I’m currently in the process of teaching my first group coaching program to seven amazing female entrepreneurs. During this time, I’ve noticed there are certain pervasive myths that stand in the way of business success.
The truth is most of what the general population says about running a business isn’t necessarily true. If there’s one thing successful business owners learn how to do early on, it’s to question everything.
Here are some common myths that may be standing in the way of your own business success.
Don’t accept credit cards because of fees.
Even though we’re in the 21st century, business owners are still hesitant about accepting credit cards.
The first reason why business owners aren’t accepting credit cards is because of fees. Are they annoying? Yes. But they are also a necessary evil. Because, as one of my Twitter followers recently tweeted to me, “Ain’t nobody got time for checks.”
That Twitter follower is correct. People would rather pay with credit cards because of convenience. Therefore, it’s your job to offer multiple payment options to customers and clients. It’s also your job to find a payment processor with a decent fee structure and security features. Failing to do either of these results in lost revenue.
You have to write that one perfect blog post, and then you have business success.
There is this huge misconception that marketing means you only need to hit it out of the ball park once. Because of this, business owners are failing in putting a consistent marketing message out there.
The idea that you need that one post to go viral is a myth. Instead, you need to focus on consistently being out there. As I recently told my students, you could have the best skills in the world but if no one knows about it it doesn’t matter.
Another way this shows up is when business owners are obsessed with perfection. Again, you’ll notice that the people making the most money aren’t necessarily perfect. Their main concern is getting valuable content out there, not writing eighteen drafts for one post.
Writers/creatives/insert type of business don’t make money.
I hate it when well-meaning friends and relatives slash people’s dreams of business success. Usually it’s by saying something like, “Why don’t you get a real job?”
While they may be worried about you, the reality is there’s more than one way to make money. Plenty of creatives make a lot of money. In fact, according to a survey by The Freelancers Union, most of the survey respondents reported earning more money than they did at their last job.
The key is you need to know how to run a business and market yourself. This is in addition to having a particular skill.
My offering isn’t needed for x reason.
One of my students recently had a major aha moment. She’s a closet organizer and mistakenly thought that because she’d only done organization for wealthy people, that regular people won’t need her services.
Another student quickly chimed in to say how they’d actually hired a professional organizer when they moved, and they weren’t wealthy.
The reason my student felt the way she did about her offering is that up until that point, organizing for wealthy people was all she knew. Once she was offered a new perspective, a whole new market for business success opened up.
The moral of the story is this: Sometimes business owners make assumptions based on the information they have. In order to bust out of that, they sometimes need an outsider’s perspective.
Final Thoughts
Business success is as much about our mindset as it is about our skill. Make sure none of these sneaky myths are standing in the way of your own success.
