Ep 284: 3 Reasons Online Businesses Fail + How To Avoid Them with Jaryd Krause

What’s an amazing question? How do you have confidence and conviction that what you're doing as an entrepreneur and your journey to acquiring and building wealth is actually going to work and build you the lifestyle you want? How do you know that this is going to pan out?

Hi, I'm Jared Kraus. I'm the host of the Buying Online Businesses podcast. And today, I'm speaking with myself and just sharing what's on my chest. This is a great podcast, I believe, with me answering some questions around mindset from somebody who has been listening to a bunch of podcast episodes of mine, solo podcast episodes, and has been struggling a little bit in business.

They had asked me a bunch of questions and we've been chatting by email. I wanted to share how you build wealth, replace your income, and do it with confidence and conviction when you're facing adversity, when things aren't going so well in business, when things are going a bit tougher and you're not convinced that you're spending your time, money, and energy on the right things and if it's actually going to pan out right for you.

Maybe you're switching between "I'm going to try this make money online way or strategy," and then you might change from month to month, every six months or every two years. So in this podcast episode, I talk about my experience, some of my stories around what I've been through in business, and how I've used some of the challenges and what the strategies are that I have used to build my self-confidence, build my character, and set myself up for success rather than setting myself up for failure, which is what I feel most people these days are doing when they're turning to the internet to make money online and build a better life for themselves.

I feel that they're setting themselves up for well enough and don't know what to expect and set crazy expectations in terms of results and time. Now, if you want to build wealth, I believe the best way to do this is by acquiring an online business. If you haven't already, get my due diligence framework. Make sure you get that. There's a link to that in the description.

It's what's helped me make millions of dollars and my clients make millions of dollars and it's also saved us millions of dollars in mistakes. Let's dive in now. Hello, and firstly, thank you for deciding to listen to this podcast. I believe this is going to be quite a valuable chat, maybe a bit of a rant, and me getting a few things off my chest based on making money online and where people struggle, and what is being taught and said out there and what you guys are being sold, which is what I was sold when I first started this whole make money online thing to replace my income.

And, excuse me, I have to say a massive thank you to Chris, who actually brought this up as a topic for discussion. Chris reached out and said thank you, giving me great feedback for some of the solo podcast episodes I have done around making money online, mindset stuff and all that.

And so if that's you guys and you've listened to a podcast that I have done and you think it's valuable, please let me know. Give me feedback and let me know why you thought it was valuable so I can do more of those as well, or offer a suggestion.

Like I asked Chris, what do you suggest I talk about if you want more of these? And he came back to me with an email and there's a bunch of things in there that I want to read out. And thank you, Chris, for being vulnerable, sharing where you're at and stepping up as a leader, because this is going to help you move forward in business and in life. Just by doing this, this small little thing has allowed something to spark and be shared that is going to help a lot of other business owners.

So Chris said recently that he's not had the funniest time in business and feels like he is a ship lost at sea. He says he's got no conviction, not sure of what to do to turn it all around, literally trying everything, working on his current niche, trying a brand new business, working on his current business. He says he'll find something to try, do it for a month or so, but then not commit to it and stop it for three reasons.

Number one, he doesn't know. He says, "I don't know if what I'm trying will work out and make me enough money. Also, I don't know if it will deliver the lifestyle I want. And lastly, I realize I don't want to do it because I have no passion for it or I hate the work. I'm just wandering around, not sure what to do, moving from thing to thing, spinning my wheels and getting no traction. I want to have a one-track mind and absolute certainty that what I'm doing is the right thing to be doing and it will pay off and it's worth the time to grind it out."

I know the answer is in getting my mindset together and right, so I have a sense of conviction and confidence in what I'm doing. I just don't know how to have those mental tools, use those mental tools or what those mental tools are right now to figure out this mindset problem. Well, I'm so thrilled that you sent this email, Chris. A lot of people are feeling the pain and I have felt the pain all through different stages of business.

And I'm not just talking about what's happening in our industry and SEO at all. I'm talking about everybody in business, all different types of businesses and lives, and all of my... What I like to use are the philosophies that I learn in life, and I apply them to business. And when they work for me, they work for my clients. And I use them when I learn from business. I apply them to my life as well. So that's what I'm going to talk about in this pod.

