If you have the desire to be an entrepreneur, it’s likely you want to succeed. You want to do it right, but most people don’t. The state of the small business today is terrible, but avoidable. If you know what most small businesses do wrong, you can avoid doing what they do, which is why I wrote this article answering the question, “Why do small businesses fail?”
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The Jeff Bezos vs. The Struggling Entrepreneur
According to Forbes, Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world. He recently passed up Bill Gates by reaching a net worth of $120 billion as the founder and CEO of Amazon, but how did he do it? He didn’t start out with lots of money. He had a fairly normal childhood. His family wasn’t wealthy, and he didn’t start Amazon until he was 30. In less than 30 years, he took Amazon from being a business run out of his garage into one of the highest revenue businesses in the world!
In contrast, you have the average entrepreneur that we’re used to seeing. They start “just getting by” and they seem to stay that way. Profit is something they don’t want to talk about very much because it’s never exciting. Most of them work very hard. Some, even work 7 days a week, and 12 hour days. They sacrifice their social lives and their family lives to work on the business, but it doesn’t seem like a way out of “daily grinding”. Then, when it’s all done, and they decide to take even one day off, their revenue dips.
What’s the difference in the Jeff Bezos-level entrepreneur and the “Struggling” entrepreneur? How did Bezos manage to escape the small business norm?
There’s a System That Self-Made Success Stories Use
There were other people who started e-commerce businesses who could have knocked Bezos out of the park! Some people had money, platforms, and other advantages Bezos did not have.
So, how did he do it?
You have to learn THE SYSTEM to take a business from a one-person empire into an Amazon-style, thousand-person empire, so let’s talk about the main 10 things that stop small businesses:
1. They Only Focus on Work – The “Technician” Mentality
Often times, the technician gets frustrated while working for someone else. They may be the best at what they do, so they fool themselves into believing that their advanced skill level in the job is sufficient to run a business.
2. They Don’t Invest in Learning
Since, they believe their work is required to run the business, they spend their learning time on advancing their skill level rather than diversifying their entrepreneurial skills. They may be learning how to paint better, how to suture better, or how to lay carpet better, but those skills will only make them better technicians.
Instead, they need to learn how to sell better, how to generate leads, how to convert leads into buyers, how to manage, how to outsource, how to create systems, and other entrepreneurial skills. Unfortunately, many technicians are scared to learn entrepreneurial skills.
3. They Don’t Surround Themselves with People Who Are Doing What They Want to Do
If they were around other people who are doing what they want to do, they could accelerate their learning curve. They may be able to see a leader who works ON the business and is effective in the market. Most “struggling entrepreneurs” don’t make time to be around people who are doing what they want to do.
They make excuse after excuse about why they can’t be around others in their niche, why they can’t professionally develop themselves, and why they shouldn’t do more than technicians do.
4. They Don’t Seek Mentorship
There are free mentorship options like SCORE that help tremendously to give feedback!
Unfortunately, many unsuccessful entrepreneurs don’t seek mentorship. They fool themselves into believing that if they keep doing what they’re doing, they will get different results than they’re getting.
5. If They Don’t Know How To Take Care of A Part of Their Business, They Ignore it
Whether accounting, hiring, taxes, or management–unsuccessful entrepreneurs tend to ignore aspects of the business that they don’t understand. For example, if they don’t understand how to do their taxes, rather than seeking help, they will keep working and working, miss the deadlines, and go thru the negative domino effect because they didn’t do what they were supposed to do.
6. They Spend All Their Money Chasing Opportunities Instead of Being Strategic
There are flashing lights all over. People telling you this piece of technology will make your business work or that one. No technology will make your business work!
The person behind the technology has to have some things in order, however, many unsuccessful entrepreneurs, go from opportunity to opportunity to find a quick fix that will shorten their hours and make them more money. While some things may spike revenue for the short term, long term business is not like flipping light switches. Long-term business is more like farming where you plant a seed, you water, and you get a crop.
7. They Don’t Take Action on the Education They Receive
Even worse than wasting lots of money on opportunities, they don’t apply the knowledge they’ve purchased. This is where I disagree with the quote “Knowledge is power”! These people buy courses, seminars, books, or coaching, then ignore the recommendations.
Applied knowledge is power!
8. They Don’t Make Time For Quadrant Two Activities
The technician-minded person is focused on working in the business, therefore, planning, strategizing, and important coordination functions are activities they feel that they can’t do. They simply need to work and work and work.
9. They Don’t Have a Plan or Don’t Follow it
Business plans are important, but if you think the work is the most important part of the business, you don’t make time to plan. If you don’t make time to plan, you don’t make tangible goals, and you stay in the same ole working cycle.
Rather than creating freedom, the struggling entrepreneur has created a trap. They can’t do anything but work because they are the business (or so they say). When it’s time to exit, they cannot have an exit strategy or a succession plan because they are the business.
10. They Act Like Victims and Blame Everyone and Everything Around Them
When things go wrong, they blame the customer, their spouse, their dog, the government, their economic class, their ethnicity, and whoever else can take blame. They are never the reason why they’re struggling.
Once they realize how big their circle of influence truly is, they can make positive changes that can create a domino effect–causing them to analyze the other 9 things I’ve mentioned before.
Now, it’s Your Turn…
Do you have any other reasons that you’ve seen lead to business failure? Do you agree with my observations? Why or why not? Leave your comments, questions, and feedback below.
Source: howtoentrepreneur
