#284: The 13 Superpowers of the Most Successful Entrepreneurs

ByJillian Leslie

Feel overwhelmed by the myths and misconceptions surrounding online business and blogging?

If you’re dreaming of building a successful online business, I’m discussing the 13 superpower traits that are essential for success.

I emphasize the importance of embracing discomfort, messiness, and failure.

As an entrepreneur, I share my personal experiences and challenges.

Don’t miss out on this episode, and be sure to check out MiloTreeCart, a tool designed to help creators sell digital products and grow their businesses. Join me on the Blogger Genius podcast and let’s build successful online businesses together!

Show Notes:

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13 Super Power Trait for Successful Business Building

Intro (00:00:04) – Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie (00:00:11) – Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I’m your host, Jillian Leslie. I’m a blogger and a serial entrepreneur. 

David, my husband and I started in 2009 when we built Catch My Party and we’ve grown it into the largest party ideas site on the web. If you want July 4th, free printables, party ideas, head over there. 

Next, we built MiloTree pop-up app to help you creators grow your social media followers and email subscribers. So many of you use it. It’s simple to use and it plays super nicely with Google. 

And now we’ve rolled out MiloTreeCart, which is the easiest way for you creators, bloggers, coaches, online entrepreneurs to sell digital products directly to your people so you can sell digital downloads, memberships, workshops, shops, coaching, really anything digital. 

And MiloTreeCart is for people who hate technology, which by the way, is all of us.

Today I wanted to do a solo episode because I’ve been thinking a lot about what it really takes to be a successful entrepreneur, somebody making real money on the Internet, breaking it down into the 13 superpower traits. 

LARPing at Business

I believe somebody needs to really find success. That’s what I want to share today. But before I do that, I wanted to talk about the fiction I see perpetuated everywhere when it comes to online business. And I call it LARPing at Business. 

And I don’t know if you know what LARPing is, but it stands for live action roleplaying. Initially it started like live action Dungeons and Dragons and now it means when people look like they’re doing something, but they’re really faking it. 

And you know what this looks like on Instagram, it’s always packaged up in peachy colors. There are always women on it and it looks so effortless and they look so happy. I’m going to tell you, if it seems too good to be true, it is.

Or if it seems like all you have to do is buy this course and you’re making $1 million, I’m going to say call BS on that. Are there people who are having success building their businesses this way in this kind of gauzy reality? The answer is yes. 

And I would say there are also people winning the lottery. So, I might put it in that category because in my experience and in the experiences of people who will tell me the truth, our business building looks a whole lot different. 

In fact, I say when you are building a business, you are a miner mining for gold. You are not Kylie Jenner. And what I mean by that is think about a miner. They’re getting dirty. They’re out in the heat. They are uncomfortable. They’re doing manual labor. It is not pretty. 

And I think that is a better image of what it really looks like to build a business online. I want to pose this reality check for you to figure out whether you are seriously building a business or not.

And my first question for you is, are you making money today? And the second thing I would ask you is, let’s say you are making money. 

If you did the math equation where you said, I’m making this much money and you divide it by the amount of hours you are working on your business per week, what is your hourly rate? And if it is very low, then I’m going to say I’m not sure you’re creating a real business.

Then you’re going to say to me, “What are you talking about? I am spending weeks and weeks building out my website, focusing on my logo and picking the best fonts and colors. I’m growing my audience, I’m growing my email list, my social media followers, and then I’ll focus on making money. 

Or even better yet, I know that as soon as I reach these certain benchmarks, the money is going to flow in.” And I will say you are in for a rude awakening. It doesn’t work like that. The truth is you have to roll up your sleeves and start focusing on making money now.

And that means selling now. And what I would say is in order to be successful, you need a couple of things. One, an expertise, but not with a capital E, a small E, where you’re about 1 to 2 steps ahead of where your people are, the people you want to serve.

And you need to have solutions to the problems these people face and you need access to these people. And then you might say to me, “I haven’t grown my audience yet. How am I going to have access to these people?”

And this is where I say, okay, your job is to get down and dirty. Your job is to start building your email list because, yes, the money is really in your email list. You can think of your business as a funnel. The top is your content. 

So, whether it be your blog, content, social media content, those kinds of things, the goal of that content is to not just grow followers, grow traffic. It’s to get those people on your email list because that is the best, most lucrative way to sell.

Let’s say you’ve got no audience. What do you do? This is where I say you go door by door and I mean you start making friends in Facebook groups, on Instagram, providing value, borrowing other people’s audiences.

Figuring out a way where you could give them a percentage of the sale or you can promote them while they’re promoting you. It is never too early to start selling actual products and services. 

A woman on my podcast wanted to be a VA and sell VA services and she found her first clients on Instagram, so be creating stuff with ChatGPT and Canva. 

Right now there has never been a better time to be creating products. I would say create a product or service at least a new one once a month. 

