A football player was asked once: how do you describe courage? He responded with: standing on the other side of the line knowing that Ronnie Lott is on the other side and he’s going to hurt me – but you do it anyway. In football, the linebacker creates fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) for the quarterback. In other sports such as boxing, a fighter attempts to FUD his component by taunting him.

In marketing, fear is used as a tool to spread uncertainty and doubt abo ut the competition and their products or services. Ever since I left “big” company marketing for the world of small business, I’ve learned that collaboration and cooperation work better than competition.

The media loves spreading FUDs about the economy, terror, diseases like the swine flu, and so on. These days, I can barely stand watching the news because they focus so much on the negative.

What kinds of stimuli are you allowing in your life right now? Are they spreading FUD in your life?

Ways for small business owners to eliminate FUD

1. Change your associations. It has been said that your income is the average of your five closest friends’ income.

2. Take a look at the diagram below:

• If you look at all the knowledge in the world as a circle, we know about 3% of it. We know who we are (okay you may not agree, just go with the example), we know the make and model of our car or we know we don’t have one, and we know if we have children or not.
• Then, there is 7% of another slice of the circle that we know we don’t know. We know we don’t know how to fly an airplane. We know we can’t perform brain surgery. At least most of us don’t have those skills.
• The remaining 90% of the circle of all the knowledge in the world, we don’t even know that we don’t know it. This is why business associations are so important to get us out of our stuck states because new associations bring new awareness into our lives.

3. A small business coach or mentor can help you gain knowledge in areas that you know you don’t know. You need to invest and acquire the skills to take advantage of these new opportunities in your life.

4. A new coaching and consulting relationship, like a small business finance coach or mentor, can enable you to see opportunities in your small business that you don’t know that you don’t know. They bring new awareness into your life that can have a dramatic effect on your small business, which could result in you earning thousands or even millions of dollars more than you would have if you didn’t have these relationships.

If you are ready to get “unstuck” and out of the small business rut, forming a relationship with Donald Hunter™ is the best place to start.

OH! BTW guys if you haven’t signed up for a free consultation it’s time to take advantage of it now because I don’t know how long it’s going to be available. So go ahead and signup now before it’s gone.

Also get my Business Survival Report it’s absolutely FREE!  There’s no catch whatsoever this is just a way for me to give back and help small businesses in these tough times. Here’s the link to my Free Business Survival Report again.

When it absolutely, exactly has to be right.

Being an entrepreneur is risky. Less than half of new businesses survive the first year and even fewer survive the second year. Of those that are left, most struggle to stay in business and only a fraction achieve more than $1 million in sales.

Why does this happen? Why is it so hard for entrepreneurs to hit the elusive $1 million mark? The reality is that 95% of small business owners never make it to $1 million in sales is because they are “stuck” and don’t know what to do about it.

Don’t let the same thing happen to you. We don’t have control over a lot of things in our small business. Two things we CAN control are our attitudes and actions. Ask yourself: what reward am I getting out of having this attitude? How has the world changed around me? Am I reacting to something real or imagined?

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD):

1. “I am not a tech person and I get stuck on implementing changes.”
2. “It costs me money to do everything I want to do in marketing. I don’t have all of the money.”
3. “Do I need to drop my fees to get more people in the door? Am I too expensive?”
4. “What I have to do for an income is an extension of what I have been doing or a slight variation of it, and not something completely new.”
5. “I’m stuck/sabotaged by others’ limiting beliefs, and their related results.”
6. “There isn’t enough time to do everything I want/need to do.”
7. “What if I spend all this time and money and fail in the end?”
8. “It’s not okay to do better than my father.”
9. “Why would anyone want this information from me?”
10. “I don’t deserve to make money and have a successful business.”
11. “I don’t have anything different to offer than what’s already out there.”
12. “It has to be perfect. I need to make sure it’s done 100% right before sharing it with the world!”
13. “Oh, I’ll just learn the software / law / accounting / medicine / system / etc… instead of outsourcing it. After all, my time doesn’t cost anything!”
14. “What if nobody buys my product / service?”
15. “My time is worth $x/hr, therefore my service should be worth $y.”
16. “Now is not a good time to do anything. The economy is in trouble and too many big companies are having trouble staying afloat. What could I possibly do?”
17. “People can’t afford anything these days so, why would they pay me the amount I am asking for?”
18. “Nothing works the way it is supposed to work. I tried advertising in the: yellow pages, newspaper, coupons; nothing works.  People are just not calling or coming in to do business.”
19. “Everyone is just hunkering down and waiting. There is no business out there.”
20. “Now is a bad time to get into business.”
21. “You have to be a very big established company (Apple, IBM,) to do any kind of business.”
22. “People just don’t want to deal with someone small like me.  Heck, I don’t even have an office!”
23. “You have to have lots of money to be successful in business; otherwise it won’t work.”
24. “I don’t know anyone that wants or needs my services.”
25. “Everything that used to work does not work anymore.”

If you recognize any of these “stuck” states in your attitude and actions, we’d love for you to comment on how it has affected you and how you plan on changing your attitude and improving your actions in order to achieve better business results.