According to statistics published in 2019 by the Small Business Administration (SBA), about twenty percent of business startups fail in the first year. About half succumb to business failure within five years. By year 10, only about 33% survive.

Let this sink in for a moment before we break out into a celebratory dance.

It seems like ⅓ of all businesses eventually succeed. Remember what I said about entrepreneurship. It’s hard.

Please don’t confuse traction to multi million dollars worth of sales. Traction is relative and is purely dependent on the size, stature, environment and ecosystem your business is operating in.

Not all businesses are bound to have a TAM of 5+ billion and frankly not all business owners or entrepreneurs are cut out to run businesses of that scale and stature.

Most first time entrepreneurs tend to be super nervous and will conclude that their business is not working rather prematurely.

The reason this happens is because folks tend to miscalculate their metrics for success. I am a big believer that one needs to take baby steps and crawl before you walk. I also firmly believe that you need to look for positive vibes across your journey to rekindle that self confidence muscle and not be bogged down by a bad day or a bad week.

Don’t kid yourself that you can build a foolproof plan that can mitigate every aspect of this stage. What I would do is pick between two or three ingredients and run a test against them to see what the data tells you.

Data is the new gold. Period. Making business decisions via intuition is not the smartest way to get through this stage. Make sure you have data that’s predicting patterns and use those patterns to make actionable decisions.

The entrepreneur journey is ridden with self-doubts. It's very natural to question yourself along the journey and one of the key aspects and probably the most important aspect is to question what if I fail?

Whether your plan involves leaving your full-time employment for good or starting a side hustle that can eventually scale you need to test the waters and build that confidence to execute.

As Andy Grove the late chairman of Intel once said, only the paranoid survive. Yes, it’s an attribute that will help you to stay grounded and execute with precision.

Once the excitement of starting a business starts to wear you out you will start questioning your decision and possibly enter a semi confused state and self-doubt.

This is absolutely common and don’t fight it. If anything this phase will help you in crystallizing your thoughts and make the whole process become real.

So how do you get through this phase? By proactively preparing and testing your ideas. Easier said than done. I know.

Ideas are great but you need to implement them to be successful. Since we are focused on online businesses you need to establish a clear path for execution.

As with anything in life, say losing weight, getting better at your golf swing, hitting the gym to bulk up, learning to play a musical instrument, learning a new language, etc you need to show up, be proactive, and practice. These are the basic ingredients to succeed. Don’t make the mistake of comparing yourself to someone else that’s able to accomplish the same much faster than you.

I will not waste your time on this podcast by telling you to start another drop shipping or Print on Demand store. Although folks have found success in those ventures it's a highly crowded marketplace and odds of success are limited for the most part.

This podcast is not about preaching to open up an online business and wait for traction to build. It sounds quite rosy and enticing but achieving that dream of sipping pina Coladas on a remote island and cashing your online earnings is at best a dream. We are all about helping you build real businesses with an online edge using all the available tools within the Digital Marketing Spectrum.

This podcast will be a true reflection of our lessons, trials and tribulations, and actionable insights that you can take to deliver incremental progress whether you are a solopreneur, side hustler, micro business, and a small business. I hope this will help each and every one of you, wherever you are and whoever you are reach the next level within. So from online marketing, SEO, PPC, web design, and a multitude of things within the digital marketing spectrum, we will delve deep. My goal is to help fellow entrepreneurs build and realize their dreams.