Most of us want things to work, sooner rather than later. When you start a new venture – like your own business, you want to get results and start doing the things that motivated you to embark on that journey. Even if you have had lots of practice starting and running your own companies, there still will be some hiccups that make you go back to square one and re-plan or rethink what you are doing. Maybe you realize that you need to learn to do something that seemed so easy when somebody else was doing it. Like marketing that everybody seems to know something about until they need to do it themselves.
I listened to a seminar where Mati Otsmaa was speaking about startups. He is advising young startups on how to get investors behind their ideas. He was saying that very often the young entrepreneurs come to Silicon Valley and think that they have created such a wonderful product that everyone will immediately understand the value and invest in it. In reality, they need to be clear on who the product is for and and how will it help make the lives of the intended customers easier. Once this is done, they might get an investor who sees the potential – that will depend on how well they presented and who else was competing for the money. Mati was also talking about the fear of failure that many young entrepreneurs have. The reality of it is, though, that if you want to create something new, you need to get out of your comfort zone and that means that you might fail. Mati has worked with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at the very early days of Apple computer and he quoted Steve Jobs saying that Journey is the reward. In other words, it is not about achieving something, even though it might be sweet, but it is about enjoying the whole journey when you are learning and building what you love. You’ll love it even if you fail. Eventually, when you persist, you will get good at whatever you do and then there is the next challenge to keep you still on the journey.
Learning to market your company is a journey: you learn, you fail, you learn more, you succeed, you learn some more. There are never any guarantees that marketing will work every time. What is important is to keep looking at marketing as a journey and enjoy it through the ups and downs.
Where are you on your marketing journey? Take this quiz to find out your Confident Marketing Factor.
