What you do and do not do on a daily basis has a long term compounding impact on your Small Business success. Depending on the approach you take and the level of self-sabotaging you engage in will have real effects on the outcome of your business, including whether or not you are actively killing your Small Business.

What does killing your Small Business mean?

Killing your Small Business means that you may be making decisions that are sabotaging your business success and unwittingly committing to a course of action that will eventually see you fail.

It is about the self-sabotaging behaviours that people employ on a conscious and subconscious level to stop themselves from being successful, to slow things down or to completely undermine their goals.

It is a bad habit that can cost you your Small Business;

It is a bad habit of ego-centric, failure enduring decisions etc that do not serve your highest purpose;

It is allowing fears to drive your Small Business direction and kill it from the inside out. Often this is a slow and painful death – one small decision, action or inaction compounding over time.
What does killing your Small Business look like?

Imagine that you decide to put on an event to show off your services and bring in more clients/customers, more money and build your business. As a result of this decision, you go about setting up the event, sorting out the details, thinking about the costs and considering what profit you will make. You’re excited and ready to go, but, then something strange happens and you lack the motivation to do the basics well to get the message out there to your niche audience. You find yourself unwilling to step out of your comfort zone and be vulnerable.

Worries begin to fester about your ability to pull the event off;

You worry that people will see you as an imposter;

Fear takes root and all your decisions and actions are now run through this internal filter;

You think about giving up;

You think about retreating because it all seems to hard to get off the ground;

You may even worry that you will have too many people show up for the event and what will you do then?
Fear burrows deeper in your gut and whispers, “Who do you think you are? You know you can’t handle it, you’re not ready, you need more time. You’re a fake, fraud and you’re not going to cope if they all come.”

Subconsciously you sabotage your every effort to grow your business through inactions and not following through. You now live in Excuse Central! You feel overwhelmed and the last thing you want to do is take action.

You may be asking, what person in their right mind would be doing this! It’s insane and it doesn’t make sense.

But from an emotional safety perspective it makes perfect sense to the Small Business Owner who fears too much success too soon. They may fear not being able to handle the abundance and prosperity that could flow from their awesome idea.

I never said it was rational.

Internally their subconscious seeks to keep them safe through avoiding situations that have the potential to be successful.

Say hello to procrastination!

This kind of self-sabotaging behaviour may not even be something that they can see themselves, however, anyone around them who is trying to help them get off the ground and grow their business can see it. Bystanders are often fraught with frustration as they watch you abort your best efforts.

If a bystander tries to intervene when the Small Business Owner is not ready to receive their message of how to help, it can lead disagreements, resentment, anger and parting of ways.

Fear and an out if balance ego that feels threatened are insidious weeds that, if left unchecked, can become an out of control jungle of compounding self-sabotage behaviours that have a flow-on effect, resulting in you actively killing your own Small Business.

Where to from here?

If you have begun to see yourself in this scenario, that is a good thing to acknowledge. Admitting that you have a fear that holds you back is an empowering step forward. It is an opportunity for you to explore what is really going on inside you.

Check in with yourself to see if your ego has flared up in response to help and give humility a go, you may just end up being more successful than you thought and experience greater support from like-minded people;

Reflect on what you are doing or choosing not to do. Ask yourself the hard questions to get to the deep reason as to why you do not want to be successful right now;

Consider what might be holding you back from success and nip fears in the bud because honestly, having too many people want to attend your event and know about your Small Business is a good problem to have!
Daily reflection on your thoughts, behaviour and resistance will help you to avoid killing your own Small Business.

