Why do we fail at business?

[Steve]

From your personal experiences and the experiences you have seen with others, what is your view on why so many of us fail at business? What makes it seem next to impossible for the average person to start a business?

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[picframer]

Lawn care business tips

Originally Posted by Steve From your personal experiences and the experiences you have seen with others, what is your view on why so many of us fail at business? What makes it seem next to impossible for the average person to start a business? There are a lot of reasons, maybe foremost is not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. - Business Plan does not reflect proper research - Start up financing was not sufficient - Marketing skills - Research of the business, I see this a lot not only here but in this market in general, looking for other service options to keep cash flow going and knowing what your competition is, what they charge etc. - Receivables - Equipment issues - Staff, there is an old saying you will only be as good as the people under you - Growing too fast, service level drops - Debt - Lack of proper insurance, things do go wrong - Poor sales skills - Knowing your costs and what to charge Those are a few things that come to mind.

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Andy
Halifax, Nova Scotia

[Chachi]

pic pretty much summed it up. One thing I get praised on is I have no overhead. Everything is paid off except insurance & ads of course. If I don't have cash I don't buy it. Years down the road I am sure that may change, but for now I live by that.

[LawnMoore]

Originally Posted by picframer

There are a lot of reasons, maybe foremost is not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur.

- Some people lack the drive and people skills required to run there business day to day..

Not to mention, that when your an entreprenuer/business owner you have to either know who or when to hire someone to take on tasks, or know how to complete them yourself.

Like advertising, www/door to door marketing, equipment maintenace, having failure days in the start up or any time, and being prepared to conquer all of that plus more and still hold your head up to give the next man a fair deal and smile about it.

just some thoughts..

Sometimes its inevitable, you know, acts of god can stop anything from happening. ( or put a serious damper on such )

[LawnMoore]

Originally Posted by Steve

From your personal experiences and the experiences you have seen with others, what is your view on why so many of us fail at business?

What makes it seem next to impossible for the average person to start a business?

Steve, are you having a bad day? (this could go for others as well)

-If so maybe you need to take a little vacation something easy and cheap, maybe a camping trip or hiking, or from the shore fishing trip..

-Maybe you should check into cutting back on business and personal expenses and overhead, untill income picks up.

-If nothing else, business has you feeling down, take a breather! (enjoy some me time) then you can be a little less stressed out and tackle your next day with pride and ambition.

[Steve]

The thing I was thinking about goes back to almost the beginning of the idea to start a business.

How many people even have an interest in anything that they can even use as a foothold to get a start?

I think about how I hear all the time, 'if I could only start my own business.'

I then follow up with 'what would you like to do?'

And they reply 'I don't know.'

How is it that so many of us just dont know? I bet if you look around you, you will see others that say similar things.

How do you get something started when you have no direction? No interests? And why is it that so many of us seem to have no interest in anything or direction?

Is it simply sucked out of us when all we know is working fulltime as an employee?

Do we lose the dreams as we make the transition from child to adult?

What's your view on this?

[LawnMoore]

Well i actually think, when they say i dont know, its because they really dont know how to do it.

Its not really something a kid growing up under parents who work 40 would know..

Now if you grew up like i did, in atleast 1 family business, maybe you would catch on, and almost 100% sure that your parents would teach you about business!

So maybe its the ones who say that, that werent raised by business orientated folks/family and had no helping direction..

I think we are a breed apart from the rest, as with anything it requires teaching, or money and sometimes both. I was fortunate enough to have that lifestyle growing up, and i would say that might be were i get my drive from. The drive to push the business even under failing conditions, because i know and was taught: "Tough times dont last, but tough people do!"

So now that im grown i know the only way to have the work when i want to and for how much lifestyle only comes from running a business or investing quite a bit of money into sometimes unstable economys.

But like the risk of losing the money in an unstable economy theres a high margin of return on the risk if the cards are played right. Tbh the unstable and broken economys are where the higher profit margins are if you (have the cash reserve) can afford to have the investment tied up untill the economy improves.

ok im kinda getting off subject so ill stop at that.

I think it takes direction..

E/ and also takes a how do i say, it takes lessons learned, like budgeting money, being content, being frugal, and a lot of other trial and error lessons (that you have to learn from) and not keep making the mistakes over and overr again! like lowballing bids, that cannot be done in order to stay in business, i would rather bid a 1-2 our tree job for 400 and not get it than i would bid it for 200 and it turn into a 3 hour job and a cut rope!!

Because like i said, if a rope gets cut or a saw drops from the lanyard sometimes those are inevitable things and have to be taken into consideration for, just like mowing, if i bid a mow at 25 to get the job even though i know its an overgrown heap worth 60! and somehow just somehow we miss a wire in the walkthrough, that could cost 40-100 or more!

So i think also bidding has a lot to do with whether a company will make it or not. If i bid at 400 and dont get a job, its better than bidding 200 and paying help 30 + gas 20 + a new rope is 150-200, right there im in the hole and made nothing!

[LawnMoore]

Oh and again, running a business is like having 3-5 part time jobs! Marketing,sales,inventory,management,labor,etc.. sometimes it feels like more than 5 different jobs lol.. plus public relation skills, some ppl cannot gather the confidence to do door to door. i dont know there are a lot of reasons why ppl fail lol..

Thats a lot for the average Joe to handle without proper training.

So like andy said, some are just "NOT CUT OUT FOR THE JOB" but after a couple trials and errors, they will get better.

[MountainViewGreenskeeper]

Originally Posted by LawnMoore

Oh and again, running a business is like having 3-5 part time jobs! Marketing,sales,inventory,management,labor,etc.. sometimes it feels like more than 5 different jobs lol..

thats the truth....

Anyways i dont really have an answer to the original question but its a thought that crosses my mind once a week or so. i am experiencing sucess in my eyes but i worry what could go wrong. i dont remember the statistic but its what 50% of businesses fail in the first 5 years. I dont want to be part of that group that fails so I am constantly looking at my action to prepare for concequences. Maybe i just over think things some times but this is my life. If this fail I fail. obviously im young enough to recover from this but i have ambitions as to where I want to take my business.

As steve was saying maybe it those childhood dreams that push me forward with this stuff. and I havent lost those dreams from adulthood yet. dont get me wrong there is a certain amount of realism in those dreams now.

Idk I feel like Im rambling now.....

[Steve]

What kind of advice would you have to offer the average person, working a fulltime job who dreams of running a business?

How should they even get to the point where they can find at least something they could do as a business, even part time?

Where should they look for ideas? What if they have no interests other than not wanting to work a full time job any further? What do they do? How do they find an interest to see if they even like it?

As you look around, do you feel most people who work full time jobs, have interests or do most of them not? Full time jobs seem to be designed to suck the life out of you and when you feel your life being sucked away, you tend to not do anything besides that but eat and sleep, in order to be ready to do it all again the next day.