In this post we’ll be discussing what I consider to be an important topic. It’s actually more like a fact than a topic, but the basis is that anyone can sell anything to anybody. Mark Cuban actually said that exact statement on Shark Tank on an episode where the pitcher was trying to convince Mark it would sell. It’s like the old saying, you could sell ice to a snowman. The reason this is important to understand is that, while it’s true you can sell just about anything to anybody, the fact is not everybody’s business is going to be around five years from now.

In fact, a statistic I love to throw around is that out of every 100 small businesses started, only 20 of them will make it past the five year mark. My business has been paying all my bills for over six years now, so I’m proud to say we’ve made it well over that mark.

But what makes it so our business survives when the majority of businesses die off so quickly? It’s certainly not that we have better luck than other businesses. From any business standpoint, you’re going to eventually have to deal with EVIL customers or worse yet, you might get scammed here and there for upwards of hundreds of dollars.

It’s not uncommon for people in this market to hire out for web design, spend over $2,000 and end up getting nothing. That’s why when it comes to getting quality web design, we always say go with the Web Design Marketer’s.

Aside from that, I’ve personally spent upwards of $500 or $600 on advertising that literally just got taken from me. Meaning, I spent the money and actually never got word back. I filed a dispute and they would not let us win due to some weird issue about the receiver of the money being overseas or something like that.

It’s crazy what people get away with these days, but in reality those kinds of mistakes were all my own. I shouldn’t have paid big dollar to a person I met on a forum that didn’t have a proper sales page and business funnel in place. You can always tell the fakers from the real deal and I should have known better.

What a big mistake I made to lose that money. Another time I lost $500 due to a dispute gone wrong: one of the old members of Beats4Legends had a beat for sale on our website, and exclusives were sold. Yet weeks passed and no files were delivered. The customer contacted me angry and I had no idea that the job hadn’t been delivered, as I had trusted my producer to do it as he said he would. Turns out my producer had lost the files and neglected to tell me. If I remember correctly we never sold his beats on our site again for that reason.

Everything is Always Your Fault

But all of this comes down to one thing: when I lose money, or fail somehow, it’s always my fault. You can try to blame the scam artist or the producer, but in the end it’s me who did the deal and I am the one solely responsible for letting it happen.

So as my business continues forward, I always make sure to learn from my mistakes. It’s probably the most important rule in all of business! If you are not willing to learn from your mistakes, you will not make it past the five year mark as so many don’t.

Perhaps you came in spending too heavily and the investments you made turned out to be bad. Maybe you just ran out of money and never made any progress. In reality though you can start a business with $1,000 in your pocket. It helps to have $10,000, or more, but in reality I didn’t have more than $1,000 when I started and anybody can come up with that much money. It’s still a lot of cash, sure, but you can find a way to come up with $1,000 here in America and in most other countries as well, even if you have to work for it for a couple months and live with your mom!

Another BIG factor that can ruin your business in the first five years is what kinds of products you offer. If our products were all bad, the reviews ALONE would be enough to hurt our business significantly! It’s not enough to simply want to sell, you have to make sure you have products WORTH selling and priced reasonably! If you haven’t gotten this down, you’re sure to fail.

I hope this blog post has gotten you started on your Friday afternoon with some motivation to go SELL and make something WORTH SELLING! Not to make mistakes and to make it past the five year mark of running a business, like 80% of small businesses fail to do.

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