Many people fail when starting a business, not because of bad ideas, but because they treat their business like a hobby instead of treating it like their future.

Here are 13 common failure modes, and below, how you can avoid them.

FAILURE THINKING #1:

My new product didn’t make money in the first month or two? Abandon the idea and make a new product.

FAILURE THINKING #2:

My new product DID make money in the first few months, but not now? Abandon the idea and make a new product.

FAILURE THINKING #3:

My new product made A LOT of money? Well, that success isn’t real somehow, I’d better throw all that progress away and try something totally disconnected and more ~ambitious~.

(you laugh but i’ve seen this so many times)

FAILURE THINKING #4:

I shipped it, now I’m done.

FAILURE THINKING #5:

I’m bored, I quit.

FAILURE THINKING #6:

My product isn’t making sales, but instead of working to make sales, continuously working on the product.

FAILURE THINKING #7:

If the product doesn’t sell itself, it’s not good enough, I’m not good enough, I quit.

FAILURE THINKING #8:

I got distracted by some shiny new whatever, and now I feel guilty about neglecting the product. But instead of doing a little emotional labor to go back to it, I’ll just quit forever in shame.

FAILURE THINKING #9:

Someone else is doing something similar, I quit.

FAILURE THINKING #10:

Regurgitating deep-sounding business crap like “market saturation” without ever even looking up what that means, as an excuse to not try.

FAILURE THINKING #11:

Nobody would buy from ME - but you never attempt it to find out.

FAILURE THINKING #12:

I’m not good enough, and no, I will not look around to see if there are people not as good as me who are doing better than me.

FAILURE THINKING #13 (baker’s dozen!):

Doing the same things over & over when they don’t work.

Want success? Great! You can get it! Bring some professionalism to your side hustle.

  • A Professional analyzes the evidence to understand why they didn’t make any sales.
  • A Professional stacks their smaller successes into bigger ones.
  • A Professional follows through on the work that comes after shipping.
  • A Professional doesn’t need excitement to sit down and do their job.
  • A Professional does the whole job, not just the parts of the job they love doing.
  • A Professional markets and sells their work.
  • A Professional doesn’t let their mistakes define them.
  • A Professional cares more about helping their customers than their idea being unique.
  • A Professional seeks to understand if what others say is true.
  • A Professional tries something to see what happens.
  • A Professional learns from each attempt, and adjusts.

Want to succeed in business? Be a professional.

There's more where that came from

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