507: The #1 Reason for Failure in Business & Marketing Is…Marketing Secrets Nobody Tells You Series #3
Welcome back to my Marketing Secrets Nobody Tell You series, where today I’m revealing one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) reasons why business owners fail to move forward: inaction. Not taking action on growing your list or following, and increasing sales will cause your business to go backwards.
Inaction is a recurring issue for business owners, especially those that are earning below six figures, and today I’m bringing you insights on how to overcome it. Trying things, taking risks, and not being afraid of failure is vital for your business to reach its full potential.
If you’ve ever been plagued by inaction, listen in as I share intentional and strategic ways to make moves in your business.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh:
One of the number one reasons, if not the number one reason that I see business owners not moving forward. They’re in the same place or or less than they were the year before. And that is in-action.
You are listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast, episode number 507.
Hello everybody. Welcome back to day three of this series, Marketing Secrets Nobody Really Talks about or Tells You. I’m excited for today’s episode because it’s something I feel really passionate about and also continually am given this reminder as I work with different business owners especially those that are in my launcher funnel live, live experience right now. This is a recurring conversation and what’s interesting is I sometimes see that the business owners and the members in this program don’t necessarily even know that this needs to be a conversation, but I spot it and call them out on it in a call. And so if you are a business owner, especially below six figures, I think this will speak to you in volumes because I think that a lot of business owners in that place, the reason why you have not gotten above six figures is because of this.
I also say this is true for business owners in the six to seven figure or going from six to seven figures. I think that seven figure business owners, when I look at my seven figure clients myself, my successful friends who are ways more successful than me, they’ve figured this out. So this is something that I believe holds you back from getting to the seven figures. Now, I do think there is a different form of it when you’re in seven figures and so maybe I’ll talk a little bit about that, but I want to stay on track with this. And so this is something that I think separates the successful from the not successful. So clearly, and I think it is one of the number one reasons for failure in marketing, but also your business. A lot of times things that can apply to marketing that I talk about apply to business as a whole.
And this is one reason that I see one of the number one reasons, if not the number one reason that I see business owners not moving forward. They’re in the same place or or less than they were the year before. And that is inaction. I know for a fact and believe this, that there is no such thing as a, if you look at a business or your life, you’re either moving forwards or backwards, like you’re not really staying the same. And if we bring this into marketing, if you are not growing your list, growing your following and increasing your sales, but even let’s just focus on growing your list, growing, you’re following, you’re going backwards because every day you’re probably losing some people, which is normal. You don’t wanna put put energy into stopping that from happening. You’re going to have people who no longer want to subscribe to your email list, wanna follow you on Instagram.
That’s normal. And so every day, if you’re not growing, you’re definitely not staying in the same place. You’re going backwards. And so if you are not doing things to intentionally move your business and your marketing forwards and grow, you are going backwards. You are not staying in the same place. There is no such thing as a plateau. And I said this a long time ago. So inaction is when you guys get so frozen on trying something, on launching a funnel, on doing that webinar, on launching that product, you name it, and you stay in this place of rumination and paralysis and then a month goes by and you’ve done nothing, you’re not going forwards, you’re going backwards when that happens. I think that the reason this happens so much in marketing is because obviously time and money is on the line, especially money and we all are afraid of putting energy into something and having it not work or putting ad spend, putting money, making an investment and having it not work.
And here’s the thing that not enough people talk about that is business <laugh>. Like literally that is business. You’re gonna win some and you’re gonna lose some, but you need to go try things. Every successful business owner, if you were to go on the inside and look at what they’ve done, they have failed more times than they have succeeded. And so when what happens is, and like let’s get into the like nitty gritty of this and how I’ve had these conversations so much is what I see, especially in the businesses who are at the stage they’re at in my launcher funnel live program, which is people who are either just at six figures but not prob most are not quite there. They’re they’re in the beginning stages or they are completely redoing or relaunching like a new offer in their business. So for that reason, it’s at the beginning stage and they continually ask me, how do I know this will work?
