The reality today is that a lot of businesses are failing on a daily basis (on average about 78% of newly established businesses, which amounts to about three in every five businesses closing their doors).
I think the appropriate thing to ask is what the root cause of these failures is?
Today I’m going to reveal some of the underlying causes which are at the core of the problem; they are further propelled by the fact that they are never talked about. One that I found very important was that businesses are not established by entrepreneurs, but by “technicians”. To explain this in simple terms, a “technician” is basically somebody who, for example, worked for a firm for some time (eg doctor, lawyer, engineer or accountant) and suddenly decided to become their own boss.
Often most of the technicians feel they can conquer the world after the great job they have done working for other people, not fully aware of the challenges in running a successful business. They feel that they know enough about the business and they resign from their jobs and branch out on their own.
The easiest way to become financially independent is by starting your own business, provided that you know how to run a successful business. After a short period running their businesses, technicians start realising that there’s actually more involved than just doing the technical work to run a business successfully.
They are suddenly faced with the management of the whole business and not only a single department in the business, the reality of finding clients, the complexities of financial management, the constant need to carefully monitor the finances, and a number of other things which ultimately become overwhelming.
What seemed like a joyride at the beginning is now a painful reality. What’s worse is that at this stage, they have no idea what to do, how to do it or when to do it.
Then they seek advice from experts who ultimately make their problems even worse by giving analysis and solutions that are complicated to implement.
Ensure you equip yourself with the right skills and have a commitment to achieve anything, irrespective of your obstacles.
Kholofelo Pholafudi is the author of The Psychology, Science & Art of Turning Contacts into Connections
