Are you ruthless about what you listen to? Are you surrounded by people agreeing with you and complaining that this year sucks, it’s slow, the economy, etc? I’m not here to say it’s not valid, but today I’ll enter with a hot take – more of a pep talk and an entrepreneur mindset reminder than my usual tangible tips. Let’s get into it.
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Table of Contents
The Danger of Surrounding Yourself with Negativity
I keep seeing, specifically on Threads for me, but it could be anywhere and about any topic, people saying this year is so slow. They ask, “Does anyone else find it to be such a slow business year?” That’s fine if it’s your experience. I know in many cases there’s legitimacy to it, especially in the wedding industry. The trend across the board seems to be that things are slow.
What bothers me is the tons of comments on those posts saying things like, “Yeah, couples don’t like to spend any money.” We’ll use the wedding industry as an example. They say, “There are too many new people entering the market. Nobody’s getting married. Gen Z doesn’t prioritize…” and so on.
Unless you want that to be your reality, sometimes you need to stop listening to things like that. If you feel like everything is slow and you’re reading that content, that is probably not the content that is going to inspire you to show up on Instagram, to write that blog post, to make moves that could actually change your reality. When it comes to mindset, what you surround yourself with is what you attract.
The Importance of Seeking Positive Perspectives With an Entrepreneur Mindset
One of the things that shook me, and I feel like a lot of people talk about this, was that Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma.” It’s very easy to validate your experience and your algorithm is just showing you more and more things of people that agree with you. But if you’re not seeing what you want to see in business, surround yourself with something else. You are going to have to seek it out, engage with it, not roll your eyes at it.
I know there are so many people who will say business is fantastic no matter what. I’m not saying we need to go down the road of toxic positivity, but we just can’t as business owners (I feel really strongly about this!) get sucked into the idea that things are out of our control and that things are just slow right now. Most of us do not need hundreds of customers.
As a business owner, if you plan on staying in business for 5, 10, 20 years, it’s okay to have an up year or down year. You don’t need to panic about that, but surrounding yourself with people that are telling you it’s going to be a down year no matter what you do, is just not true at all.
One of my favorite business coach follows is Sara Dann. She says there are enough customers on Facebook that if you love Facebook and marketing and you do it really, really well, there are enough customers on there for you. I am not saying Facebook marketing is the best way to grow a business in 2024. But she is just talking about, maybe you don’t need to post on X, Y, Z platform. The truth is, enough of us use all the platforms that we can find customers literally anywhere and being surrounded by that energy is important.
Overcoming Negative Market Beliefs And Expanding Your Entrepreneur Mindset
Let’s say you sell a group program (entrepreneur mindset example). Group programs are slowly dying (in my opinion!), but don’t listen to me if you don’t want that to be your reality. Let’s say you’re selling a group program and think nobody is buying $2,000 programs anymore. If you need 12 people to fill your program, you’ll find 12 people who will spend it if you want to and if you’re working hard. I always feel when I say working hard, I don’t want to open up that can of worms but iykyk.
The idea that we can’t fill our calendars is insane to me, maybe partly because I don’t want that to be my reality. I refuse to accept such things as truth, and it hasn’t been my reality. I’ve had great years. This is my best year in business yet. 2020, 2021 should have been great years. Many people started their business in the pandemic and are riding those coattails, and now in 2024, they’re saying things are harder than before. But 2020 and 2021 were my worst years because I was emotionally spent from my wedding business.
I’m saying there are years where you might backtrack, but you’ll have up years and down years for sure. As a business owner, if you plan on staying in business for 5, 10, 20 years, it’s okay to have an up year or down year. You don’t need to panic about that, but surrounding yourself with people that are telling you it’s going to be a down year no matter what you do, is just NOT true at all.
Adapting to Market Changes
I do think it’s good to be aware of market slowdowns. Marketing actually tends to do okay when the market softens because people invest in marketing when they’re not getting clients. However, we have to know as marketers selling marketing services that our clients’ industries and clients in general might be more on edge. They might be watching their ROI, they might be getting nitpicky, and that’s not a bad thing. That’s just something that would naturally happen as things slow down and we need to be mindful of that with our communication.
One of the things I think is so cool is when people start innovating. That’s a true entrepreneur mindset. I’m not saying in a panic place where you jump on trying to switch up your product suite every time the market shifts a little bit, but I do think it’s cool when people innovate and they’re like, “Okay, it’s slower, so we’re doing this, this, and this, and this is doing better for us,” or “This is serving a need people have right now.”
Back to the Facebook marketing example, people buy what they need and we can’t assume that everyone who has an opinion is automatically correct. If you hear someone say, “Courses are dead,” if you’re not trying to sell a billion courses, and your goal is to sell 50 courses, the idea that 50 people aren’t buying courses in your topic is crazy, right?
There’s a ton of people buying a ton of different offers, and we don’t have to just be like, “Oh, so-and-so said that masterclasses are the new courses, so I’m going to throw the course I spent two years creating away and reformat it.” We can’t be jumping from thing to thing. We need to package things into what will get the best results for people.
A masterclass on Instagram marketing to me is insane. I appreciate a masterclass on something specific about Instagram, but the idea that you could teach somebody how to market on Instagram in an hour and 90 minutes is crazy. They’re going to need to come to that masterclass already knowing some stuff.
Be Ruthless About What You Listen To
That is my pep talk on having an entrepreneur mindset today! I like to throw these in here every once in a while between the actionable, tangible things and interviews. Talk to you next week!
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