The 5 Traps of an Entrepreneur!

It pretty much doesn't matter what business you are in, we are all subjected to these 5 things...and...if we aren't careful, they will slow us down, get in our way or even stop us completely!

That's not hyperbole....it's a fact that has shown to be present time and time again.

Listen so it doesn't happen to you!

Hello! We are James and Angela, entrepreneurs and strategic marketing coaches living in Northern Virginia! Nice to meet you!

We began our entrepreneurial journey in 2009 after spending 25+ years as Sales and Marketing execs in high-tech Corporate America generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues earning multiple 6-figure incomes.

Our mission - to help NEW or Early Stage Coaches, Consultants and Small Businesses, COMPRESS the time it takes to get to a 6-figure revenue stream without the stress, overwhelm and costs of advertising, hours on social media and complex sales funnels.

We quickly learned that NO amount of success at the corporate level would prepare us for such an income level as brand new business owners.

After too many years of scrambling trying to get clients and build predictability and consistency in our business, we finally decided to get out of our own way and got some coaching help (every business owner, especially coaches, should have a coach!)

We re-examined WHO we wanted to help and WHAT problem we best solved. BOOM! In less than 9 months, we were generating 6-figures using our own methodology and have helped hundreds of small business owners, coaches and consultants do the same.

It all comes down to 3 core concepts - CLARITY in your messaging, CONFIDENCE in your offer and CONTROL in your business.

Transcript

Hey guys, James here and welcome to episode 8 of the Business Success by Design podcast. Great to have you here. Before we actually get started, listen just a happy Thanksgiving to everybody. We are just getting to the back end of Thanksgiving week so we're a little bit late in getting this podcast posted but I think you'll forgive us. So what are we going to talk about this week?

We call it the five traps of a new business, but honestly, this is really something that can apply to any business at any time of any size. And we think it's one of the things that really starts to slow your business down. Right. And honestly, we've been through it. Right. So we recognize what these traps are and how easy it is to kind of find yourself falling into them.

So I thought it might be fun to kind of take you guys through what we believe these are. You may recognize one of them, you may recognize some of them, you may recognize all of them, right? But I guarantee you that every single person listening to this podcast right now is going to have some level of association with these, yeah, with these five things that we think are slowing your business down. So listen.

Let's just kind of jump in, right? The whole point of this podcast is to give you what you need and just dispense with the waffle. So we're going to jump in. Here's, here's, here we go. Right. Number one, the comparison trap, right? So what is a comparison trap? This is when you guys are all sitting on Facebook watching your contemporaries and looking at their highlight reels and, you know, comparing yourself to,

other businesses that might be doing significantly better than you are, whether it be in revenue or audience size, whatever it might be. But you're out there and you're looking at them going, my God, look how well they're doing and I'm still sucking wind, right, for the most part. All right, so listen, here's what you can't do. You can't look and take your raw material and compare it to their finished goods, right? It's almost like you're sitting with

all the ingredients to make a really great soup, but you haven't put it together yet, and now you're looking at someone who has, who's made the soup and it looks wonderful and it probably tastes wonderful, right? But the thing you don't know is how long it took them to take these raw ingredients and actually make the soup. So you're comparing yourself to someone else.

and you have no idea what their backstory is. And let me tell you, they have probably, one or two things are going on. One, they're lying their asses off about their success, which happens all the time, especially on Facebook, right? I mean, people are always planting videos of them in front of Lamborghinis or private jets. Like guys, this is shit they've rented for the day, right? This isn't theirs for the most part. So be very careful about...

looking at someone else, looking at a contemporary and comparing what you have to them. Because you have no idea what it's taken for them to get where they are. And you might be at the beginning of your journey. They've maybe been on this journey for 10, 15 years. Alright? So just be really careful. Don't believe everything you read for one thing. But don't get caught in this trap of believing that you should be further ahead than you are.

Trust me when I tell you, you're exactly where you're supposed to be in your business. Exactly. So one is a comparison trap. So don't spend time comparing yourself to other people. Number two is what we call the guru trap. Now the guru trap is simple. Again, you're online and you're getting sucked into all of these people who are online saying, hey, we've got the magic bullet. Whether it's the Brian Tracy's or...

Brendan Burchard or Russell Brunsnet Clickfunnels or Tony Robbins or even Amy Porterfield, Frank Kerns. All of these wonderful people. They're all really good people. And I know Amy Porterfield. We've met Amy Porterfield. So, really sweet gal. But, if all you do is follow what the gurus tell you...

you may be following the wrong things for where you are in your business. So you've got to be really careful, right? About, you know, looking at the tactics or the strategies that these people might be pushing and you're nowhere ready for this stuff. But because they're like the so -called guru, you believe this is what I should be doing. And it rarely is that the case. Like rarely is that the case. So you've got to...

look at what's happening, you've got to be really clear about where you are in your journey and what the most important thing is that you need to be working on right now. Alright? So don't get caught into this guru trap. That's number two. Number three is what we call the carousel trap or the entrepreneur carousel. Well what the hell does that mean? Well this is essentially where you're jumping from like one program or one course to another to another to another. Right?

