The statistics are daunting: 80% illustrate the uphill battle every new business owner faces when opening their doors or turning on the website.
In the world of investing, if we were to read that we have an 80% chance of losing our investment, we wouldn’t give that investment a second thought. The risk of losing it all doesn’t justify the investment.
For every business that starts today, 80% will close their doors not far in to the future. Yet the allure of being an entrepreneur drives those to ignore the odds.
Our ultimate goal is to reverse those figures so that 80% succeed – and we believe that can happen when owners have better information and are equipped with better knowledge and tools to develop their teams and sales and operational systems.
When business owners open their doors with the knowledge needed to succeed, those figures dramatically decrease.
Some of the best business minds in the world believe that emotion has no place in business decisions. Whether you believe that or not, one truth is hard to argue: business owners sometimes allow their dream of being an entrepreneur to get in the way of being a well informed business professional.
They open their doors without the essentials of business success. The top reasons businesses fail are lack of knowledge, lack of a plan, the lack of accountability to a plan and lack of cash or capital.
While some expenses can be budgeted, those that the inexperienced business owner didn’t foresee are what can be the downfall of a startup.
Often, though, nothing is more important than the vision. A clear vision and mission and system act as a guiding light, or a “North Star” for an owner, and helps bring back focus when the desire is to diversify or go off into a business or market that isn’t aligned with the original focus and mission.
That doesn’t mean that a company will never stray. It’s like keeping a rocket on course.
There will be fluctuations in trajectory but the overall destination should not change. Knowing where the business is going is pivotal to plotting the course.