Grow Your Biz – Week #2: Failure is necessary

Does failure result into giving up for you? It shouldn’t. I believe you need to fail before you can succeed because the lessons we learn when we fail are super valuable and can help us to succeed even faster than if we hadn’t struggled at all.

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Before we start…

What exactly is #GrowYourBiz?

Grow Your Biz is a new blog post series I created after running my online business for two years. Every week I will share my goals and learnings with you so that you can grow your business alongside me.

The internet is a wonderful place, which allows us to create and run a one-person-business from home. But it also can be very lonely and depending on where you live you could be cut off from fellow entrepreneurs. Not being able to chat about your business with someone who has similar goals, struggles and to-dos can be stressful. While family and friends love you and will always listen to you, there are just some things they can’t follow and fully understand – they try to believe me! – if they work a usual nine-to-five.

But you are not alone!

There are many of us even if we live all around the globe. So let’s use this wonderful place called ‘the internet’ once more to share our journey, learn from one another and grow our businesses together.

Review of last week’s goals

• Design and publish four of the five surveys planned
• Decide on the product name for English Bullet Diary
• [90%] Translate Bullet Diary layouts to English
• Create the Sales page for English Bullet Diary
• Create Flip-Through-Video for English Bullet Diary
• Announce Launch of English Bullet Diary for Oct, 12th 2018
• Write and publish the blog post you are currently reading 😛

As you can see I only managed 3.9 of the 7 goals I set myself. While I could come up with many excuses why this is the case, I won’t. The truth is I got distracted by tasks popping up and I put more on my plate than I could chew.

Lesson learned.

Last week I talked about the mindset shift I’m currently going through. And as with every shift nothing happens from one day to the other. Things take time. It is a process. Which is why after being mad at myself for half an hour I accepted my progress and decided to do better next week. This brings me to the main point I want to talk about this week.

You need to fail before you can succeed

There is one thing you need to understand about failure.

Failure is necessary.

If you always win. If you always succeed. You are either really lucky, really smart or you are lying to yourself.

Without failure, there is no opportunity for learning and growth.

The earlier you accept that the earlier you can analyze what went wrong and adapt. So instead of giving up and deciding my new ‘mindset’ is not working out. I reviewed what I actually did this week. What I didn’t do. And why it is as it is. Knowing that I can make a better plan for next week.

Without failure, there is no opportunity for learning and growth. Click To Tweet

Which I did.

GOALS FOR NEXT WEEK

• Finish translation of Bullettastisch printable bundle
• Announce Bullettastisch printable bundle for October, 12th 2018
• Create the sales page for Bullettastisch printable bundle
• Create the flip-through video for Bullettastisch printable bundle
• Document ‘unplanned tasks I did each day’
• Write & publish two blog posts
• Brainstorm & draft as many blog posts as you can on Tuesday
• Write & send three newsletters this week // one of them will be automated for new subs

Are you asking yourself why there are more goals than last week, even if I didn’t manage them all back then?

I wasn’t as focused on growth last week as I could and should have been. I struggled a lot. Because knowing what you need to do and actually doing it are not the same thing. Which is why I struggled to stick to the goals I had set myself.

Knowing what you need to do and actually doing it are not the same thing. Click To Tweet

EVERY GOAL YOU SET NEEDS TO GROW YOUR BIZ

Setting goals is easy. What is hard is setting the right goals. One thing that is helping me to make the right decision is the audiobook I’m currently listening to called ‘The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results’ by Gary Keller.

The whole book pivots around one single question:

What’s the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

And it’s the question I’m asking myself every Sunday so that I can make better choices regarding my weekly goals. While I haven’t listened to the whole book yet, I already love the approach. Especially since it is nothing new or hard to do. Which is why most people don’t do it. Because if it’s easy it can’t make a big difference, right?

I personally think that’s wrong. I think asking this little question and putting in the time to answer it properly can make a HUGE difference to your success. Which is why I’m implementing it as best as I can. Since doing so equals implementing a new habit into my life. I’m trying to do it slowly and carefully, so I don’t stress myself out and stop altogether.

So instead of asking myself this question every waking hour of each day, I focus it on my weekly goals for now. And as soon as that is established I will try to work it into my life more and more.

MY LEARNINGS SO FAR

I want my weekly goals to add to my bottom line. To increase my monthly income longterm.

So all my current goals are based on that.

The Bullettastisch printable bundle will add a new product to my product line. And I know my customers love bundles which makes it a great choice for a product. Since the launch is only two weeks out most of my goals this week are focused on it.

Moving forward I want to document the unplanned tasks I do each day. This allows me to get an overview of how I use my time each day and will show me what I need to automate, delegate or remove in the future.

Back in March, I started to publish two blog posts each week as well as to send out two newsletters each week. This resulted in more traffic as well as a huge increase in general sales. Because consistency is king. Unfortunately, consistency is something I always struggled with. And I want to tackle this head one. I have plans on how to do this already in the works and will share them in more detail with you in a future post.

Now ask yourself…

What’s the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?