It's what entrepreneurs do. They're jumping from one thing to another. They're on this carousel that's spinning around and around. It ain't going anywhere. It's not going forward, it just keeps going round in a circle. And all that is because you're lacking a number of things, including a lot of clarity in your business. Typically about where you're going, who your ideal client is and what your message is. Like all the things that we talk about all of the time.

that you should be really clear about, but because you're not, you're jumping from program to program to online course to online course, looking for that magic thing. And unfortunately that magic thing isn't going to happen. It doesn't exist for the most part, right? It's just not going to happen. So again, you've got to be really, really clear about what it is you're trying to do and make sure that whatever you're going into,

is the thing that you need for where you are at this point in time in your business guys. Alright? So this might sound a little preachy but I'm just telling you from experience from someone who's done it that all the coaches in the world aren't going to help you. Well, mine's will. But most of the other ones won't, right?

And the reason I talk about ours is because we focus on that foundation. We focus on ideal clients and your messaging and your points of differentiation. We want you to create that foundation so that all the things that you layer on top, all the tactics and strategies actually work. But jumping from one course to another, to another, to another is just going to keep you on what we call this entrepreneur's carousel. You're going to go round and round and round and you're going to go nowhere.

Alright, so just be really, really careful, be cognizant about where you are, where you're going and what you might be trying to get to.

That's number three. Number four, right? This is what we call the finish line trap. And yeah, this is where you start to get focused on what we would call the complex strategies, right? So if you're in start mode in your business, and start mode for us, generally below $250 ,000 a year.

That you're in start mode if you are still not at that number. And then you get to grow, right? Grow is where you are typically maybe in that 500 ,000 to a million dollars a year. Scale is when you're doing a million dollars plus. Here's what you have to understand. The strategies that people use at scale are very different to the strategies and tactics that people use in either start or grow.

But what's happening and what you have to look at is saying, am I trying to employ strategies if I'm at start that someone at scale is using? And that's what we call finish line. The finish line is when you're at scale and kind of really killing it. But if you're focused on the finish line strategies, i .e. online marketing, Facebook ads and all that stuff, and you still haven't got past the start phase in your business,

That's going to really slow your business down. It's actually, can potentially put you out of business. Cause you're throwing cash at something that you are nowhere near ready for. So the question ask yourself is, is this strategy a finish line strategy? If it's something that you are having to pay for, like put a lot of money into every month, then it's probably a finish line strategy. And you might want to pull back from that because trust me, there's better ways, faster ways.

more economical ways to get clients and throwing money at Facebook ads or Google ads or any of that other stuff. So that's the finish line trap. That's number four. So you've got to watch out for that.

Number five is what we call the drifting trap. Now, this one's a little bit harder to kind of deal with because it's something that happens to you as often as not you're unaware that it's actually happening. And drifting trap is when a culmination of the comparison trap kicks in.

maybe the carousel trap kicks in. And now what's happening is you're sitting and you are becoming incredibly anxious, you're starting to stress out, all right? You're having a high degree of anxiety. And what happens is you tend to drift away from the work at hand, away from your focus. And this is where you're going to start to get what we call these primal thoughts in your head.

Alright, so you hear us talk about the powerful state and primal state. Well the drifting trap is when you're moving into this primal state guys. And when you're in this primal state, this is when it's impossible for you to be your most creative, your most generous, your most loving. All the stuff that allows us to be successful happens when we're in a powerful state. But if you've drifted over and you're in this primal state,

then you're in a place of hurt. You're in a place where everything is going to feel like it's an uphill struggle. And like I said, typically what we're looking at is, you know, getting an anxiety, you're an overwhelm, you might even be in confusion because you're not sure where to go next, what to do, or, you know, what the next step should be. Now, the thing you need to understand about all of these traps is, honestly,

Just a big fucking waste of time. That's all they're doing. You're wasting time comparing your success to others. You're wasting time learning from the wrong people, i .e. the gurus. You're not ready for that yet, probably. You're wasting time on this entrepreneur's carousel. You're wasting time on finish line strategies when you should be focused on the things that are more...

Appropriate for where you are right in your business and you're wasting time drifting through this again anxiety overwhelming confusion So all of these things guys are just wasting your time So if your business isn't growing as fast as you would like if you feel you've maybe you've plateaued or whatever then go back and say am I falling into one of these five traps and You'll probably find that you're in at least one two or you might even be in all of them. I don't know

But it's something that you have to look at and that you should look at, again, especially if your business hasn't been kind of growing as fast as you would like. So there you go, that's it. That's your five traps of a new business. And like I said, we call it a new business, but hey, Jesus, it could be... You could be in a business that's doing half a million dollars a year and you have plateau and you don't know why. Right, start looking at this. Is this what's happening? Right, it could be one of these five things.

So listen, that's it. Awesome. If you're looking for or need some more help, you know where to find us. Actually, what I would say to you is go check out our latest training, where we actually take you through the five traps in a bit more detail. But yeah, excited. Lots of good stuff going to be happening coming down the pike, so really chuffed about that. But...

Let us know your comments. Let us know if you are in one of these five traps or if you recognize the five traps. And if you need any more support, you can get it from us. Look forward to it. Alright guys, James signing off. Look forward to our next episode. Not 100 % sure what it's going to be but I'm hoping that Angela is going to be joining us on the next episode. She has been MIA in these first ones but there's a reason for that. So it's all good. I'm excited and hey!

We will see you next week. Alright guys, have a great week. Take care, bye.