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“How do I fast track my success in my business?”
I’ve worked with several businesses and website owners, including working my own blogging business to know that fast-tracking to success is on everyone’s mind.
How do we succeed, and how can we get there quickly?
I’m certain these questions pop into your mind too:
- Is it TRULY possible to fast track your success?
- And if so, how is that possible?
There are several areas to account for the success and failure of a business, but we’re focusing on three related habits that you can actively do today, to elevate your practices to achieve greater success and results in your business.
They are easier than you think, but also more powerful than this post can do justice to.
Becoming Successful Faster, and Doing it Well
I’m not sure if they tell this story anymore, but maybe you’ve heard of it?
It’s about a tortoise and a hare. They decide to compete in a race. The hare is so much faster than the tortoise (obviously) and the hare speeds around a racetrack, completely outstripping the turtle, who ambles along at a much slower pace.
In first hearing the story, you would expect the hare to win, right?
If you know how the story ends, the hare is overconfident, naps, and quickly and carelessly throws time away to show how possible and easily he can win the race, compared to the tortoise.
In the end the “slow and steady winner” is the tortoise.
The continual determination to put in the work on the part of the tortoise completely “outpaces” the carelessness and overconfidence of the tortoise.
Um…wait, are you saying I need to be comfortable with being the tortoise in slowly trying to be successful with my business?
No, not at all! We just need to focus on being more of a hybrid of the tortoise and the hare.
The new retelling of this nursery tale is that we look at both sides.
We take the determination of the turtle and combine that with learning from the overconfidence of the hare.
It’s the best of both worlds when we learn from the hare’s mistakes.
And in doing so, we become a faster tortoise.
How Do I Fast Track My Business Success?
Here’s how to be a faster tortoise.
A business takes a fair amount of time to succeed. We know this and statistics show it’s a marathon.
If you’re in the blogging sphere, it’s around 18 months to 2 years. For a traditional startup, the first one to five years is pretty telling. (Contrary to popular statistics out there, only 20% of businesses fail in the first year, with roughly 50% failing by the 5th year.) Meaning, don’t let the saying that “the majority of small businesses fail from the start” keep you from launching a business.
Related: The Business Launch Assumption To Watch Out For
That’s a vast amount of time when you’re at the starting line with limited funding, a balancing act of time available with your day job, and other responsibilities, mixed with trying to get the business off the ground.
So, how do you get to success faster?
Fast Track Training: Invest in Learning What You Don’t Know
I know you’re short on cash from the start of your business but bear with me. (I’m in the same boat.)
When you start a business, your success feels dependent on you correctly learning how to do everything, and then executing it yourself.
You’re asking yourself, “How do I do this?” in relation to every piece of your business – from marketing to building a website, to putting out content on social media, and creating and shipping out your products, digital or physical.
You’re the go-to person who has to become the expert in everything. *sigh*
Let me tell you…it doesn’t have to be like that!
It is possible for you to cut out part of the equation, namely, the part where you’re learning to do everything. And you can do this without breaking the bank.
Invest in budget-friendly ebooks and courses.
Here’s an example.
I wanted to learn Pinterest. Mostly because Pinterest is pretty valuable from the standpoint of diversifying my site’s search engine optimization and organic traffic channels.
Note that this diversification point applies to you as well, whether you have an e-commerce store, blog, podcast, or even a brick and mortar business.
You want traffic from all over.
Note: Pinterest is actually a pseudo social media. It’s actually a search engine – like Google and Bing.
When it came to Pinterest and learning it, I HAD NO CLUE ABOUT THIS OR WHERE TO WHERE TO START, much less any desire to teach myself the basics of how Pinterest worked. I had started an account in high school where (*cringe*) I posted a bio with dated song lyrics to describe my personality and repinned a lot of comfort food recipes and braided hairstyles with flowers.
It was nothing related to my blog here, and I wanted to rebrand. And I had so many questions?
- Did I need a new Pinterest business account?
- What were group boards and are they helpful?
- What are “rich pins” and how do I set that up?
- How do I pin with SEO practices? (What does that even mean?)
- How do I design “pins”? Can someone do this for me?
And here’s the KICKER question that I encourage everyone to use in this case and with everything you do in your business to succeed:
Is this approach worth my time?
In my case, was Pinterest worth my time?
I didn’t know the answer. But I heard it was important based on the content I surrounded myself with email newsletters, articles, and other information.
So I invested in someone to teach me, and I did it on a college graduate budget.
What I purchased (at the time that Pinterest was more viable for business marketing) was Carly’s Pinteresting Strategies.
The moral of the story is to do your research the right way. If you have time to reinvent the wheel and learn the strategies by building them yourself, then that’s perfectly fine.
You want to focus on what counts – your business administrative tasks and coordinating with customers, your audience, and with approaches that help you to help others at scale.
Don’t get stuck in the learning cycle.
