How to Stop Your Business From Failing

Have you heard the statistics that 80% of small businesses go under in the first 5 years?

After being a business coach for 10 years, I totally understand why.

I am absolutely gobsmacked ever single day by how many business owners I speak to that are in business without any kind of plan.

Have you ever heard of the saying, “Failing to plan is planning to fail?” Well, in my opinion that is completely true. What would you say to a builder that said he was going to build your house without any kind of plan? Would it be OK if he said; “We’ll just make it up as we go along?” Would you put your family under that roof? How safe & secure do you think your family would feel?

Similarly, would you drive a car if the manufacturer just threw some parts randomly together? How far do you think the car would travel along safely for? Well, it wouldn’t even hit the market because there are strict guidelines and measure that need to be met.

So why on earth do so many professions quit their job every day just because they think they can do a better job than their boss? Yes, they may be more skilled at that trade but what do they know about business? Every day I meet business owners that do not and have never had a budget or goals in place, they have no idea of their margins in each sale and even what their break-even point is.  These are just a few basic elements that should be in the business plan before someone even goes into business. It is important to track and review the business plans regularly, as things change often and you need to be able to alter and tweak these structures accordingly.

The sad thing is that I have often met business owners that have been in business for over 20 years and have still haven’t got a business plan or educated themselves on how to do one themselves. The worrying thing is that they often have a dozen or so staff who depend on their job to feed their families, pay their school fees and pay their mortgage. Image if they knew their boss was just winging it each and every week, had an overdraft that was growing annually and the only strategy they could think of to get out of the business was to go bankrupt or die.

All this stress instead of simply asking for help, but wait, these business owners have been doing this for 20 years, surely they know everything by now. The truth is, that no one knows everything, our business is either growing or dying and if we are not continuing to learn and develop our business, it will be dying.

I am passionate about business owners actually taking ownership of everything they can do to make their business a success, because everything they need to know is out there, they just need to read out and do it.