The 5 Biggest Mistakes of Business Owners At The Start of the Year

As I look back at my failures and successes this past year, as well as the advise from my business coaches, I’d like to summarize the 5 biggest mistakes I did at about this time last year.

But before we get to that, let’s put it in perspective.

2010 has been a fantastic year. As some of you might know, I just arrived in the local business scene in December 2009, when I first offered my Twitter 101 classes. Since then, I have expanded to:

• conduct over a dozen workshops on social media marketing,
• connect with an audience of over 500 attendees, and
• reach an almost equal number of people, while networking at Launchpad, the Valley Chamber, Greater Spokane, the CDA Chamber, SCORE, LeTip, as well as the Filipino-American Association.

Although I’ve been working on internet marketing projects since 2005, they were mainly focused on search engine optimization (SEO) for national marketing campaigns.

I was a virtual unknown in the Spokane business community. Heck, when I first joined the Chamber, I didn’t even know what chambers did!

So here they are: “my bad!”. (Fortunately, I’ve been able to make a course correction very, very early.)

1. Not Defining Success

Even though I’ve been marketing on the internet for 5 years, my business is a start-up for all intents and purposes in the Spokane market. My clients’ business models are different; their understanding of internet marketing is different.

Given that, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of identifying financial goals. So let me pose a different way of thinking.

Recently, I met with a prospective client who got it right. He also just started his business full-time in 2010. He had ambitious, but realistic and very specific definitions of success: he just wanted to “plant the seeds”.

In his case, he went on to make sales calls to show what solutions he has to offer. (Note: There is a distinct difference between a product and a solution.) As a result, he was very successful introducing himself to key organizations, so he looks forward to reap his financial rewards in the coming year.

He’s also thinking ahead: he needs help in planting new seeds, specifically in the online world.

In my case, I went planting seeds both in online and offline social networking. (Being voted as Launchpad’s first ever Member of the Year was a heartwarming surprise measure of success for me.)

The same concept applies to non-startups. Even if you’re a young 5-yr venture, or a mature 50-yr old business, you will have some kind of innovative project that you’ve never done before.

(And if you’re not innovating, then your business is dying – but that’s another story.)

Guess what? You need to plant seeds in your marketplace to successfully introduce your innovation.

So what seeds are you going to plant for your business, and how many are you going to plant?

2. Undervaluing Business Partnerships

My biggest mistake here is not doing enough – not in quantity, but in quality.

Right from the beginning, I knew that I had to establish very good relationships with a select few organizations. Needless to say, it had to be mutually beneficial. Some of these key partnerships are:

• Chris Tornquist from ITT Tech has become a good friend – allowing me to hold my seminars and workshops at their beautiful facilities in the Spokane Valley.
• Sandra McNett, Coralie Myers, Billie Moreland and David McKenzie (all from SCORE), were all instrumental in helping me reach an audience to get started from nothing.
• Bill Kalivas and Allen Battle (Launchpad), supported me as I shared their philosophy of the hybrid online/offline networking.
• Jim Munro, ActionCoach,  who’s early vote of confidence – did boost my confidence!

These are all very healthy relationships, but I feel that I could have done better, had I given more time and attention.

BTW, I hate mentioning names, because I can easily overlook one other person – but all of the above people were really instrumental in 2010.

3. Not Giving Priority to Marketing

I spent my time and energy on marketing my business in one year,  more than the previous 50 years combined. (That may sound like an exaggeration, but it really isn’t.)

Nevertheless, it wasn’t nearly enough of what it should have been. The ideal number is that 60% of resources should be allocated to marketing – which applies to other businesses as well – not just mine.

Here’s what I’ve been advising my clients:

The first priority of any business is to keep the marketing pipeline full. Delivering the product, believe it or not, is 2nd priority.

I’m not suggesting that you sacrifice product delivery to get more customers.

Instead, what I’m saying is that businesses should fulfill their promises, and then turn around to spend MORE time and energy to attract more people to their door.

4. Offering A Product The Customer Does NOT Want

In the beginning, I was trying to find a customer for my service. I learned very quickly (as in a few weeks), to do the opposite. I needed to determine what my target customers want, and then offer the service to satisfy that want.

More specifically, I’m talking about search engine optimization (SEO). This is the technical process of placing a website at the top of the search engine results: Google, to be more exact.

Unfortunately, the Spokane business culture, as a general rule of thumb, does not yet appreciate the value of SEO marketing.

So I adjusted my approach, and focused on social media marketing. Why? Because whenever I meet people, they would ask me questions about Facebook and Twitter, instead of Google and Yahoo.

There was a huge hunger – so that’s what I fulfilled, which leads me to the next lesson…

5. Selling Instead of Marketing

“No matter what your product is, you are ultimately in the education business.” ~ Robert Allen

(Note: Robert Allen was one of my early influencers decades ago, when I first started in the real estate business.)

This is probably the single biggest mistake that I have observed from businesses who are ‘dabbling’ in social media.

All they ever talk about is: “BUY MY STUFF!”, even though they’ve not established any relationships at all.

If you think about, the only time a person gives up their wallet in exchange for your product, is when TRUST is established.

Sometimes, that trust may not be 100%, but it’s sufficient enough to give up their hard-earned dollars for the solution that you’re offering.

You see, education is the perfect vehicle to establish that trust. The more you educate, the more trust is developed.

Your prospect gets to know you, and what your values are;  they get to like you and they get to like your product.

Once that trust is established, then the sale is a forgone conclusion. Marketing is really all about education.

What Lessons Have You Learned?

If we fail to understand why we failed or succeeded, then we’ll never succeed in the long run.

Feel free to leave your thoughts below, and engage in the new order of social media conversations.

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