If you want to build a successful business, it helps to look at why businesses fail in the first place. Business failure is so common that many people believe that means they are likely to fail, but the truth is, there are reasons that half of all businesses fail within the first three years – and since there are reasons entirely within your control, you can mitigate for it and ensure your business succeeds.
These five reasons that most businesses fail can be changed easily if you know about them.
No Purpose
If you have no idea what your business’s purpose is, it will be hard to succeed. What you do may change over the years if you are sticking to your true Purpose.
For example, no one creates VHS tapes anymore (do you know what they are?), but a factory that made VHS tapes purpose was not making VHS tapes. It was making a delivery system for information and movies so that more people could watch. A smart VHS manufacturer would stay aware of future technologies, also called killer technologies, that might end their current method of meeting their Purpose and transition to a new approach when it was imperative.
Lack of Funding
Whether you are starting at your kitchen table or having a brick-and-mortar business, your online business has to have investment and funding. You can’t run a business without investing. You can run lean and mean, but you must be willing to invest in the tools and education you need to ensure your business meets its Purpose.
Inexperience
It’s okay if you don’t have the experience, so don’t worry. But you must be willing to hire experts or get educated and learn the information necessary to meet your Purpose whether it’s learning about the technology available for automation, or understanding how a business process works, or something else you need to be willing to find someone who is experienced who will either do it for you or teach you to do it.
Poor Planning
Many small business owners skip business planning altogether. They just start. This is okay to a point because you don’t want to delay starting, but without a clear purpose and planning, it’s going to be hard to know what you should do each day in your business that will lead to the success you seek.
You must plan for a typical business day that leads to a result, and you must plan for contingencies and mitigation efforts during a disaster, downturn, or other disruption, including killer technologies. If you’re focused on proper planning, you can avoid this primary reason for business failure.
Poor Execution
All the other issues leading up to this last reason that many businesses fail. Even if you spend all your time planning, if you don’t implement and execute your plans consistently and persistently, you will be unlikely to experience success.
If you want to succeed and know that you do, mitigate these reasons for failing to eliminate these possibilities. Know your Purpose and invest in yourself and your business and do the thing.
Thank you for joining me! For more free lessons in this series simply click the “Next Post” button below.