How do I know? How do I make sure, what else do I need to change? And, and if I wasn’t there to be like, you don’t know, they would probably stay in that place for weeks. And so here is the reality. You don’t know if something’s gonna work until you go try it. And so you can be as strategic as possible, as intentional as possible. You don’t know. Nobody can predict the future. And so what I told one of the members in there this week is I said, all you can do is follow my process. Check the boxes of messaging strategy. You’ve thought through all of these things, you’ve connected with your audience, you’ve created a strategy that’s right for your business and your customers. You’ve put the work into your copy, your emails, your funnel, all of those things based on your messaging and the work we’ve done.
And then you have to go launch it because you don’t know at any at one point you hit this place where you’ve done, you’ve been as intentional as possible. And now the only way to know is to go and do it. And I truly think if more of you guys stopped what’s also called mentally masturbating and just did shit, you would make so much more progress. And I, and I’ve shared this before in the podcast. I, I recently did an episode on this and I’m putting it in this series again because it’s so important and I feel like maybe some of you didn’t listen to that episode or it didn’t hit right and this one will, because if I was to seriously boil down and tell you what is one of my number one secrets to success, it is at the pace at which I take action.
And the fact that I am not afraid to fail, you guys have to understand, you don’t see all the failures. I’m, I don’t even show you all of my fail. Like what? Because I’m moving on so fast from my failure, I’m like, oh, that didn’t work. Next thing, right? And so you don’t see all of that if you are not failing, you are not making progress as fast as you could. I actually don’t think there is a such thing as failing, but we call it failing when something doesn’t work. And this is also what I told the the member this week who asked this question or she didn’t ask the question. I was like, hold up, we’re gonna, we’re gonna pause right there <laugh> because I need to call you out on this. I said, you are stuck in this place of of not taking action cuz you’re overanalyzing things.
And what you don’t realize is that the only way to get that feedback is for you to go out and try it and then learn from it. And if you were to go out and something didn’t work, that’s not even failing. Because what happens when that happens, you learn, okay, that didn’t work, that angle didn’t work, this type of content didn’t work as well as I thought this was the feedback that I got. This is how I felt doing it. And so now I get to take that and go improve next time. But you wouldn’t have that feedback and be able to improve next time if you didn’t have that quote failure. So there really is no way to fail. You can’t fail because if you’re at least taking action and you’re moving, that’s moving forward, action is moving forward. Intentional strategic action is moving forward.
And if you’re doing that, then you’re getting feedback and you’re taking that feedback and you’re constantly improving, which means you’re constantly growing. So I want you guys to just take inventory on your marketing, on your business and ask yourself, am I taking action and actually doing as much as I could be? And you know, the other reason I focused in on businesses that are below six figures or at and around six figures, that’s the hustle phase of business. You guys, people don’t talk about that either, but this crap on like don’t hustle and you don’t have to work hard and business is easy and you know, anti hussle culture, I get it because that’s not sustainable forever. But there is a season of business where you have to get your hands dirty and do some work and then you earn the right not to hustle and you earn the right to build a team and to build systems and to automate things.
We’re gonna talk about automation in a second. You earn that right after you’ve done the work. You don’t get to skip that step. You can see I’m getting fired up about this because I think two things, it’s such a disservice to entrepreneurs to be fed this lie that business is easy. And to be fed this by multiple seven figure business owners who even myself, I’m a multiple seven figure business owner. I don’t work eight hour days. My life is amazing. I travel, I I have a remote, you know, I, I get to set my whole schedule how I want. I can work out, I can care about my health, I can meditate every day. I get to check all the boxes outside of work because I have that freedom. Did I have that in the beginning? No. And so it’s a disservice to entrepreneurs when they see this as that’s how, how it should be right now for you when you haven’t gone through the necessary grind to get there.
That’s the first thing. The second thing is if you operate in the mindset thinking you get to skip that step, you are going to be stuck for so long. And that’s not, that’s not what this whole podcast is about, but what I really wanna emphasize on is taking action is the golden, it’s everything. It’s the golden rule. It’s the number one thing you can do is action. And that as you expand your business, like first that looks like you, that looks like you actually doing things, you getting your hands dirty, you writing the emails, you creating the social posts, you editing the content, you doing everything that is, that is the way it is. And when you have a business, you either have a huge investment like corporations do you know, or or businesses that go that route to be able to hire this out from the beginning or you’re doing it yourself and you’re bootstrapping and you have to wear all those hats and that is normal for a period of time.
