Mo Qaem

5 ways entrepreneur beat themselves up (and what to do about it)… 1. “I work hard but don’t see the rewards” This is caused by working hard on the supply-side of what you do rather than the demand -side. You make profit by having a lot of demand for what you do not by being a good supplier. Would you rather have a shop that has 10,000 fresh bananas and 1000 customers or 10,000 customers and only 1000 fresh bananas? Fix this problem by focusing your attention on lead generation and sales conversion. 2. “I can never switch off” You don’t have visibility over your pipeline. Next time you are driving at night, switch your lights off and see how you feel when you can’t see the road ahead. The answer is having a dashboard that shows you your sales pipeline, your delivery issues and your margin for error. 3. “I‘m juggling too many balls and I can’t focus” Entrepreneurship is a team sport. You need some extra people on your team who focus on key results. If you can’t afford them, you need to start with your “free employees” - ChatGPT, YouTube, Spotify, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. If you feed his tech with good content you can do some heavy lifting 24/7 and is free to use. Make no mistake though, you will eventually need a team of 4-8 people so you can focus on the highest value tasks. 4. “I charge too little for what I do” You are in a race to the bottom, competing with remote workers in cheaper countries and tech providers who are funded and can lose money on customer acquisition. There’s one moat small businesses can deploy to defend against this - the personal brand of the founder. If you build your industry notoriety, you will attract more clients. If you position yourself as the “best in the world” for a niche topic, you can attract clients from all over the world who want that niche focus - these people pay more. Build your brand as a key person of influence for a high-value niche. 5. “I‘ve lost my spark” You’re all out of creative juices. Your brain has discovered that all your effort doesn't produce rewards and it’s put the breaks on. There’s two things that can help. Firstly, start rewarding yourself more - even in simple ways (go have a coffee at the top hotel in town, buy yourself that nice treat when you sign a client). Secondly, get around energising people. Environment dictates performance - you will become like the people you spend time with. You need to be part of an entrepreneur accelerator that is full of vibrant, energising, people and ideas. If you are cold, sit by the fire. If you are dispassionate, sit by the fired-up. Which of these 5 can you relate to most?