I have built two businesses that failed, but those failures taught me what business success actually requires.
I wish I could tell you there was some magical business strategy that suddenly made everything click. There wasn’t. There was a lot of trial and error, a lot of questioning myself, a lot of trying things that looked brilliant from the outside and turned out to be completely wrong for me.
But those failures gave me something I could not have bought from a business course or a mastermind..
They showed me exactly what I was doing wrong.
When I look back now, the biggest mistakes were not complicated. They were the mistakes so many women make when they are trying to build something of their own while simultaneously trying to keep up with everyone else online.
If I had to start again, these are the six things I would watch like a hawk.
1. Stop copying someone else’s business model.
This one is almost impossible to avoid when you spend any amount of time online.
You see a woman making money with a membership and suddenly you think you need a membership. Someone launches a group program and has a huge launch, so you start wondering whether your one-to-one offer is wrong. Someone else has a low-ticket product, a mastermind, a podcast and a seven-step funnel, and suddenly your beautifully simple business feels inadequate.
I have fallen into this trap, multiple times!
The problem is that you are copying the visible part of someone’s business without knowing the invisible part. You don’t know their personality, their capacity, their audience, their expenses, their team, their history or what they actually want their life to look like.
Their business model worked for them.
That does not mean it is your business model.
Study people. Absolutely. Learn from people who are doing things well. But take the lesson instead of taking their entire blueprint.
Before adding something to your business, ask yourself whether you actually want to deliver it, whether your audience wants it and whether it fits the life you are trying to create.
Your business should not become a costume you wear because somebody else looks good in it.
2. Get ridiculously clear about what you sell.
I have learned that being good at a lot of things can actually make your business harder to sell.
Because when you can do ten things, you want to tell everyone about all ten things.
And suddenly your website says coaching, strategy, consulting, courses, mentorship, workshops, mindset, business, leadership and probably something else you remembered while writing the page.
The customer is sitting there thinking, “Okay… but what am I actually buying?”
Clarity sells. Seriously, I have this brain-tattooed now!!
You need to know the main problem you solve, who you solve it for and what transformation or outcome your offer is designed to create.
Then look at your offer suite.
Does each offer have a clear purpose? Does one naturally lead to another? Is there a reason for someone to choose one rather than another?
You don’t need a shelf full of offers. You need offers that make sense.
If someone lands on your website and needs a notebook, three cups of coffee and a detective degree to understand how they can work with you, it is time to simplify.
3. Stop trying to market your business everywhere.
This was another one I learned the hard way.
Instagram. LinkedIn. Email. Podcast. Substack. YouTube. Pinterest. Facebook. Threads.
At some point, you are no longer marketing. You are just moving content around the internet.
Being everywhere does not automatically make you visible.
Sometimes it just makes you tired.
Pick the places where your people actually spend time. Pick one main platform and, if you have the capacity, one supporting channel. Then get really good at communicating your message there.
You don’t need a brand-new content idea every morning.
Say the same thing in different ways.
Tell the story. Teach the lesson. Share the mistake. Explain your point of view. Answer the question your clients keep asking.
Repetition is not boring to your audience just because you have already said it twenty times.
You have been living with your message for months.
They might have seen it once.
4. Stop changing your strategy every time something shiny comes along.
This is where social media can really mess with your head.
You decide you are going to focus on one offer. Then you see someone else’s launch.
Now you want a membership. Then someone tells you memberships are impossible to scale. So you want a course.
Then someone says courses are dead. Now you are thinking about high-ticket coaching.
This is not strategy. This is panic with a Pinterest board.
I am all for changing your strategy when the numbers, customer feedback or actual results tell you that something needs to change.
But changing direction every few weeks because you are bored or because somebody online had a great month is a very expensive habit.
Give something enough time to teach you something.
I tell my clients to go all in on a strategy for at least 90 days, because after 90 days, you have something incredibly valuable: data.
You know what worked, what didn’t, what got traction, what your audience responded to, and where things fell flat. Then you can make an informed decision about whether to tweak the strategy or change it completely.
But if you keep changing things every two weeks, you never really give anything enough time to teach you anything.
Test it. Track it. Learn. Then decide.
Sometimes your strategy is not failing. You simply haven’t stayed with it long enough to find out.
5. Treat the business like a business.
You can love what you do and still be terrible at running the business around it.
I know because I have been there.
It is very easy to spend your entire day working and still not actually do the things that make a business function.
You answer clients. You make content. You tweak your website. You learn another thing. You reorganise your Canva folders. You have a very productive day and somehow do not know whether you made any money.
A business needs numbers.
Know your monthly revenue target. Know your expenses. Know what you need to sell to hit your target. Know where your leads are coming from. Know your conversion rates. Follow up. Review what is working.
And put actual working hours around it.
You don’t need to become some terrifying corporate CEO who schedules her breathing.
But if you want the business to pay you consistently, you have to treat it like something real.
Passion is lovely. But it does not replace a profit and loss statement.
6. Learn how you work as a woman instead of constantly fighting your own rhythm.
This one changed the way I think about productivity.
For years, I thought being productive meant being able to show up with exactly the same energy every single day.
If I had an incredibly creative week, I expected myself to maintain that pace. If I could write for four hours one day, I thought I should be able to do it every day.
And then I wondered why I was exhausted.
Women experience changes in energy, focus, mood and creativity throughout the menstrual cycle. Many women also use the moon cycle as a reflective framework for understanding these shifts.
You don’t have to follow any particular system. But you should know your own rhythm.
Pay attention for a few months. Track your cycle alongside your energy, creativity, focus and desire to be social. Notice when you naturally want to create, when you feel more outward-facing, when you prefer planning and when your body wants more rest.
Then start planning your work accordingly.
Maybe your creative work happens when your energy is naturally higher. Maybe you schedule calls and visibility work at another point. Maybe your lower-energy days are perfect for admin, organising or quieter work.
This is not permission to disappear from your business every time you don’t feel like working.
It is about understanding the difference between “I don’t want to do this” and “I genuinely need to slow down.”
And once you know it, you stop treating rest as something you have to apologise for.
You also stop building your business around somebody else’s productivity schedule.
That matters because the goal was never to build a business that looks impressive from the outside while you are completely exhausted behind the scenes.
The goal is to build something that makes money, serves people well and still leaves you with enough of yourself to actually enjoy the life you are working so hard to create.
My two failed businesses taught me that.
The six-figure one taught me something else.
Simplicity works. Clarity works. Consistency works. Knowing your numbers works. And knowing yourself works.
You don’t need to copy the woman next to you. You don’t need twelve offers. You don’t need to be on every platform. You don’t need to reinvent your strategy every Tuesday.
You need to know what you sell, who you sell it to, how you are going to get it in front of them and how you are going to run the business like you actually expect it to succeed.
And then you need to give yourself enough time to let it work.
That, more than anything, is what I wish I had understood the first time.
In conclusion
In conclusion, building a six-figure business didn’t come from finding some secret strategy I hadn’t heard of before. It came from getting clearer, becoming more consistent, and finally giving myself enough time and space to see what actually worked.
So, if you’re building your own business right now, maybe don’t ask yourself, “What should I try next?”
Ask yourself: “Where am I making my business harder than it needs to be because I’m afraid to commit to what I already know?”
That question might tell you more than your next strategy session ever will.
Author
Bansi Patel, a Chartered Accountant turned entrepreneur, Online Business Consultant, Mindset Mentor for Female Entrepreneurs, 3X author, and host of the award-winning The Bansi Patel Show.
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