It’s not sustainable forever, nor do you want it to be forever because that would suck. Like there’s a payoff to going through that. And for some people that happens in a year, for some people two years, for some people it’s three years. But eventually you get out of that. Then what happens is you get into the the seven figure and you grow a team and then you actually, what got you there is gonna kill you going forward and you have to figure out how to not keep doing and to be more strategic and to get out of the getting your hands dirty constantly and stepping in and taking over and do a lot more being. But you gotta earn that. You gotta get to that level. So not doing is gonna kill everything in your business. And so in the beginning for most of you, you guys are the ones doing, you guys are the ones taking the action.
So understanding that number one, do an inventory of your business, of your marketing and are you taking enough action or are you spending too much time ruminating, analyzing, questioning and waiting for some perfect confirmation that it’s gonna work. If you find yourself going, well how do I know, what do I have to do to know for sure that this is gonna work? That’s where the problem is because you don’t, and you have to go out and launch that thing, put that content out there and, and do the reps. You know, there’s, if you look at any anything that we become experts on sports you know, any craft that we master, it’s all about reps. It’s all about the amount that you do it, the time that you put in, how much you do it, and then you get to earn the right to hire that out eventually.
But you’ve gotta keep moving forward. A couple other things that I had written down to talk about with this is that understanding perfection is not the goal. And I think it’s really easy to be like, well yeah I know that, but if you are, if you find yourself wanting confirmation that something’s for sure gonna work and overanalyzing everything that you’re doing, your strategy, your content, your videos, then you are trying to achieve perfection. It’s never the goal because it doesn’t exist. Because if you were trying to be perfect then you would never release anything. But also then you’re, you’re keeping that like who defines what perfection is anyways, regardless, understanding that marketing is a game of auto or is a game of constant optimization, you will launch something and then you need to understand that it’s not gonna work. There are gonna be components of it that won’t work.
That is the game, that’s the game of marketing, that’s the game of business. You might release a funnel and one part of it works really well and you get leads in but they don’t convert into sales. Okay? So that’s feedback. Now you take that and you take action and you make adjustments and you make changes. And so I think that sometimes people have the expectation and how and definition of perfection would be that I’d be able to launch something and it would fully work. And I also get it because it’s a lot of work. Like I see how hard my students, business owners in launcher funnel live are working because they’re wearing like four or five hats because they have to do their copy, they have to build. And again that’s you know, going back to if you’re bootstrapping your business and you don’t have the investment to go hire help, that is the route that you have to take.
There’s kind of two paths to business. You get the investment up front, you go hire the experts and you’re able to do that or you’re doing it yourself and you’re trading time and time and money are those two resources. And so I get it that people are exhausted and so they want this confirmation that once I put in all this work, you know that it’s gonna, it’s gonna for sure work and there will be parts of it that will work from there. You have to take the feedback and go make changes and you have to expect that that’s part of the process. And it’s not you failing, it’s normal to have refinement forever. Even something that is working should be being refined because things are constantly moving and changing and evolving. Your audience is moving and changing and evolving. And so you need to be constantly refining your messaging, your offer.
I think that’s a theme of these secrets, you know, that I talk about because if I, yesterday I talked about messaging, the first episode I talked about your offer and if you look at the theme, it’s like constant evolvement and constant refinement. You are evolving and improving and changing. And so go into be in, be as intentional as possible with your strategy. Be as clear as possible, you know, follow my content, get my support in giving you, here’s everything you need to create the most epic strategy that’s custom to your business, that is has the best chance of success to work. And then from there you gotta take action because you can’t keep analyzing it or being afraid that it’s not gonna work. Or maybe you launch something and you let it go for like two days and then you decide okay, this isn’t working, I’m gonna shut everything off.
That fear is what’s holding you guys back. Inaction is the death of your business and your marketing strategic and intentional action will get you to the next level. How you be strategic, you gotta have the right resources. Maybe that’s investing in a program like my launcher funnel live members. Maybe that’s listening to content. You will mess up, you will do things that didn’t work. You will look back and go, man, if I would’ve known that I wouldn’t have done that. That’s part of the game. I do that all the time. If I had that insight or if I had that realization or if I had that feedback, I wouldn’t even have made that decision. Well now I won’t next time. So did I fail? No, the last thing on this that I wrote down is that automation is a lie. And getting your business to a place where you don’t have to take any action is bs.