With the financial pressures everyone seems to be facing, it should come as no surprise that the Home Based Business arena is growing at a tremendous pace. It would easy to just assume that the increase in the number of people looking to start their own business is simply a result of the tough economic times everyone is facing. I happen to think, however, that there is something else at work here.The Internet is changing the way consumers conduct business and is the primary source of information for many people. Think about how you use the Internet and you will begin to realize how buying habits are changing. If you are typical of many consumers you begin by doing research on the product that you want to buy. More and more that research is done on the Internet rather than a book store or magazine. The next step is to search for the best price and, again, many times this involves a search on the Internet. Once a decision is made the purchase is completed. It is true that a typical brick and mortar retail operation might be the place of purchase. However, the Internet is gaining a larger market share every day. The traditional retailers are not happy about this and are quickly adapting to this trend by having a website for their consumer to make purchases from if that is their desire.So, how does this impact the Home Based Business owner? The growth of the Internet has revitalized this growing segment of our economy. A whole cottage industry has arisen with Home Based entrepreneurs becoming active with online stores with very affordable startup costs. There are some who make six figure incomes selling solely on E-Bay. This is not only phenomenal but word is spreading rapidly that a nice income stream can be created with a very low investment. This market has created another industry with businesses springing up offering automated income systems. Almost anyone can have a website up and running in a few hours. As with anything of this nature, be extremely careful about false promises of incredible wealth overnight. That almost never happens. It is very unfortunate that once a viable business opportunity is created there needs to be a constant effort to sort through the hype and separate fact from fiction.Just as with any other business category, new businesses on the Internet have an alarming rate of failure. You cannot create a website and sit back to wait for the money to pour in. If, however, the opportunity that you are evaluating seems to have a proven system of attracting visitors and does a good job of presenting the products or opportunity, it might be worth investigating. Just as Mail Order created a whole new group of Home Based entrepreneurs, the Internet and online marketing is already doing the same thing. It has made ownership of a Home Based Business a realistic possibility and has become a possible source of part or full time income for a new generation. The Internet has leveled the playing field for the small business owner.How do you enter into this exciting new world of opportunity? Just as with anything else, you start by gathering information from as many sources as possible. Keep notes and sort through what you like and dislike about what you find. You will start to create a very clear idea of the type of business you might want to create. There are many website owners who make information without creating a single product. They offer useful information and collect information from advertising and referral fees. The possibilities are nearly endless and the rewards can be impressive. Start exploring this opportunity today!

Marketing includes matters such as pricing and packaging of the product and creation of demand by advertising and sales campaigns. There are other options, of course, like product creation, resale rights marketing, joint ventures and the likes, but they are merely secondary to the above.

If you take the freelance route, it is important to ensure that all rights to profit from the final product, or any materials produced in its making, remain yours. Bookkeeping, physical product creation or delivery of goods can be done better with specialized help. Determining the purpose of the product is vital in niche product creation.

Implementation of Methodology – The choice of implementation of Six Sigma methodology depends on whether development is required on existing processes (DMAIC) or on new process/product design creation (DMADV). Determining what you really want to sell, something that you can be relaxed selling is the first step at the creation of a niche product. With the technological advancements in the hosting industry, from automated control panels and scripts that simplify creation of accounts; to complete turnkey solutions, there is no excessive need to worry about spending time on the actual product sold to the customer.

For instance, you should be prepared to either perform yourself or to subcontract the completion of the following tasks:- Product idea research (are there any existing products or patents already existing for this idea)- Product specification document training (what it will do, how it will look, how will it be powered, and how the user will interface with it)- Marketing study (what it will be named, who would buy this, how much would they pay, how will we get customers to purchase the product)- Schematic or electronic circuit design process- Creation of a bill of material or BOM and an approved vendor’s list or AVL for each component in the design, preferably with multiple sources identified, with a BOM and AVL for each assembly level in the product- Printed circuit board layout design process (single sided board, double sided board, or multilayer board; size of the PCB; board material)- Mechanical packaging design with user interfaces (displays, buttons, switches, key. This removes all product creation costs from your budget as a marketer.

No other database of affiliate programs offers such a possibility for profit on either the affiliate side or the product creation site. Your chosen niche should allow for the creation of more than one product or service.

There are several marketing strategies that are necessary in the creation of a successful e-commerce web site – Email marketing (broadcasting) of prospects/customers – Effective use of auto responders (generate automatic email messages) – Online Newsletter – Online Form / Survey to capture your prospect’s email address – Electronic Product Delivery (if you sold a digital product) – Advertisement (Ad) Tracking – Back End Sales – Affiliate program etc.