Hey there! Welcome to another exciting episode of “The Entrepreneur’s Journey” with your host, Rick Mulready. In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into the world of online entrepreneurship and discussing the importance of embracing challenges and difficulties along the way.

In this episode, we’re going to talk about something that every entrepreneur faces at some point – challenges and difficulties. Yep, those pesky roadblocks that can sometimes make us want to throw in the towel. But fear not, my friends, because today I’m going to show you why embracing these challenges is actually the key to unlocking your true potential as an online entrepreneur.

To illustrate this point, I’m going to share not one, but two inspiring stories from members of my accelerator program who faced some serious obstacles in their businesses. These stories will not only motivate you, but also provide you with practical strategies to overcome your own challenges.

First up, we have an entrepreneur who discovered the power of tracking data and knowing your numbers. I’ll walk you through how this member was able to scale their business effectively by diving deep into their analytics and making data-driven decisions. Trust me, this is a game-changer!

Next, we’ll explore the story of another member who had to make some difficult changes and reinvent their team in order to achieve growth. I’ll share the steps they took to transform their business and how you can apply these strategies to your own journey.

Throughout the episode, I’ll emphasize the importance of embracing the “muck” – those tough, messy parts of entrepreneurship that we often try to avoid. But here’s the thing, my friend, it’s in those moments of challenge and discomfort that we truly grow and unlock new opportunities.

So, if you’re ready to learn how to overcome obstacles and achieve success as an online entrepreneur, this episode is a must-listen. Get ready to be inspired, motivated, and equipped with the tools you need to navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship.

Tune in now and join me on this incredible journey of embracing challenges and unlocking new opportunities. Remember, the road to success may be bumpy, but the rewards are worth it!

Links & Resources:

• The Art of Online Business website
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• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

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What’s up, my friend? Welcome to today’s episode on the Art of Online Business podcast. Rick here. And this is going to be kind of a quick tip episode here on the show. It’s going to be a short one, but I think this can be really, really powerful for you. And I’m calling it embracing the Muck. It’s something that we as online entrepreneurs go through. Every one of us goes through stuff, meaning challenges, things that are annoying, things that are just not so fun, maybe in the business. But when we can embrace those things, when we can recognize what is on the other side of these challenges and stuff that might be annoying and the not so fun stuff when we can recognize that, hey, we’re going through this for a reason and that what’s on the other side for us is really, really good. It’s going to make getting through that muck, if you will, a whole lot easier. And I want to share with you a couple of examples.

So I’m thinking of two different accelerator members. I’m going to leave them anonymous. And one of them I’m thinking about that I want to share with you. When they join Accelerator, they were generating great revenue in their business. They had an evergreen funnel going. They were running ads to it. Everything was was really good. Now, a challenge, though, was that they were spending a lot of money on ads but could not connect the dots between, Oh, I’m spending this much money on ads and I’m getting this much money out as a result. Now, of course, they could tell what their ad spend was and they could tell what their monthly revenue was, but they also had traffic going to the Evergreen webinar funnel from social media and from warm traffic email list and so forth. There was no distinction between, you know, from the ads funnel and the rest of the marketing efforts that they were doing in the business. And so this was something I said, you’ve got to know your numbers in order to scale to the point that this person wanted to scale to.

You’ve got to know your numbers and you’ve been listening. If you’ve been listening to the podcast here for any period of time, you know that I’m a broken record about that. You have to know your numbers. You have to know the data. And that’s what we worked on. That’s what I worked on with this person for several months, actually getting things set up, getting Google Analytics set up, getting a dashboard set up so that they could directly correlate ad spend to revenue on the other side. And obviously, as we talked about many times here in the show with post iOS 14.5, this has become a lot more difficult. But you can do these types of things and tracking and getting the data, using like Google Analytics. And at this point it’s ga4. By the way, if you are not set up with Ga4, you have missed the deadline where it is only for now and not Google Analytics anymore. You haven’t missed the deadline to set it up, but you definitely need to set up Google Analytics for and I did episode number 704.

Actually, Cujo, who is one of our coaches and Accelerator, did a guest teaching episode back on May 31st. Episode number 700 for all about Google Analytics four. But anyway, so this person that I was coaching that I am coaching took months. Like not like they were dilly dallying about it. But I’m so glad I got dilly dallying into a podcast episode. You know, it just took a long time to get the systems set up in the business so that they could actually have data and numbers and set the foundation for the rest of the business. Because, you know, if we start adding money to a funnel or putting more marketing efforts to get more people into the funnel, but yet we can’t distinguish which efforts are actually performing the best. We are wasting our time, effort and money. We need to know the numbers, we need to have the data. And so setting all this up and so that we can get the data and setting up the dashboards isn’t always the most fun, right? Or and this person was actually setting things up with another person they were having they were getting help to set these things up.