And first things first, you can see that, Chris, you've tried something for a month or so and then you've given up, right? Because you don't know if it's going to make enough money or if it's going to give you the lifestyle you want. And I'm going to talk about passion soon as well. I'm just going to debunk a lot of these things.

The first three things that I really want to mention based on this email as I freestyle this, with no notes prepared at all, are, and I'm treating this just like I would in a coaching call, that number one, "I don't know if what I'm trying will work out and make me enough money." Firstly, if you're trying something, quit. Don't try something. That's the wrong mentality. You don't just want to try something to see if it works out and do it for a short period of time. Don't try it. Just do it, right?

Take a leaf out of Nike's book and don't try it. Do it. Commit to it wholeheartedly and go the whole way. Now, a lot of people are trying to find it, and I get where you're at. We might be in the survival phase, trying to just work as employees or do whatever we can to make an income to pay our bills.

And what we're doing may not actually satisfy us in our lives because we've been doing it for such a long period of time and I totally get it. I've been there as an employee and had to do things that I didn't want to do to get to a better position in life, as well as things I didn't want to do just to live and exist.

However, if we have such a short-term mindset, we're going to try things and we're not going to get a result because we just have this mentality of trying it. And we set unrealistic expectations based on maybe what I've shared—stories that I have shared from people who have worked with Bob and got great results.

And then all these other people who have overnight successes and what they have shared as well. However, I try to really share that these people who have had a certain level of success may just be seeing the tip of the iceberg and you may not know that they had been in business 10 years prior, right?

Or for a decade prior and doing mindset work for a decade prior and been through all these other gnarly experiences and these crazy tough times that have helped them become the person and build the character they need to have to overcome these challenges and stay in business or continue on their path of the journey to achieving what they actually want to achieve.

So number one is don't give something a month. Don't give something for two months, three months, four months, five months, or six months. Don't give something away for a year. Don't give something two years. Don't give something for three years. Give something five to ten years. Absolute minimum five years. Give something ten years. Give something a lifetime commitment to achieving it until it's done.

When I first started, I wanted to replace my income as a plumber as soon as possible. And if I tried something for a year and it didn't work, I would give up. But my goal was to make money online and I would do anything I could do for the longest period of time until I achieved that result. Now, I started trying to make money online at the end of 2012 or early 2013.

So it's been basically 11 years. And only in the last few years have my investments, lifestyle, income, and life gotten compounded and gotten so much byears, right? So I went through like eight years of just hardcore head-down work. If you're not prepared, this is a tough bottle to swallow or a tough pill to swallow. Don't swallow a bicky. That's probably too big. Bicky for Americans, biscuit, I mean, is a biscuit or a cookie. Now, with that, what I was saying is, if you're not prepared to commit to something long term, don't bother, right? If you want something bad enough, you will actually get it.

So then it becomes a mindset thing of how do you get to a point where you want something bad enough? Because that's one of the questions here. I realize I don't want to do it because I have no passion for it or I hate the work. Well, how do you change that?

And I've talked about this in multiple trainings, and I talk about this very specifically in the Buying Online Businesses course. There's a whole thing about mindset, which is the first thing that everybody's got to go through to completely understand it and actually get results. Because if you don't have these tools, then you're not getting results in anything in life.

So with that, it's committing to and finding a vision that you can commit to, remembering that vision consistently, and giving yourself realistic—or not even setting any—expectations. Give yourself a realistic time frame because when you give yourself more space, you have more capacity to think, you have less pressure and stress on yourself, and you make better decisions.

If your goal is to achieve maybe $2,000 of income online and you're trying to do it in six months' time and you've got no idea how you're going to do it but you're going to start and give yourself six months, chances are it's not going to happen and it's not going to work, especially if you know nothing about online business and you're starting from ground zero.

Now, if you give yourself 10 years to start making a $2,000 a month income online, you're going to probably achieve it because you're giving yourself space and time, and you're going to be able to collect a lot of resources, tools and things that you need and become the person you need to become to earn that $2,000 a month within a 10-year timeframe. It's far less easy and far less stressful.

