Mistake 1: Being Afraid to Negotiate

As a business owner, you get plenty of opportunities to negotiate. For example:

• You can negotiate a better affiliate deal with a vendor. If you’re the vendor, you can negotiate better terms with your super affiliates.

• You can negotiate for better terms with your freelancers and employees.

• You can negotiate for lower rates or other perks from suppliers.

• You negotiate good deals between you and your joint venture partners or even your business partners.

Those are just a few of the most common negotiation opportunities that you may encounter on a fairly regular basis.

Now here’s the interesting part…

Most people never fully take advantage of these opportunities. In fact, most people never even attempt to negotiate. They feel silly. They feel afraid.

But what’s the worst that could happen?

Someone says no.

Big deal. Life moves on.

And what’s the best-case scenario?

Someone will agree to your terms, and you’ll end up getting a much better deal. Depending on what you’re negotiating, this could save or even generate thousands of extra dollars for you. It’s definitely worth at least asking if there’s room to negotiate.

Now here’s the next mistake…

Mistake 2: Letting Negativity Influence You

No matter how solid your business plan is or even how well you’re doing, there’s always going to be someone who tries to tear you down.

They’ll tell you your plans won’t work.

They’ll say you should go get a “real job.”

Even when you’re doing well, they’ll warn you that it won’t last.

This is actually a lot more common than you think. Even some of the greatest entrepreneurs in the world have had to deal with this sort of negativity. Take Walt Disney, whose own wife and brother laughed at his plans, and they told him no one would be interested in the types of films and animated characters he was developing.

Of course we know how that story ended up. Today Disney is a household name, with an empire that includes amusement parks, movies, merchandise and more.

If Disney had listened to his family, that empire wouldn’t exist. And that’s why it’s so important for you to believe in yourself and persist, even when everyone around seems to be unloading their negativity on you. You need to let it slide off of you like water off a duck’s back.

Which brings us to the next mistake…

Mistake 3: Failing To Plan

When that negativity comes at you hard and fast, there’s one thing you can hold up as a shield to deflect it: a solid business plan.

When you have a solid business plan, that means you’ve thought through ever part of your business in great deal. For example:

• You’ve figured out your target market, and learned as much as you can about them.

• You’ve designed a sales funnel, so you know what you’re going to sell to your target market.

• You’ve created a lead-generation and conversion strategy, so you know how you’re going to bring your target market to your website.

• You’ve studied your competitors to the degree that you even know their strengths and weaknesses.

• You’ve looked for opportunities and threats within your marketplace.

• You’ve thought through potential problems and come up with solutions an workarounds.

In other words, you’ve chosen a business model and a designed a plan for turning a profit. And if you do this, you’ll be ahead of the vast majority of people who start a business. After all, if you’re failing to plan, then you’re basically planning to fail.

Next up…

Mistake 4: Wasting Time

No one sets out to waste time intentionally. It’s not like you sit down at your computer at the beginning of the day and proclaim, “I think I’ll waste as much time as possible today.”

And yet it happens. You blink, the day is gone, and you’re nowhere near getting through your to-do list. That’s a lot of wasted time—and wasted opportunity.

So what you need to do is focus on ways to make yourself more productive. Here are a few tips to help you out:

• Create and prioritize your to-do list. Before you go to bed at night, you should create a to-do list so that you know exactly what you need to do tomorrow. Be sure to prioritize this list so that your most crucial and important tasks are at the top of the list. In other words, focus on those tasks that deliver the biggest results to you.

• Try productivity apps. If you have troubles with distracting sites such as Facebook, then you may want to try a productivity app. These apps shut down all programs except for your essential programs, such as your word processor. This forces you to focus, because your typical distractions are inaccessible.

• Use timers. Sometimes being productive is as simple as setting a time for 20 minutes, and working as quickly as you can for the duration. If you keep setting a 20 minute timer throughout your allotted work time, you’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish.

And finally…

Mistake 5: Not Doing Market Research

A lot of business owners and marketers get product ideas, think the idea is awesome, and then rush out to create the product. But when they put the product up for sale, no one buys it. Tumbleweeds blow over the order form. There is not even a trickle of sales, much less a flood.

So what happened?

The business owner probably didn’t do their market research.