But the frustrating part that can come with this is I can’t scale, I can’t do the things I want to do until this is done, until I have insight. And so I know this person was really frustrated for a few months because, like, I’m still doing this. This is still happening. We’re still trying to distinguish we’re still trying to figure out what’s going on. And they made other changes in the business. But this is the stuff that needed to happen in order to get the business to take off, if you will, which is where this person wanted the business to go to. And this is an example of you often want one thing for your business, but how to get there is not what you had envisioned. You have to go through some other stuff in order to get to the point where you want to. And oftentimes this is what, as I’m referring to in this episode, the muck, right? It’s the sort of annoying things that we have to do or maybe the not so fun things.

And the challenge is we got to get through so that we can get to the other side, which is where we really want to get to. Another example of this is another member of Accelerator. They have a large business and they were going through several, several team issues for many months and it was just really wearing on them and needed to make a whole bunch of changes, basically putting much of the rest of the business sort of not on a whole, but just sort of running on autopilot, if you will, in terms of their marketing and so forth, so that they could deal with the team. And basically there was a complete reinvention, if you will, of the team. It took several months, but a turnover was needed because the right people were not in the business and had been for a while. But it was quickly realized that these are not the right people to help the business continue to go forward. They were actually hurting the business. As I talked about recently here on the show, they were like the anchor of the business.

And I don’t mean that in a good way. They were holding the business back. So a lot of frustration, a lot of anxiety over having to deal with all this team stuff. And again, this was not like a one month thing. This was several months of working through these things. And it’s the muck. It was like, it’s not fun, it’s annoying. But where this person is now, several months after going through that stuff, they’re. Team. They have the strongest team they’ve ever had in the business. And that business is on a trajectory that is amazing. Those are just two examples of people who embrace the muck. Maybe they didn’t do it so much when they were going through it, but when they got on the other side, amazing things happened. That first person I just shared an example of, they got a huge opportunity that I’m not at liberty to talk about, but they got this massive opportunity for their business that was made way more possible because they had gone through, you know, getting those numbers and getting the data and having all of that to be able to say, Oh yeah, you know, I know my marketing channels.

This is how much they’re, you know, worth and this is the conversion, all this other stuff. They also had other opportunities. It was basically like once they got through this part, then all these other things opened up in the business and it was amazing. And so it was like, All right, we had to get through that muck to get to get to the other huge things, the other opportunities that were coming at this person really quickly. And likewise that, you know, the latter person I just mentioned of going through the team stuff, that business is now on an amazing trajectory. They have an amazing team in place. It just everybody’s moving in one direction, right? That anchor has been pulled up off the ocean floor and that ship is starting to cruise in the direction that that they want to go. And that’s really exciting to see. Maybe you’re writing a book. You know, I have not written a book, but I hear from so many people that it becomes this much bigger, sort of more painful process than they originally thought.

But when you stick to it at the end, this finished product is this amazing book that you’ve written. You now have a book and, you know, you went through the muck, if you will, to get to that finished product being, you know, a published author. And oftentimes, as I mentioned before, it likely wasn’t what you were expecting or hoping to happen in order to get to that point. But you work your way through it. And when you do that, there’s a whole new trajectory for your business that’s waiting for you on the other side. And so what I really want you to get out of this is, number one, it’s completely normal when you’re going through this stuff, when you’re going through the muck in your business, things are not always going to go as you expect they might in your business. But if you can learn to trust the process, that especially when you have a coach right, and the coach is advising you or coaching you to do some things that you’re like, Wait a minute, don’t even think about doing this stuff.

This is not what I thought I was going to be doing. Trusting the process. Try and enjoy yourself along the way. Right. We created business to create more freedom oftentimes and have more fun and do our own thing. Try to remember that as we’re going through this. Right. And try to enjoy yourself along the way. And also think about the skills that you are acquiring along the way. You know, this person going through team stuff like that person is such a better CEO because of that experience. The person needing to get to the bottom of their numbers and have actual data and numbers, that person has a undoubtedly healthier business as a result, and this person learned those skills along the way so that when they introduce a new marketing channel, for example, or, you know, maybe they’re working with somebody else and somebody like, Well, what does it cost you to acquire a customer? Boom, They know that. You know, they know those numbers. Or if they’re introducing that new marketing channel, they know exactly how to do that and to be able to see what the result is from a financial perspective and from a numbers perspective as a result of that channel.

So there’s amazing amount of skills that you learn through the muck too, and there’s a whole lot of amazingness on the other side of it. So I want you to try to remember those things as you’re going through the muck or if you come upon the things that we’re talking about, just examples. There’s tons of examples, right, that come up in your business where they’re challenging, they’re not fun, they’re annoying. The good is on the other side. And the real fun is when you can learn that the good and the fun is actually what you’re going through and also what you’re learning along the way. Hope this was helpful for you, my friend. Hey, if you want to support the podcast here and have not yet done so, I would be super appreciative if not only subscribe to the podcast, click that subscribe button and Apple podcast, click that follow button and Spotify or whatever platform that you’re listening on. And then also do me a favor, take 10s and leave a quick rating and review for this podcast over on Apple Podcast.

Guest I do read all the reviews. I love hearing your feedback and it really takes like 10s and it’s super helpful for the show. So thanks in advance for doing that and thank you as always for tuning in today. Appreciate my friend. Be well and I’ll chat with you soon.