But then you also might be comparing yourself to others and saying, "No, but these people achieved this result in two months or five months. Why can't I do it?" Well, you might be able to if you started with the same amount of resources as these other people, right? You might have if you started with the same amount of money and the same amount of background, knowledge, character, and mindset.

Maybe you could. But if you're starting from ground zero, which is where I was at, and if that's you as well, don't be beating yourself up. It's a part of where we're at. We need to start somewhere. If you give yourself those 10 years, you're going to make it.

If it really took you—you're doing what you're doing—and it took you 10 years to achieve, you know, making two grand a month, which might be able to help you replace your income if you're a single person, or maybe a little bit more if you've got family independence and stuff like that. Is it going to be so bad if you achieve it in 10 years' time? Not really, right?

You still get to achieve that goal, which will probably be one of the hardest things you do. And I say that for myself. It's like one of the hardest things that I have had to do to this day. I've gotten great results in business, life, and success. However, one of the hardest challenges was getting out of that grind, out of that employee life, and quitting that job.

So be kind to yourself and don't just try something. Commit to something completely long-term. Now, that's one thing. One thing that most people get wrong is setting unrealistic expectations, and it just kills you. You end up going nowhere and you try 7,000 things and you go, "I'm just a failure."

The more things that you try, the worse you get into a negative mindset spiral or a backwards compounding effect of, "This didn't work, that didn't work, this didn't work, that didn't work." If there are so many other people who've done these things and they've all achieved results, but they didn't work for me, then it must be my fault. I must be a failure, right?

It's not that you're a failure; it's just that you haven't yet learned winning principles in life and philosophies, which is what I'm trying to share with you. Set yourself up for success. Start small and build yourself up, and overcome these small challenges to build up your capacity and character to overcome the bigger challenges when they come, which may be the one that you're facing right now.

It may be the biggest one that you've ever faced. Treat this as an opportunity to overcome it because it's going to help you become the person you need to become to achieve larger results in 10, 20, or 30 years' time. I like to think in 10- to 20- to 30-year chunks, right? Or 10-year blocks in my life, and I urge you to do the same.

So then you're going to come back to me and you're going to have, "Alright, well, Jared, how do I know if it's going to make me enough money or not?" Well, honestly, you don't know. And also, as you also mentioned, Chris, and some other people might be thinking the same thing, "I don't know if it will deliver me the lifestyle I want."

And "I realize that I might not be passionate about what I'm doing," right? Let's come back to the passion soon. But let's talk about it now, is it going to make enough income, and is it going to produce the lifestyle you want?

If you're worried about these things too much, it's going to cripple your success because, yes, you want to make money, but you just need to make a little bit first before you go, "Oh, will I ever be able to run this marathon?" or "Will I ever be able to lift this amount of weight?" or "Will I ever be able to achieve this sort of thing?" Start.

You're focusing on the wrong thing. The vision is important, but if you're trying to take steps towards this, you know, monetary goal or lifestyle goal, you can't just leapfrog to that. You need to start with small, bite-sized chunks. So just set smaller goals for that bigger vision of yours. And also, you don't know if it's going to make enough money, and you don't know if it's going to provide you with the lifestyle that you want.

But the thing is, when you do commit to this, you might end up building a business that is not making you enough money, and it might not—or buying and acquiring and building a portfolio of businesses that might not be making you the money that you want and/or allowing you to have a lifestyle you want—but that's okay because at least you've gotten traction, you've gotten started, and you've got runs on the board.

I have built a business before where I was making a lot of money, but I hated the business. It was not the right lifestyle business for me. So I had to change the business model, and I had to change the business model not just for myself but for everybody else to serve better as well.

So you've got to be thinking about other people in your business too. It's not just you. I was selfish at the start, and I realized, actually, I didn't grow my business. The market did, and everybody that told me what they wanted from me needed me to serve them better.

And when I did that, I was able to understand what they wanted, give myself what I needed as well, the type of lifestyle I wanted, and then I could serve them better at the same time. So it gets quite meta, as you can see.

So if you build a business in, say, three years or have acquired a business and it's growing to something, and it's not giving you a lifestyle you actually want, it's not the end of the world because you can change it. Nothing lasts forever, and that's a very valuable and important lesson. Some people are worried.

