An excerpt from recent podcast with Jim Sabellico, who runs a large digital agency, is a published author, partner in a sushi restaurant, and owns multiple other software businesses.
Alex:
A lot of people really struggle to turn their passion into a business. There are so many different competing gurus out there telling you the only way to start a coaching business and we’ve both heard it. We’re both in marketing and we know that there are a lot of different ways you can market your business but according to every guy online there’s only one secret you need to know for a seven-figure coaching business and I struggle with that now being about 8 years in. I know that through my tough years, there wasn’t just one secret. It was incremental steps.
So I want to talk to you about that because I know that you mentioned you started your first sort of quote business when you were 8 years old mowing lawns and you’ve been through the wringer with lots of different ventures and lots of different industries since then. Is there a common theme that you have noticed between all of your successful businesses whether it's a marketing agency, software, or a sushi restaurant?
Jim:
Failure, I think is the answer to that, and I know it seems like a contrarian answer but trying new things, not being afraid to fail at them, and understanding the faster you fail the faster you'll succeed.
I think that a lot of people especially in this age want to build this instant overnight TikTok business, where they are just going to say Hey! I’ve got a business idea and then put out a couple of posts on social media and be a millionaire tomorrow. But it just doesn’t work that way, and I think when you're able to fail a lot, you're able to learn more and I know that may seem obvious but the more time you spend working in an industry, working in a business, failing and trying new things and seeing what works and what doesn't work, you're able to kind of learn from your mistakes and grow.
And I think the benefit that I've had personally is being involved in so many different industries and failing a lot in all those different industries, you learn what works and what doesn't work and you get creative ideas that you can apply between industries. So some things you might learn from working in a restaurant that you can apply to work at a web design agency. There are different things that you can learn from dealing with people and dealing with vendors, but it's not without the failure and I think that's a really important part that a lot of people skip over. They look at it like an overnight success and they think Oh man! that person just got really lucky, they were able to kind of create this business out of nowhere but they don't see all the failures from the past 28 years.