The better way to sell online

Why intelligent people struggle in business

It takes a lot of guts and a lot of brain to start your own business. It’s one thing to work for someone else and something else entirely to start out and pursue your dreams on your own: but why do so many smart people struggle at it?

We’re often taught that success equates to busyness. The busier we are, the more we do, the better we are: but it’s not necessarily true. As switched on business owners, it’s not uncommon for us to try to figure everything out and do everything on our own.

But instead of helping us grow, it turns out that this hinders us: we make our paths unnecessarily complex. Often, we come from one background. Marketing, design, accounting – whatever it might be. But once we take the small business mantle upon ourselves, we start trying to manage things that are outside of our skillset. The result is that we’re overwhelmed, our work becomes mediocre, and we fall out of love with our ideas.

When we stretch ourselves too thin we end up as masters of nothing, and as a result our businesses struggle to thrive. It’s for this exact reason that we need to stop pushing ourselves so hard, and refocus on the good old KISS principle: Keep it simple, stupid.

We’re often taught that success equates to busyness. The busier we are, the more we do, the better we are: but it’s not necessarily true. When we stretch ourselves too thin we end up as masters of nothing.

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Dumb it all the way down.

I’ve been there: I’ve wanted to create the perfect strategy and the perfect product and market it in the perfect way and I’ve found myself so deep in optional things that I can barely breathe.

We come up with sophisticated plans because we believe complicated and busy is good, but all we end up with is exhaustion! If you really want to succeed in business, strip it back to the fundamentals.

What’s your goal? For instance, it might be brand awareness. You might want people to recognize your name. As a result, you might come up with twenty schemes which all involve resources outside of your means and tactics outside of your time frame. This quickly develops into overwhelm!

Instead, think of what someone with half your intelligence and time would do. What quick method would they use to reach people? Sure, you could do something better, something more complex, but do you really, truly need to?

More often than not, the answer is no. A lot of the work we take upon ourselves is unnecessary. We try to master everything we encounter, and ultimately end up stuck. Instead, accept that your tactics might not be super refined, but that all they need to do is work.

Regain control.

By simplifying our business strategies we can quickly regain control and oversight of our work. While using more basic methods to grow and enhance our stores might seem simplistic, it can often help us gain time and clarity.

And besides, overly complicated doesn’t necessarily mean good!

As intelligent business owners, it can be so tempting to create really savvy strategies to showcase our abilities. But often, they aren’t truly necessary, and it can be nearly impossible to balance them with all our other responsibilities.

So, take a deep breath and relax. Then, go strike all the things off your to-do list that don’t necessarily need to be there.

Lena Klein

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