Fail Fast for Success

Failing fast might be one of the best ideas most entrepreneurs don’t know about. Being good at failing fast gives you the opportunity to succeed fast. I think that’s one area where not many people who teach entrepreneurs spend too much or any time on at all.

The way to fail fast correctly is to have your business plan completed. You need the guidance to recognize that the plan is not working and make corrections. Sometimes you will have to remove an employee, or maybe even yourself. Other times it will be a product that doesn’t get the traction you thought it would or it might even be your entire business.

Entrepreneurs who fail fast keep themselves from personally going bankrupt. They don’t let the business conquer their personal assets. That helps so that the entrepreneur makes better less emotional decisions which are better for everyone involved.

Many people think of failure as a negative. It usually is, but when you fail fast, you actually turn failure into a positive event. You are freeing yourself from burdens that you cannot control or change. You are giving way for others to go a different more productive direction which is a good thing if they aren’t doing well.

As you prepare your business plan, prepare your mind and heart to fail fast. If you do, you will do more good for everyone involved. You will make choices that help people to move on and be the best at what they do and you’ll eliminate destructive habits that hold you back.

While this post may not seem to leave a bright and cheerful afterthought, soon enough you will see that this is probably one of the most valuable posts here. Nothing but good comes from failing fast. Don’t be afraid of it, embrace it and you’ll see when the stress comes off.

Are you ready to get started on your new company? There’s no money needed to get started, no matter what you’re planning on doing. Before you do anything else start working on your business plan. It’s a critical document that acts as your GPS for your company. The GPS will keep you out of bad neighborhoods and on the right road to success.

Writing your business plan will take some time. Stick with it and make your business works on paper before you actually make it happen in real-life. There’s a saying that if it won’t work on paper, it won’t work in the real world and I believe that.

A business plan helps you decide how much money you will need for your new company and more importantly it will tell you what other resources you will need like man-hours and even your hours. Labor is one of the critical areas where Entrepreneurs underestimate their needs.

A business plan is a living working document. If you have a bad address entered into the GPS you have to get a new address, the correct address for it to work. If you have bad data in your business plan, you need the correct data so you can get to your destination. Great business plans update multiple times to show new and more accurate information.

Sometimes we have the right address but road construction forces us to take a different route that is not entered into the GPS.  We wouldn’t force our way into a construction zone where the bridge was removed, so we have to constantly check our business plan. If we have a road block that’s not part of the plan, we have to add the data into the plan and then recalculate our route.

The more information we put into our business plan the better the data will be when it comes out.

Start by building a business plan and then consistently work that plan so the right directions report properly taking you to your destination.

Mark Zuckerberg connected with two brothers who had an idea to build a social networking application only visible to Harvard. They had this idea to keep it exclusive so others would not be able to use the data.  They were limited to that idea because they didn’t have the skills or knowledge to take the network to the next level, but Mark Zuckerber, who is the real visionary expanded on their vision and created something bigger, what we know as Facebook today.

Their idea was worthless because they couldn’t or wouldn’t properly act on expanding their vision past fun and games of their campus. Zuckerberg on the other hand saw something bigger than even he could have ever imagined. He kept control of his vision and became the expert on what started as a niche.

That’s why who has the idea has nothing of value. That is unless they are an expert, or quickly become an expert. That’s why the twin brothers didn’t create Facebook, they lacked the skill that Zuckerberg has.

You may argue that patents are an idea which is sold. That’s partially true. Something like 95% of all patents never do anything. They simply go nowhere. That means they are worthless. The ones that do, are acted upon, which means the result of actions are.

This is why having an idea is worthless, unless you become the expert in the niche that services that idea and put it into action. That’s where the money is and that’s what you should focus on.

That very first niche website turned into a business that does about fifty million dollars a year and is responsible for hundreds of jobs.  That’s what makes the Internet such a huge opportunity for the Entrepreneur. It truly does level the playing field so anyone can compete no matter how big or small you are.

Since I launched the first niche site, I’ve gone on to build multiple other sites in niche markets that have done extremely well. Some have failed, and in every instance I can see events that led up to those failures, helping me to do better the next time.

One thing stands out in every success and that is consuming information and knowing my niche business industry better than anyone else. I became the expert and as long as I knew more than what others knew, I was able to deliver value to my customers.

The successful people I know consume themselves with knowing everything they can about their niche markets. They make sure that they are the go-to guy when it comes to getting the right knowledge. As long as they are the expert, they are successful because their customers need them.

Every niche business that I have been highly successful in has been due to extensive research that I have done learning an industry. I’ve been paid by other people while working for them as I learn a business, and in most cases, I did not need money for researching a business.

The takeaway that I want to stress is to be successful you have to become an expert on your niche. If you know your niche well, you can do extremely well in creating an Internet business wrapped around your idea.

This tool, used wisely, provides the gateway for anyone to make a lot of money talking about what they love to do. It’s actually perfect because it gives me and you the platform to go on for hours and hours and we can find other people who share the same passions.

The Internet levels the playing field so we can compete against the largest companies, building our own brands. It reduces the amount of exposure we have to take on to achieve success and increases the profit margins on the stuff we sell. The Internet is the perfect platform for the Entrepreneur who wants to build a business from scratch with minimal investment, so small that self-funding is quite possible.

The Internet doesn’t lie. It gives you an exact score of how you’re doing. If you aren’t doing well, you won’t make money. That is all you need to tell you that you need to be doing something differently, but get it right and it is like a money machine that keeps on giving. It will work for you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, even on holiday’s and when you’re sleeping.

You are free to be your own boss right from the very start. Working online creates the true Entrepreneur who has to be creative. There isn’t a method to the madness that works every time and innovation is required to constantly be ahead of the curve. Still, the potential reward surpasses any other opportunity I know.

The best times of my life for this Entrepreneur has come from the work that I have done working on the Internet and the same can be true for you, if you are willing to what it takes to create the business of your dreams.