Don’t make this costly and time-consuming mistake. Instead, do some research to find out what your market is already buying. If they’re already purchasing a certain type of product in your niche, then there’s a very good chance they’ll buy your product. This is particularly true if you follow these two guidelines:

1, create something better than the existing solutions. In other words, don’t just create a “clone” or a “me too” product. Instead, improve upon the existing solutions. Create a better mouse trap, as the saying goes. Put out a product with more features and better benefits than anything else out there.

2, set yourself apart from the competition. This means creating a USP (unique sales proposition) that tells your prospects why your products are different and better than the competing products. This is your succinct reason why people should buy from you instead of your competitors.

Let’s wrap things up…

Conclusion

So now that you know about five of the most common mistakes that can derail your business, you need to take a good look at yourself to find out if you’re making any of these mistakes.

Chances are, you’re making at least one of these mistakes. In fact, most new business owners make several of these mistakes.

For example, if you’ve ever had a day pass you by where you didn’t get much done, then you know the importance of productivity.

Or if you’ve ever launched a product that flopped, then you know why it’s so important to do your market research.

The good news is that you now know to avoid these mistakes. And you can easily avoid many of the other top business mistakes too.

How?

By joining so many other savvy marketers to become a Power Marketer’s Club member. This is a site developed by two of the net’s top marketers. These are two guys who’ve put multiple millions of dollars into their bank accounts over the years. They’ve been there, they’ve done that, and now they want to teach you the business strategies that will help you start or grow your business too.

Learn more now at www.powermarketersclub.com…

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be sweating and your heart is going to be racing. Fear doesn’t always manifest in those ways when we step outside of our comfort zones. Sometimes it just sort of sneaks up on us. It comes in the form of a disguise.

Take a look at these subtle signs of fear that are often mistake for something else…

Procrastination

Sometimes when we’re getting set to step outside of our comfort zone, we simply procrastinate to avoid doing the work.

For example, you sit down with your to-do list one morning, and suddenly you realize that you really need to clean the house instead since it’s such a mess. You even rationalize and tell yourself that you’ll be more productive when you don’t have that task looming over your head.

That’s just one example, but procrastination manifests in a lot of different ways. Simply put, you prioritize everything else in your life above your business.

So what happens?

It’s pretty simple, really. If we don’t do the work, then we’re not stepping outside our comfort zone. And if we’re not stepping outside our comfort zone, then we don’t get uncomfortable. So we procrastinate in order to feel better.

Except procrastination rarely makes us feel better. Usually we feel worse. We start feeling guilty for not doing the work. But even guilt might not light a fire under you if your fear is strong enough.

Here’s a related idea…

Busy-Work

As mentioned, procrastination is all about doing something ELSE instead of working on your business. What’s different with doing a lot of “busy work” is that you ARE working on your business… every day. That means you don’t get that nagging procrastination guilt weighing you down. And yet you never get anything truly important accomplished, because you’re so busy doing non-essential tasks.

Think of the 80/20 rule here. About 20% of the tasks on your to-do list are going to create 80% of the results. And then the inverse: about 80% of your tasks will create just 20% of the results.

Someone who is feeling fear tends to focus on the 80% of tasks that produce the least amount of results. That means they spend a lot of time working, but have very little to show for it. If you find yourself doing this too, then you might just have a fear of stepping outside your comfort zone.

Next…

Perfectionism

This third sign of fear happens when you work on big, important tasks… but you never quite get them done. That’s because you tell yourself you won’t make your task available for public consumption until that project is “perfect.”

That sounds good in theory. It makes you sound like a conscientious business owner. But “perfection” is an impossible standard. Nothing will be ever truly perfect. You won’t have a perfect product. You won’t create a perfect sales letter. You won’t design a perfect website.

Point is, if you wait for perfection, then you’ll be waiting forever. And maybe you already know that on some level, which is why your fear is using “perfectionism” as an excuse to not get anything done.

You Recognized a Sign: So Now What?

If you’re still reading this, I’m guessing you recognized one or more of the signs above. You’ve recognized that somewhere there is a tiny part of you that doesn’t want to step outside your comfort zone.

That’s not unusual. Starting and running a business is a scary proposition. You’ve probably been groomed all your life to work for someone else. Maybe you never thought of yourself as a leader or a strategist. And maybe it feels a bit like walking a tight wire without a net.

If any of that sounds familiar, just know that you’re not alone. So do yourself a favor and change your mindset so you can change your life. Learn how to start and run your business the right way so that the fear melts away.

Take the first step right now by clicking here: www.powermarketersclub.com… And do it today, because you deserve all the success in the world.