The Biggest Challenge With Most Businesses Is YOU, The Business Owner. 

Ok, We've Said It....So Many Businesses Are Held Back By The Business Owner.

The Reality Is Most Business Owners Buy Themselves A JOB. 

The idea that a business can generate a profit and work without you, for most business owners is a fantasy. How could that possibly be? I am my business.

Who would do all the work? How would the customers be served?

Opening your own business is a dream that many people would like to do yet very few take the plunge, of those that do around 80% will be BROKE within their first five years, of the 20% left, 80% of those will be BROKE in the second five years.

So why do so many businesses go BROKE?

My belief is that most business owners have little to no training on how a business works and in most cases the business owner buys themselves a job.

Consider this;

If you are lucky enough to drive a car, how much training were you required to do before you could drive on your own? This varies throughout the world but where I live, our children are required to complete written tests and 120 hours of driving prior to going for their licence.

How different would business be if you had to commit to a similar amount of training prior to opening the doors to your new business?

Yes, a car is a lethal weapon.

Isn’t a business just as lethal? What happens if you go broke, how many people and lives are affected, what are the financial ramifications of going broke?

For me starting out in business required paying a $50.00 fee for business registration and a bank account was all that was required to get started. 

Starting out in Business at the age of 18, and then over the next 17 years owning and operating 22 others in range of industries including retail, hospitality and home improvements, some of these more successful than others; I figured at the age of 35, I was an expert on business. Right?

Wrong!

So, why so many businesses?

I’d either buy an existing business or set one up from scratch, operate it, then burn myself out, sell it and repeat the process when I’d physically recovered enough to start again.

What I had become an expert at, was buying myself a job.

How many business owners do exactly the same thing? They’re good at something so they build a business around the skill and then spend all their time doing it within their business. Just like the hairdresser who buys a hairdressing salon and then spends all their time cutting and colouring hair or the motor mechanic that completes his apprenticeship then goes and sets up a mechanical business and spends all his time repairing cars.

80 % of these businesses will go broke in their first five years, why? Just like me they bought a job! Good at doing the day-to-day work of the business but in most cases very little understanding of the ‘other key components’ of the business. In a lot of cases the ones that do survive after the first five years simply don’t grow at the rate they should or they cause the owner ‘burnout’.

Those ‘other key components’ being; Operations, Financial and Marketing.

Most business owners tend to be strong in one area but weaker in the other two, and generally its ‘operations’ that they are strongest in. They’re good at the day-to-day tasks but don’t have the knowledge on how to market the business or sufficient understanding of the financials.

Buying a job traps the business owner and as a result leaves little or no time to focus on the other areas. Therefore these other key areas are neglected.

Success means to be equally strong in all three areas.

In the majority of the businesses I owned, during this seventeen year period, I was working seven days a week and some weeks, in excess of a hundred hours, doing all the technical work of the business, serving customers, setting up the shops, ordering the stock, cleaning, merchandising the stock, hiring and firing the staff, opening up and locking up, balancing the tills, handling customer complaints and anything else that happened during the course of the day.

And if that wasn’t enough...

I decided I wanted to be an Entrepreneur, and to me an Entrepreneur was a business owner that had multiple businesses, so I went and purchased another three stores in major shopping centres.

It was then I had a major learning. I didn’t know how to run one business properly let alone four at the same time!

So, getting the Business right starts with the Business Owner....