Rich Kid's Campus|A Community for High School and College Entrepreneurs

I’ve worked with dozens of potential entrepreneurs over the last 10 years and it’s always the same old song and dance. They continuously think about an idea and research it to death! Now, I am no stranger to this myself. I have been a victim of such fear. When I started my online sports store I spent a year and a half researching it and making sure I knew all that I could know.

Well, guess what? It was one of my biggest mistakes. I should have just jumped right in and got at it. As a result of my inaction I wasted a lot of time because the majority (90%) of the research I did was never used. It meant absolutely NOTHING. Experience is the best learning tool you could ever have. That is why I constantly tell entrepreneurs to dive in head first and learn to swim.

Failure

People get immobilized when they think about failing. Some people cannot face failure head on, but successful entrepreneur’s can! Failing is a part of life. It’s a huge part of finding out what works and what does not work. That is why I tell entrepreneurs to fail as fast as possible so they can find out what is working. The more times you fail the faster you find out what works!

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Do you know who your competition is? Knowing your competition is a big part of your future successes and failures. I am not a fan of recreating work that has already been done. Maybe you never thought about this before, but your competition actually has a lot of positive influence on your business. You may be asking yourself how that is possible? Well, let’s explore this phenomenon.

Determine Who Your Most Successful Competitor’s Are

This is actually the first step for many people before they venture into a new niche. However, the buck usually stops here. As a general rule of thumb I like to explore my competitor’s website about once a month. Why? You can see what it is they are doing. If they took something down it’s probably because it was not successful so don’t bother trying it. If you see them pushing a certain product a lot, than you know it’s probably profitable for them.

In addition to understanding their revenue streams you can also determine their overall strategy for their website. Are they trying to drive traffic? get people to sign up to their mailing list? are they doing a lot of product reviews? etc. You can get a firm grip on where they are heading.

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