And here’s one that is never popular when I say it, but I think it is very true. Go be salesy. Go put your offers out in front of as many people as you can, as often as you can. Are people going to be annoyed? Sure. Maybe 1 or 2. Who cares? 

Hopefully your offer will hit a person at the right time when they are ready to buy. You might be listening to this and saying to yourself, You know what? This sounds too intense. I remember being on a call with a blogger and she said, “I’m a lifestyle blogger and I blog about family and travel and food and crafts.”

And I said, “Are you making any money?” And she said, “Not a lot of money.” And I said, “What blog posts are doing the best for you?” And she ultimately said, “My food posts.” And I said, “Guess what? I recommend you become a food blogger.”

Not that every so often you can’t blog about your travels or other things. And she said to me, “Oh, I can’t do that because that just really limits me. And I think I would get too bored and burnt out.” And I said, “No problem. Then you know what? You won’t be building a business or it’ll be a very slow growing business.”

You can make that choice. I have no judgment. But know what you’re doing. Business isn’t always fun. I am not living the life of Kylie Jenner. And to be honest with you, I don’t think she’s living the life that she presents either. 

Building a successful, satisfying online business is absolutely doable. And if you can embrace these 13 superpowers, I believe you will succeed. So, let’s get into what these traits are. These are superpowers. 

13 Superpowers of Successful Entrepreneurs

First, let’s think about them that way. And the first one is your willingness to be afraid. I will tell you, I am afraid constantly. It’s part of my personality. I am afraid when our Catch My Party traffic takes a dip, especially after some sort of Google algorithm update. 

I’m afraid when people aren’t buying our products, I’m afraid when people aren’t necessarily listening to a podcast episode that I think is going to do great, it doesn’t do as well, I am afraid all the time, and yet I move forward.

The next superpower is my willingness to be embarrassed. I have released podcast episodes where all of a sudden the audio cuts out. I have launched products with lots of typos. If you read my emails, I almost always have a typo in the emails I send out and don’t think when I reread them and realize I am not cringing inside. 

I am and I will release products that are a little rough and I feel a little icky about, but I will put them out because I have learned that I need to be a little bit embarrassed and feel a little bit of shame. 

The next thing is, this speaks to the third superpower, which is discomfort. I was on a panel last night and we were talking about getting on calls with your customers, which I highly recommend. And one of the women said, “Yeah, but it’s hard for people who are introverts.”

And I would say it is hard for people who are introverts because I’m an introvert and I will get on calls. I believe instead of retreating from these things that make us uncomfortable, we move in baby steps toward them.

And we challenge ourselves to, let’s say, get on calls or let’s say, show up live on video, whatever it is that scares you. You don’t have to do it. But if you want to move your business forward, I recommend you chip away at that insecurity. 

And by the way, does it ever go away? Absolutely not. But can you build the muscles around it that help you show up and do it? Yes. 

In fact, many of you know, I was a writer in Hollywood and people would say to me things like, I could be a writer in Hollywood, too. I’ve got a story in me. I just need to move to Hawaii, look out at the ocean, and then I can write my screenplay. 

And I always laughed because I always knew that’s not true. Because you take you anywhere. And that person in Hawaii is no different than that person in their tiny apartment. 

And most days I would wake up and think to myself, Oh my God, I have to sit and face my blank computer screen and write. I am so freaking uncomfortable. However, I would do it. And that’s what separated me. So, discomfort is your friend. 

Embracing Messiness in Your Business

The next quality, the trait, the superpower that I want to share is this idea that you need to embrace messiness. Growing your business is not clean. If you have kids, you understand messing up your business is the same thing again. 

You see these influencers, you see these successful business owners and it all looks like this well-oiled machine. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But if they got there, it was through mess. You have to go through mess. You have to test. You have to try. Things won’t work. 

Your technology will fail. It is all a big mess. And slowly, if you can hang in the mess, you start to discover a path through it. 

And the other superpower. I’ll call these the more difficult ones is this idea of embracing failure. Failure never feels good. I’m failing constantly and it sucks every time. That’s what I want to share. It’s not like, oh yeah, failure. It’s so bad.But it’s right. No it’s not. It feels awful. 

Tenacity Is a Superpower

Here are the final traits that I wanted to share, positive superpowers that I hope you will cultivate. And so, let’s see. This is the sixth one. Tenacity. I think tenacity separates the winners from the losers. If you can keep going, that is impressive. 

I was talking to a food blogger and she had the most delicious recipes. Her photography is beautiful and yet it’s not working for her character. Traffic isn’t growing.

And I am thinking to myself and she has optimized her site. She’s using the foodie pro theme and she has done a bunch of things right. And I said, “How often are you doing blog posts?” And she said, “Maybe one a month or so. I’m not really consistent.”

 And I said, “If you can get consistent, I promise you your traffic will grow.” So tenacity being that dog with a bone, the person who doesn’t give up that again, is how you have success.