(This happens to people more than you think, so don’t feel bad.)
Learn From The Mistakes of Experts
This is closely aligned with investing in courses, however, it doesn’t have to be a paid course or ebook.
Learning the mistakes others have made comes from a lot of different sources, and a lot of them are freely available to you!
A good example of digital product and course creators is Amy Porterfield’s Online Marketing Made Easy podcast. She shares a lot of the “secret sauce” on what makes her launches so freaking successful. And she also freely shares her “cringe-worthy” (her words, not mine) failures and the time-consuming mistakes she made in trying to create and launch courses.
Case in point – you can find documented mistakes everywhere (weird to type this with such positivity, but it’s true).
Other ways you can learn from experts is by signing up for email lists (like these 5 business newsletters I ALWAYS recommend), taking advantage of free courses and ebooks, reading articles and books, or listening to audiobooks.
I read a lot of books on getting things done and business strategy to strengthen what I do in my consulting work, via Libby. (An app on desktop and your phone that is always and forever free, because it’s connected to the library, and thus, free books.)
In some respects though, you may be prompted by courses and ebooks that are not free but contain all the advice you need in one spot.
As a blogger, I went looking for a course that was specifically dedicated to blogging mistakes, all in one spot.
I purchased this ebook as a part of an annual course bundle called the Blogging Concentrated Stack (or BC Stack). (I have a post in the pipeline on course bundles and what I think of them, so stay tuned for that!)
This ebook is by Debbie Gartner and her path to making $20,000 per month blogging, with all major mistakes listed out, plain and simple. (A gold mine, and not an affiliate link here.)
We all want to be in her shoes (in our own niches and businesses) and avoid the pitfalls that would cost us. We all want to know and understand as many of these pitfalls at once, as is possible.
As a startup blogger, I avidly read, and to say I quickly applied her advice based on what mistakes she made, is a vast understatement.
In starting out, my site speed is faster, (which Google LOVES) I know a secret insider affiliate tip, and my blog gets twice the amount of traffic for its age compared to other blogs I know at the three-month-old point.
Approaching a domain ranking of 15, with roughly 1,500 monthly page views starting out, versus 0-600 page views for other competing sites, even at the 6-month timeline.
I’ve researched, applied, and revised to get the results.
Due to the fact that I applied the tips that steered me away from the mistakes that other people had faced before me. I cut down on time – majorly.
These are the same mistakes that could be adding months of HARD work for your success story.
Can you afford NOT looking into the mistakes of others first before quickly and maybe carelessly (like the hare) barreling forward on a road that gets you to the finish line later?
Ask for Help in a Community
Like the concept of investing in the learning process, this can be such a hard concept. It’s hard to ask for help.
You want to figure things out yourself in some respects because it’s almost a source of pride that you figured it out solo from the start. (That could just be me feeling that way though.)
If you’re feeling the same, let’s get you out of that mindset too, because you can learn so much from others and learn new ways of approaching and troubleshooting.
Facebook groups are one of the top ways that I do this in the blogging space, and one I recommend for others in practically any niche on the Internet in your business.
(I’m doing an upcoming post on the pros and secret “dangers” of Facebook groups. Trust me, there are some definite downsides.)
That being said, it is still highly important to join a group of like-minded people, and ask for help when you need it.
Another very applicable example. I broke my WordPress admin view this week doing some tech fixes and locked myself out of the backend of my blog. (It was a tough spot to be!) I was part of this blogging group about blogging and posed my problem in a post to the group.
In less than five minutes, I had three experienced people helping me troubleshoot.
Now the response time depends on the engagement of the group itself, but it goes to show you that the Facebook group support can be such a help. Especially when you’re trying to get some help on an immediate issue like I was.
In general, Facebook groups are a great way to see alternate solutions to either simple or complex problems you haven’t even come up with yet.
You don’t know what you don’t know, and Facebook groups are a gold mine to learn the answers you didn’t even know you were supposed to be seeking in the first place!
Final Thoughts: How Fast Can a Business Grow?
The track to business success looks a little different for everyone. I’ve been on the various sides of promoting a blog post, software, and physical products, and these have similar approaches when you break it down to the fundamental strategies to success.
Overall, how fast a business can grow is dependent on these points too:
- How fast can you Google Search?
- What’s the quickest time that you can be proficient in the areas you need to succeed?
- When can you set aside time to apply these outlined habits effectively and consistently?
The answers will help to speak to your quick success.
I know that my DA ranking at four months at my blog blows a lot of my newbie competitors out of the water. I say that to confirm this posts’ habits.
They have seriously(!) worked for me and can translate to you.
Whether I speak on blogging tips or directly for an e-commerce business, know the advice I share is purposefully translated to meet you in your business and blog, and get them on the fast track to succeed for you.
Get out there and apply these tips in the next hour or two. Your success is waiting…
Related Articles:
The Business Launch Assumption To Watch Out For
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