I was just having this conversation with someone the other day. Systems and a team is possible in the future, but a funnel that you create one time and then you launch and it works perfectly, literally does not exist. And the people who do launch funnels, like if I look at, you know, some of the industry leaders in the marketing space, when they launch a funnel, does it work out the gate? Yeah. Do you know why? Two reasons. One, they’ve done it a hundred plus times, actually probably more than that. Two, they have a massive warm audience and so it’s so much easier to sell to a warm audience cuz you already have the trust and so don’t compare yourself to that. But if I even look at myself, the reason why I can put out a funnel or launch a webinar and it works every single time, now it’s because I’ve done it a hundred times.
I’ve done it so many times now. There still are webinars and things that I do that some work better than others. And there’s things I put out that I’m like, this is gonna work amazing. And then it doesn’t. Things I put out that I’m like, I have no idea what this is gonna do. Let’s just try it last minute and it does amazing. And some things that work, some things that don’t, that is part of the game. So inaction is the number one reason for failure. And I shared this in the last episode, but I wanna share it one more time in understanding that the goal is not to have everything figured out in your marketing and your business right now. I think that you can have big goals, that’s really important and you gotta have the vision and know where you’re going. Sometimes that shifts in changes as you get experience, but knowing that you just need to have like a, b, abc, you just need to have the first three steps figured out and enough to know what your next move is, enough to know what your next action is.
If you have that now you can go start getting feedback and fill in the other puzzle pieces and the other components of this. So my action for you guys today is to take some time to just reflect and ask yourself, how could I be trying more new strategic things? Now, I don’t want you guys distracted. That doesn’t mean like go try and be on five different platforms and posting all this content and doing all this stuff. I just want you moving forward. You need to be intentional and strategic with those steps as pos, you know, as intentional and strategic as possible with the resources that you have to get the information to be that way. You need to do that, but you need to be moving forward and not sitting in a place of like, I’m gonna do this and then I’m gonna go over here and work on this.
And the reason that I’m doing that is because I don’t know what’s gonna work and I’m overwhelmed and I’m confused and I’m in paralysis. And most of you live in that place and understand that there is no such thing as that plateau. So you’re even either moving forwards or you’re moving backwards. How do you push yourself to try more new things? This is gonna look different for everybody based on what you’re automatically really good at, based on where you’re at in your business, based on what the best thing for your business is. The best next step is it could be organic, it could be paid, it could be getting a funnel strategy, could be testing a new offer. And there’s so many times that people ask me like, what should I do? And I’m like, I honestly don’t know because you gotta go try it.
Here’s my strategic opinion, here’s best advice and now you need to go try it and you need to go get that experience and that feedback and then come take that to improve every day. That’s why one of my core values is strive to be better than yesterday. Because if you’re doing that, you’re growing, your business is growing, you are growing and you’re constantly moving forward and you can’t go wrong with constantly moving forward. Eventually you’ll get to where you wanna be and then you’ll be like, now I have a new level to achieve and I couldn’t even imagine what I’ve built today. All right, you guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I’ll be back tomorrow with episode number four. This will episode number four. Tomorrow is gonna be another rant like this. I love being able to give you guys this insider intel. I just feel like enough people don’t talk about this, but partly it’s because they don’t have the perspective like I see behind the scenes of hundreds of businesses, plus my own, plus I have a really amazing network of friends and so I’m able to bring that real perspective that I hope leads you to actions and not just, Hey, here’s some information to make you feel better, but let’s go take action. Let’s go build these businesses and let’s go get the results that you guys know you’re capable of. All right, talk to you tomorrow.
Thanks for listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers Podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support with your marketing, head over to helpmystrategy.com to see how Hirsh Marketing can help take your marketing to the next level. No matter where you’re at today, we help our clients scale faster than ever, find hidden leaks in their funnel, experiment with new creative marketing strategies, and help their business explode and be more profitable than they ever dreamed possible. Head over to helpmystrategy.com and see if you qualify for a free strategy audit with Team Hirsh.