You know, we get very worried, like, "Oh, is this..." You know, we just want to have a set-and-forget mindset, right? And once we get this, we're going to have it forever. The reality is that nothing lasts forever, and that's not a bad thing. It's actually a beautiful thing because when it's not working as well anymore, you can close off that chapter, and what happens is another opportunity opens, another door opens, and you've got more space to go into a different avenue, which will allow you to probably have a better lifestyle through how you might change your business.

Now, is it not making enough money? Then you can solve that problem when you get to it. You can hire me, you can hire somebody else who can see things within your business, and you've already got runs on the board to help you manufacture more revenue, right?

Maybe you can get enough runs on the board that you can afford to hire a fractional CMO or hire somebody to do some level of marketing that can help you build that. So if you're focusing on these big, large things too much that you need to achieve in a short period of time, you're going to give up. Give yourself a lot of runway with massive vision and then start with small bite-sized chunks, okay?

Now, the passion thing. Now, with the passion thing, that's an interesting one. A lot of people out there are saying that your passion is your pension, and I'm just going to say that's absolute freaking bullshit. It is not. Your passion is not your pension, and you do not need to have something that you're super-duper passionate about.

Now, let me explain. It does help, but it's also a double-edged sword. You know, passion allows you to be super into something, but it also clouds your judgment of when certain things in the business may not actually be working because you just push it aside because you're so passionate about something.

Some people think that your passion might force you down the wrong track in your business because you're so passionate, and it might cost you money, time and effort and not actually give you the result that you're actually wanting. So it's a double-edged sword. Passion is fun and it's great, but I think it's fleeting, right?

And in your business, the niche doesn't need to be the passion. The industry doesn't need to be a passion. I have acquired businesses for which I have no passion for the niche or what they do at all. But I became passionate about learning about how to grow the business and how to become a better entrepreneur. That's what I loved. That's the part that I loved about it. So for you, find parts in the business that you do love and that you are passionate about.

Maybe when I first started writing, uh, travel blogging and doing SEO stuff, I was super duper passionate about that. And now I'm like, I do not want to write at all. I hate writing and have people help me write. I do a little bit when I need to, and I can, you know, optimize it and do the least amount as possible for the greatest result.

But I have people do the things that I used to love doing that I no longer love doing. And I can now, because I have runs on the board, hire them and afford to do so. Same with the guitar. I played guitar for a certain period of my life, and I absolutely loved it. It was the number one thing. I just absolutely loved it. I still play guitar, but it's not the one thing I'm absolutely passionate about. And when I stopped playing as much guitar, I got into something else I'm passionate about.

So understand that passions can come and go. And if you're worried about trying to hold on to something and make it last forever, you could be setting yourself up for more turmoil in the future by forcing yourself to love something you still might not. Give up on it. That's okay. Push it to the side and get somebody else to handle it for you, right?

And then, when you are more passionate, lit up and fulfilled in life—and it's not just in your business, but you're doing other things outside of business—when you're more fulfilled, then you end up becoming a far better servant, which is what an entrepreneur actually is. You know, you're of service to the business, your clients and your customers.

So, do not fret about the passion thing because you've got people here that are just like, you know, out there on the internet, podcasts, YouTube saying, you know, you need to get a niche that you're passionate about and all this sort of stuff, and it's just BS, right? If anything, it's just injuring people and stifling growth and progress.

So, back to having the right mindset and having the tools to have conviction and confidence. It comes back to building a vision, right? Having your vision, and as you start to go through this journey, start to count your wins, not your losses. I had a partner many years ago, about 10 years ago, who actually had a mentor, and her mentor said to us, like, "Hey, look, you are so good at so many things, but you beat yourself up, and you think you're a failure because you're counting all the times that you've failed."

And that's not great, because all those values are lessons. So, in fact, they are actually wins if you look at it from that perspective. But also, when you do achieve the bigger wins that are a bit easier, you're not counting them. You're discounting them.