The next superpower, positive superpower, is this ability to be scrappy. So when you’re facing failure, when things are at a dead end, you figure out a way around it. 

When you don’t have an audience, okay, what else can you do to find people in your niche? Go make friends, Go find people who are writing about the fact that they’re suffering from the stuff that you have solutions for. 

How can you create a new digital product or come up with a new service once a month? It is through being scrappy. 

The next superpower is the willingness to be imperfect. I am a recovering perfectionist, and I came up with this idea called B- work. I was giving people in my membership some homework and I didn’t want it to be intimidating. 

And what I said to them was, please do not do A+ work. Please don’t even do A work. Do B work. And then I thought about it and I said, Nope, do B- level work because B- is above average and it’s doable.

And when I said it, I could see all of their shoulders go down like, oh, if you can get this concept in your head, I have it written on a Post-it on my desk. I think that is one of the things that unlock you. 

In fact, B- work has resonated with so many people. I get emails all the time saying, “Oh my God, I love this. This has freed me up.” And when you are freer, you can move faster and that is how you test. 

And that is how as a miner, you go find the gold specs so that you know to dig deeper. This is how you start making money in your business.

The next superpower ready is your willingness to love your imposter syndrome. We all have imposter syndrome. We all think we’re a fake and that the jig is up and we don’t really deserve any of the success we have gotten. And who cares? Keep being an imposter. Keep putting it out there. Keep pretending because eventually you will find even more success.

So, we all struggle from this and we all think we’re going to heal our imposter syndrome. I’m like, guess what everybody, I’m announcing it. I am an imposter. So, tomorrow this imposter is going to wake up and do it all again. 

The 10th superhuman trait is your belief in your own resilience. So, yes, I fall down. I fall down a lot. I doubt myself a lot. And yet I pick myself back up. I am resilient. I can face anything. I get a bad comment, I get a bad review. Somebody unsubscribes from my list. It hurts and I’m resilient. And that is what I remind myself. 

Belief in Higher Calling for Your Business

My 11th trait is the belief that hopefully I have a higher calling and this helps me know that what I am doing is putting good in the world. My higher calling is empowering other creators and bloggers to make money. That’s it. 

That’s what gets me up in the morning so that somebody can afford braces for their kids or take their family on a vacation or pay their rent. This is what excites me. This is why I feel I am called to do this. And if you can figure out what it is that you’re called to do, it gives you meaning. 

And for my 12th superpower tip, it is a sense of humility. And this idea that nobody is really thinking about you because we’re so busy thinking about ourselves. Therefore I’m sharing all of my darker thoughts. 

I get embarrassed. I’m feeling it much more than you’re feeling it for me because I’m inside me. A lot of these traits, when you start to put them into the perspective of no one’s really thinking about you, it’s so freeing. 

What I love about this is it shrinks me down, makes me not that important. And that way I have the freedom to risk and to try and to fail and even fail in public because you don’t really care if I have spinach in my teeth. 

And the final superpower trait that I want to share is this idea that life is short. We only have one life to live. My recommendation to you is to go big or go home. And that’s how I live my life. And that’s why I try to swing for the fences. 

When I kept hearing from you, you wanted to sell digital products, digital downloads, courses, memberships, workshops, coaching, but it was too difficult. I turned to David, my husband and partner, and I said, we can solve this. We can solve this by making something simple. 

We thought when everybody zigging or zagging, when companies are selling these incredibly complicated all-in-one solutions that I don’t believe exist.

We said, no, we’re going to get people selling in ten minutes or less with free sales pages, resources, everything you need to put your stuff out there so you can test it so you can move quickly. 

The goal is to go up in the hills and mine for gold too. Figure out what people will buy from you. This is the way you grow your business. It might not be as gauzy and as beautiful, but if you want the tools to do it, get MiloTreeCart. 

I’m a big believer in Internet Karma that what you put out you get back. So, we bake this into MiloTreeCart. For example, we are now selling it for $349 for a lifetime deal If you buy it right now, all new features we build get grandfathered in. You pay for it once and never again. 

And we have a three month installment plan because you guys asked us for it. Also, we offer a 30 day money back guarantee because if you don’t love it, I don’t want you to keep it. Plus, we offer all the resources to make that possible. 

If you are wanting to make money in your business because you are not LARPing, because you are real, because you’re willing to lean into these superpowers, then this is the tool for you. So, if you want to check it out, go to milotreecart.com. 

I will personally help you get started so that you’re on the path to success and my team and I will be there for you anyway we can. So be willing to be afraid, to be embarrassed, to lean into discomfort, to embrace messiness, to face failure, to be tenacious, to be scrappy.

To love your imposter syndrome, to believe in your resilience, to understand that you have a higher calling, to recognize that nobody really cares about you, of course, except the people that love you. And to understand that you have one life to live and you get to decide how to do it. 

And I will see you here again next week.

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