PRLog (Press Release) -
Oct. 9, 2012 - Everyone has heard of the rumors…. 9/10 small businesses fail their first year! With such scary statistics looming, there is a reason that less than 8% of Americans are self-employed (and less than half of them are profitable). By reading these stats, you may have better odds going to Vegas and putting it all on black. However, what most people fail to recognize is WHY there is such a high failure rate for small businesses. When observing a bunch of first year small business owners, you realize that productivity is not what determines someones ability to survive in the cut throat business world where your existence directly threatens everyone else in the industry, and therefore makes you unwanted and feeling like you’re all alone struggling to get your piece of the pie. What determines your survival is your outlook on your situation and fully comprehending the reality of the success flowchart which basically states that success is based on making good decisions which is based on having good judgement which is based on having lot of experience. So when working backwards during times of frustration and feeling the eminent illusion of FAILURE one must ask themselves, “Do I have enough experience in what I’m doing to effectively judge the situation I’m in to lead to me making quality decisions on how to handle the situation that will lead to successful results”. If you’re in your first year of business, the answer is undoubtedly “NO!”. However, whether its due to ego, pride, disillusionment, false expectations, or just a lack of understanding of business, a lot of business owners choose to bail and blame their circumstances for the position they ended up in. Economy, employees, competition, vendors, creditors, banks, customers, blah, blah, blah, and many other excuses that one might make as to why their business failed; when in reality the only way to fail as a business owner is to give up and there’s only person ever responsible for giving up, and guess who that is.
The common misconception that business owners fail to realize though, is that “experience”
has nothing to do with your craft or skill and your knowledge of that craft or skill is NOT what will make you successful. Time and time again you see bakers opening up bakeries after 10-20 years of baking, or mechanics opening up body shops after 10-20 years of working on cars… and then shutting down 6 months later. In reality, you need to know little about an industry to be successful at running a business in that field. Case in point: Ray Crock, the traveling multi-mixer milkshake machine salesman who bought out the McDonald’s brothers and took over the franchise to build it from a handful of restaurants to a massive multi-billion dollar franchise that is recognized by everyone from age 4 – 104. So essentially a baker can run a successful body shop and a mechanic can run a successful bakery, as long as they understand the rules of entrepreneurship.
Business owners aren’t successful because they’re lucky (luck = opportunity + hard work), or because they have a great idea (Bill Gates got rich off of others) or they have knowledge of the field (Worst team in the NBA owned by… Michael Jordan).
The characteristics of successful business owners is defined by intangibles:
- Resiliency
- Perseverance
- Focus on big picture
- Implementation of systems
- “Eat what you kill” mentality
- Ability to perform in a 100% performance driven environment
- Passion for winning
- Never-give-up mindset
- Stickativity (might or might not be a word)
- Eternal optimism
- Acceptance of delayed gratification
So even though the stats on failure might be accurate, when truly analyzing society, what percentage of people can we say actually reflect these characteristics?
Very few. So failure is avoidable… just like laziness, poor attitude, and sub par work ethic. Running a business is about having the guts to deal with the learning curves and growing pains and never refusing to make the sacrifices necessary to improve the situation when times get tough. At the end of the day, the biggest failure to avoid is the failure to realize that tough times don’t last, but tough people do. Stay tough!
1919 provides dynamic and traditional tools to market their clients’ benefits, values, and incentives to their consumers face-to-face. For more information, call (240) 428-1134 or log onto
http://www.1919inc.comPhoto:
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