So, build up a bank of times that, and you can do it in your notes section on your phone if you want. Build up a bank of times that you have had a certain challenge come up in your life and you really, really struggled with it for a long period of time, but you overcame it. Set a bunch of those things, and any time that you're coming up against adversity, look back through those notes, and that's going to help you build more courage, confidence, and conviction in yourself because you don't need to believe in the business model as much as yourself.

You don't need to believe in making enough money as much as you need to believe in yourself. The most important thing you need to believe in is yourself. Nobody else is going to believe in you as much as you, unless it's maybe your parents and father, but they also have limiting things as well.

But you need to be the driver, right? You don't want to jump in the car and start driving and realize that these bumps are too much. And then you just give up, right? You just run off the road because you can't deal. You want to hit a little bump and go, "Wow, I made it. That's cool. I'm going to count that as a win." And then you hit another bump and then another larger bump.

Pretty soon, you're driving a monster truck in a four-wheel drive competition or something ridiculous. That's just a funny example and metaphor. But you can see that you need to start with yourself and build confidence in yourself.

When I was going through school, I was a loser at school. Academically unintelligent at school. I did what they called dumb English and dumb maths. And I wanted to try and do advanced maths, but they wouldn't let me in. I tried it, but I couldn't pass. And so I felt like a failure at school.

And I was pretty much in the eye of academia. And so I wasn't able to go to university or college. And so I had to pick a trade that was going to allow me to have the most amount of income because that's what my goal was. And then, when I started that trade, I was around real men who showed me how to take on challenges and just be a boss in life, grow out of those challenges and be confident. And so I learned from them and I learned from other mentors in books.

There's a great book that I always recommend. It's called "The Obstacle Is the Way," which is by Ryan Holiday. So when you guys are facing adversity, and you as well, Chris, don't run away from it. Lean into it. Learn from it. Build your character. Tackle it. Challenge it. And learn how and see how you can overcome it.

And keep grinding until you do overcome it. Because if you don't, you'll give up. You'll try something else. And you'll try and try and try. And all these times that you try, you're just trying. You're not doing it. You're not committing. I hope that's valuable, and I hope you guys get a lot from that.

Don't be too wrapped up in it Are you going to make enough money? Is it the right business model? Is it going to provide me with a style? " Just find a route, commit to it for five years. I would like you to do it for 10 years minimum, and the compounding effect of you staying in that lane is going to help you crush it, absolutely crush it. You can change your direction as you go, but as long as you've got runs on the board, you've got more resources.

So you can change direction. You can make a little bit more money. You can have it be a little bit more optimized for your lifestyle. You can change the business model to serve your clients and yourself as you start to progress through the route that you choose. Stick to it, commit to it, build your confidence throughout it, and use it as a lesson. Use it as a tool to become a far better person and a far better entrepreneur that deserves to have the results 10 years later down the track.

And I can almost guarantee you will. And you're going to win. You're going to win against all the other competition because, out there right now, there's no such thing as delayed gratification for most people, right? They are getting on the internet and watching TikTok, Instagram reels, all these things, and getting dopamine hits and feeling good, getting junk feels, which is great, but that only can help you go down a negative mindset of just getting quick little hits. It's motivation. It's fleeting. It doesn't last. You need to build inspiration.

And inspiration comes from within, which is how you get this is through the vision and through taking on the challenges and embracing them, counting your wins and looking back on your wins, going through the notes and going, "Holy crap, I'm actually, you know, I've actually done good here." Pat yourself on the back. Don't feel so bad about yourself. And you'll see how productive you are and how far you've come. And that's my message to you guys. So I'm sending you love.

I hope you get a lot of value from this. If you liked me talking about this, please reach out and let me know. Give me some feedback. If you have some other things that you feel would be valuable for me to share and talk about on an open mic like this without any preparedness, let me know. I'm here to talk. I love this stuff. As you can tell, I'm super passionate about it. And maybe one day, like I said, in 10 or 20 years' time, I might not be passionate about it. I might have somebody else come on the podcast and do it. And I might be still talking in a different capacity, right?

But I'm not attached to it. So there's a lesson in that as well. So please reach out. Give me some feedback. And, uh, yeah, give me some feedback in the comment section. Give me some feedback via email and let me know how I can help and serve you guys better. I hope you get a lot from it. Bye.