Photo by Aurélia Dubois on Unsplash

December 2017, I made a very drastic decision.

I ‘fired’ most of my freelancing clients, and kept only my top 2.

My reason? I wanted to focus on my new ecommerce business so I could give it my everything.

A month before that time, I had made a mistake. A mistake which, now, I’m glad I made. I went against my own practices.

I’d invested several thousands of dollars into the business without even having the faintest idea how I’d sell the products.

I believe so much in testing and validating a product to be sure it would sell, and probably even have customers waiting for delivery, before you invest any money into it.

Well, I didn’t do that, but I was not entirely stupid: my friend had been selling the same soap successfully, before I chose to sell it. In fact, he was the one that advised that I sold that particular soap, as my introduction into eCommerce.

A blessing!

The truth, however, is that if I’d gone the testing-before-buying route, I probably wouldn’t have the success I later had with marketing the soap…and I wouldn’t have learnt all the awesome stuff I now know and have successfully applied to several other businesses.

I would’ve tested and done everything the right way, but as my campaign failed severally, I would have given up ultimately.

I actually got to the point of giving up, but two things kept me going:

  1. The fact that I already spent money on the business and I had cartons of soaps always staring at me while I was working. They just had to go, even if it was just to recoup my investment
  2. Fact that my friend actually already sold this same soap successfully in the past. So, I knew there was definitely a way to make it work.

So, really…I had no other choice but to make it work and sell the soaps off. I definitely wouldn’t perish if I didn’t, but it would’ve affected a lot of things adversely.

More especially, it would have meant that my intended “ticket to financial freedom” got torn!

Focus + Determination

This was when I realized that, as cliché as it sounds, one of the major reasons we entrepreneurs fail is determination.

When you’re stubbornly determined to make something happen, and you do everything you can to ensure it indeed happens, it will happen.

And one major reason we sometimes don’t have this determination is Focus. Once we do several things at a time, we tend to give one priority over another. Or we have this mentality of “a bird in hand” and give up easily when a new venture fails — all because we have something already working and bringing in some money.

Unfortunately, most times, it takes several adjustments and relaunches for a campaign or funnel or business to pick up sales momentum. Being distracted and unfocused can make you give up before that one more try that would be the one!

Sometimes you just have to burn the escape bridges and boats after entering unfamiliar terrain, and declare: I either sell or perish!

I did that. And it paid off.

I hope you do too!

Cheers,

Oludami

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