wonder who is really benefiting off of it.
The comfort zone part is so easy for anyone to fall into... if things aren't broken, we really have no desire to fix them.
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guilty as charged. But sadly we don't learn from the mistakes. I am still WIP.
I have 100% failed in affiliate marketing, may be creating lists, teams etc.
My worst one was AMWAY, thinking i can make money. The result was i could not enroll even one person.
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Great lessons.
Somehow along the way you seem to have missed the biggest mistake of all - chasing too many things. I am an ideas person - I have more unfinished projects than one can shake a stick at.
Good news is there is one thing I am really good at and it does not require a lot of the things you wrote about - investing works for me. Maybe it is time to can all the other projects and just do that.
You can read all about the investing stuff - just search on here for #tib and @carrinm - 676 investing posts written so far
Networking is an area where I am far from consistent. And I know that has to change. I was playing around on W3 schools trying to learn how to code. That ball got dropped right around the start of summer. Thanks for sharing your struggles, Jon. It is a great reminder for all of us of what can happen when we let things go.