Over the last few years I’ve had the pleasure of working with and coaching a number of aspiring, novice & seasoned Teacherpreneur’s on their business journeys. These conversations have enabled me to crowd source common problems that I see being made time and time again.
Join me for the first in a 3 part series focusing on the biggest mistakes & how to work towards fixing them.
Single Source Dependency
This has many variations, but in more recent times I’ve seen this evidenced by Teacherpreneur’s solely focusing on sales or traffic from one channel. The problem with this is that you leave yourself 100% at the mercy of the platform you sell on or the traffic source you use, therefore if they experience changes or interruptions your capacity to earn and drive traffic is greatly diminished. The biggest examples of this I’ve noticed recently are Teacherpreneur’s selling on the Teachers Pay Teachers Website.
While this is an exceptional place to make a start, it becomes more and more risky with each sale and follower you accrue on the platform. All it would take is a change in their algorithms or terms of service and your account may start to be relegated to the back blocks, or worse, removed all together. Investing too much in a platform you don’t own, is unwise.
Solution: Once you’ve began to establish yourself in a place like TpT, focus on starting your own space where YOU own the customers. This can include a website, blog or email list that you cannot be removed from.
Treating Everything Equally
This is by far one of the biggest mistakes I learnt throughout my business journeys, so much so that as soon as I stopped treating everything the same my business grew 4560%.
So what exactly does this mean?
It means, focusing on the right things brings epic results. This is brought home by the Pareto Principle & the FACT that 20% of the things you do are responsible for 80% of your success, or more specifically in business terms.
- 20% of your products bring in 80% of your income OR
- 20% of your customers generate 80% of your income
- 20% of the day to day tasks you do are responsible for 80% of your business success
Solution:
Stop treating everything the same. Just because you have 52 products in your lineup doesn’t mean you need to spend equal time on promoting and attracting new buyers. Start with an 80:20 analysis of your business and determine the RIGHT things to focus on. Quite frankly there are a myriad of tasks you’re doing right now that you could stop & they would literally have zero impact on your business.
Be ruthless on finding the core 20% and focus All of your efforts on taking this section to the next level. Your business will thank you.
Expert Syndrome
Stop trying to learn everything yourself.
While it might be difficult to hear, your desire to learn everything first hand and ‘Do It All Yourself’ is KILLING your growth. While it might seem economical to learn how to edit your own images in photoshop, you will likely spend an absurd amount of time learning a skill that you could have had someone else do for you. Stop trying to be the expert.
“Ok, Jarrod… I get it but I can’t afford to hire someone”
Sorry, you cannot afford not too. Here’s the reason why;
Scenario 1:
- Lets say you want to learn how to edit your own videos promoting your products and services.
- You buy a course, invest in expensive software and get started becoming proficient enough to make something worth using in your business. At this stage you’ve invested $500 on the course and software & 25 hours of your own time making it happen.
- You produce your video and its of OK quality
Scenario 2:
- Hire a skilled freelancer on a website like Upwork or Fiverr.
- Outline what you want done & pay for the video editors time to complete it for you
- Meanwhile as they’re working on your deliverable you focus on the RIGHT things and spend the 25 hours to build an entirely new product or promote your best product to new audiences.
- You receive your video, which is of a much higher standard than you could have ever done, however best of all you’re ahead as the freelancer only cost you $200. Add in the sales from the new product you just created and pretty soon the decision to focus on the right things becomes much clearer.
While this might seem counter intuitive, its the very reason the worlds largest companies are the worlds largest companies. At some point the founders realise that you cannot be the expert in every situation & by attempting to be so you actually impact the results you could obtain.
We’ll be back for Part 2 of this series soon, in the meantime let us know the biggest mistakes you’ve made in the comments below.