A recent article (A good case against entrepreneurship – Willem Gous) mentioned nine out of ten entrepreneurs and start ups fail.
Sit with those figures for a moment.
If you are a betting person they are not good odds. If you were in battle, that is a ninety percent kill rate of your troops.
Even with this outrageously insane failure rate newbies are lining up every day.
Those that were spat out the meat grinder tend to wear their failure as a badge of honour. Broken friendships, marriages, relationships, bankruptcy, self worth and many other costly losses seem to be of no avail.
Business is war, or at least, it is an initiation under fire. It is not the place or the faint hearted and for the little princesses untrained in the dark side of human behaviour. No one is ever really your friend in business.
Start ups and entrepreneurs tend to either create a new wheel or are in disruptive industries. Both are immediately faced with competition and other businesses not eager to give the newbie a leg up.
Stress is the biggest killer of any new business, or should that be the inability to deal with change is the real roadblock to success. Entrepreneurs look at all of the outside factors barring their succession to the dizzy highs of success, glory and the crowning achievement of their vision. They do the business plans, jump through the legal and financial hoops. They cross the T’s and dot the I’s, yet in many cases fail to address the inner saboteur, their own inherit unrecognised weaknesses and short comings.
Spend time with the highly driven entrepreneurs and it will become obvious some are truly driven robots and lousy human beings. Their Artificial Intelligence levels are high, their people skills are in the negative. Some treat their staff as slaves or robots building resentment and sometimes causing problems with internal saboteurs getting revenge.
Why?
The answer needs to be approached from several levels, yet all relate to stress and the inability to deal with change. Having a brilliant idea, creating a product/service and taking it to market is a gift that needs a highly focussed and dedicated set of actions to complete.
The first area some fall down is they forget the real customer will be a person. Computers and machines never buy what we are selling. People do, so having great people skills is the winning factor. Yes, people can be dazzled with marketing BS, but long term success is always governed by the people who support you.
Lack of Physical Awareness of what really keeps us well. Burning the candle at both ends, drug use, and that includes coffee and caffeine drinks will eventually destroy your health. How many driven young bucks and fillies are burning out their adrenals in the pursuit of what, eventually they will discover they never really wanted. There is several simple steps, taken every day that can improve the quality of ones health. And they need to be carried out every day without fail. Going to the gym or wearing “active designer label clothes” is not always the best way to improve your health, it’s deeper than that.
Lack of Emotional Awareness of your true nature drives many over the edge. Business is like combat, nerves of steel and a good sense of timing makes the difference. If you have low emotional intelligence it is advisable to learn some new skills or partner with some one better at staying emotionally stable. Pride, arrogance, ignorance, stubbornness all undermine our success. Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends And Influence People will never go of print. If you have read reread it.
Lack of Mental Awareness.University knowledge is one thing, real life and business, another. At some point you need to get real life experience, not theoretical mumbo jumbo. School and business are diametrically opposed. Robert Kyosaki constantly points out the weakness of ‘formal” education as opposed to self education. Having a good balance of logic and intuition gives you the advantage of seeing more of the whole situation and the ability to create solutions.
Lack of True Purpose, it is difficult to find a person who truly understands their “life purpose” and the greater meaning of their life. Most resort to ‘The Money Dream” and the illusions created within that strange fantasy. All goals, all visions and all ambition is solely designed to get us to a place of feeling good. That’s it, you may think it’s the car, the house, the prestige, the trophy Wife/Toyboy etc. Why wait until middle age to discover the lie you have been living? Do the real hard work now and work on your Why! Sort that out and How’s become obvious.
Business, in many cases is never your true purpose, destroying your friendships, relationships, driving on the obsessive super highway towards what you don’t want is soul and health destroying. Why do so many people end up depressed even if they are still highly functioning? The answer is simpler than you think and makes the difference between being successful human being and a business person.
Nine out of ten ventures fail because of inherit human weakness. It does not need to be like this if one is willing to uncover the issues and work on building solutions.
Take care of your health first and this means doing your due diligence because much of what is presented as health facts is simply marketing hype or other people’s opinions. Take care of the basics and the rest takes care of itself.
Build and sustain important relationships. No one is an island and whether we like it or not, we all need other people supporting our journey. People are important. Even the marketing gurus are figuring out person to person contact is the key driver of business.
Understand your own nature, work your strengths and learn to improve your weaknesses. In fact in many cases when we turn our weaknesses into strengths our ability to achieve is amplified many times.
In conclusion the key factor to true success is Knowing What You Really Want, Knowing Yourself and letting go of What you Don’t Want.
Need to get clear on what you Really want? Let’s chat.
