I hear it so often around this time of year…

“Next year is the year we’re going to make it big!”

Or “This year I’m finally going to do what you did and replace my full-time income and walk away from my job!”

But so few people actually do it.

Regardless of whether people are trying to be more established in their businesses or start up their own, there are a few issues I see across the board from the individuals who fail to live-up to that promise.

The What: Lack of Action

There are three major excuses or problems that stall action...

1. Avoiding Things They Don’t Want To Do

I see this primarily with solopreneurs.

Solopreneurs see someone like me or Cardone or Robbins or Vaynerchuk and hear us talk about delegation and living inside their energy advantage zone, and assume that they get to be in the same spot overnight.

There is some truth to the realization that you’ll need to outsource To Do quickly in your business. But very rarely will you get to outsource EVERYTHING you don’t want to do overnight.

Additionally, when it’s time to outsource, it has to be done properly or you’d be better off not outsourcing at all. If you can’t outsource properly and it’s vital to the growth of the business, it’s better to keep it on your plate a little while longer. No matter how much you dislike doing it.

For Example:

Most people I talk to don’t like doing sales.

Hell, I don’t like making initial calls either. I love running the appointment itself, but calling and calling and calling to maybe get a hold of someone? Not my cuppa. So I’ve outsourced that. But it took me three years to find a good person to trust with that integral part of my business.

Too many wantrepreneurs try to mimic without knowing who to look for to manage that portion of their business. Whether they’re outsourcing to a contractor or through online funnels, they find the first person who promises a great funnel, or who says “Sure, I can make calls!” turn it over and try to not look back.

When it falls apart because they hired the wrong person, they blame everyone but themselves.

Here’s the hard truth: No one is going to flock to a business just because it exists. I don’t care how great of a person you are.

If you want sales, you have to go out and actually sell. Talking about your business at a networking event is not sales. Talking about your business on social media is not sales.

Generating leads, setting appointments and running those appointments, that is sales.

Build a sales funnel (I’m talking about scripts and stage selling here, not a series of landing pages). Understand your culture & what kind of person is needed to do sales for you. Then run sales yourself while you look for that perfect fit individual to take over.

2. Looking for Perfection

Nothing will ever be perfect!

This isn’t news to anyone. But it doesn’t stop us from trying to get everything perfect before taking action.

Get the website perfect before going out to generate leads. Perfect headshots. Perfect mailing list auto-mailers. Perfect business cards. Perfect Logo. Perfect package. Perfect subjects for your emails so you’ll get a much higher open-rate. The list goes on…

It won’t be perfect. Get over it and take action. As you take action, you’ll find what works & what doesn’t. You’ll learn the small tweaks to make to improve your results. Start your program and build it out as you go.

In small-business, things change rapidly. By the time you get your perfect email funnel set up, you’ll realize that you need to change the entire package and you’ve just wasted hours of time. Start taking action today, and perfect things as you go along.

Side Note:

I didn’t even have a website for the first year and a half that I was in business. When I did get it up? I threw it together in a few hours and moved on with my life because there were more important things in my business than getting a perfect website at the time. The websites that we have now? They were different aspects of leveling up the business as we went along.

3. Failing to Take Action ON The Business

The first two of these obstacles are more commonly seen in smaller businesses. Not exclusively, but more commonly.

This third issue is one of the most prevalent among established businesses.

Don’t get stuck working in the business.

Invest time in things like what your brand really is and what makes you unique. Figure out what message you should use and whether or not you need a better sales funnel (WHILE you have one going, you can’t improve a sales funnel if you don’t have one already going… Remember that you won’t get everything perfect right off the bat, but you can and need to work on improving things that you already have in existence). Evaluate current marketing strategies. Evaluate current market trends. Establish needed changes to the business model to increase profitability or revenue. Establish clear SOPs and perimeters for operation that allow scalability.

The important thing is to take time to work on improving things and processes in the business on a consistent basis.

The Why

I find three keys that create that lack of action:

1. Lack of Passion:

Passion creates action.

When you are passionate and excited about something, very little will keep you from working on it. But when we lack the passion and vision to get the business going, it’s easy to get distracted and work on agenda items that won’t help!

So find the passion in your business that will drive you to take action.

2. Lack of Accountability:

We need some sort of external accountability.

Most entrepreneurs are driven. I am extremely driven. But even I have found that I need someone outside the business to hold me accountable to growth actions. Otherwise our growth trajectory stutters. Someone who checks in with me consistently and holds me accountable to keep moving my projects forward.

3. Fear:

Fear of failure is a real thing! And it’s normal.

The problem stems from letting that fear of failure prevent us from giving everything we’ve got to make something work.

It’s easy to justify failure when you don’t put all of your effort in: “I didn’t really fail because I could have done better.” We all have to get past the idea that it’s the end of the road if we put all our energy in and it doesn’t work.

If you put all your energy in and it doesn’t work, focus all your energy on tweaking it and trying another method. Don’t stop just because you gave it your all and it failed. Part of being in business is that some things just don’t work, but you don’t stop trying just because one thing failed.

Don’t do something half-way just because you’re afraid of failure. Don’t do that to yourself!

It’s ok to fail! Recognize that you might be preventing yourself from trying your hardest because of a fear of failure, and use that knowledge to overcome it because you know that failure is not the end of all things.

Moving forward in a business of any kind requires action. So whatever you’re struggling with that is keeping you from taking action, push through it. The biggest obstacle to business growth is lack of action.