Jason Kanigan
New member
The ups and downs of a new business can be very upsetting.
A new business owner asked: "I am feeling so stressed. Every time I faced with some form of set back or disappointment I just shut down and then have to try to get back up and running. Do you feel the same way? How do you deal with disappointment?"
My response:
There are usually a couple factors involved here that maximize your emotional involvement.
1. You're banking on whatever you're doing turning out immediately
and/or
2. You believe (for now) that everything you try should work out on the first try.
A key improvement here will be to take pressure off yourself.
I know how important it is that things turn out the way you hope they will.
However, business is a learning process and it frequently--almost always--does not work out correctly on the first try.
For example, I started buying Stumbleupon traffic to my blog with the intention of getting new readers and subscribers...leading to a client or two.
I installed heatmaps on the two pages I'm sending traffic to. And in the first week, I found people were not reading the articles the whole way through...and they weren't clicking where I wanted them to click.
I could have been disappointed and turned the campaigns off. Frankly, it was tempting.
But if I remove my "This has to work the first time out" emotional need, I find that what I have bought is market intelligence.
From my heatmaps, I see WHERE most people left.
I can make adjustments...more subheadlines, more white space, move a video up so it gets seen. Change the call to action.
Now going forward, positive motion is the reader getting further down the page. Towards that CTA.
Not having it to work immediately is key. It's likely not going to work perfectly on the first try, and that's OK. If I'm progressing, I'm winning.
A new business owner asked: "I am feeling so stressed. Every time I faced with some form of set back or disappointment I just shut down and then have to try to get back up and running. Do you feel the same way? How do you deal with disappointment?"
My response:
There are usually a couple factors involved here that maximize your emotional involvement.
1. You're banking on whatever you're doing turning out immediately
and/or
2. You believe (for now) that everything you try should work out on the first try.
A key improvement here will be to take pressure off yourself.
I know how important it is that things turn out the way you hope they will.
However, business is a learning process and it frequently--almost always--does not work out correctly on the first try.
For example, I started buying Stumbleupon traffic to my blog with the intention of getting new readers and subscribers...leading to a client or two.
I installed heatmaps on the two pages I'm sending traffic to. And in the first week, I found people were not reading the articles the whole way through...and they weren't clicking where I wanted them to click.
I could have been disappointed and turned the campaigns off. Frankly, it was tempting.
But if I remove my "This has to work the first time out" emotional need, I find that what I have bought is market intelligence.
From my heatmaps, I see WHERE most people left.
I can make adjustments...more subheadlines, more white space, move a video up so it gets seen. Change the call to action.
Now going forward, positive motion is the reader getting further down the page. Towards that CTA.
Not having it to work immediately is key. It's likely not going to work perfectly on the first try, and that's OK. If I'm progressing, I'm winning.