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We’ve all heard the U.S. Bureau of Labor stats: 20% of small businesses fail in the first twelve months, and 50% in the first five years. They’re real numbers, but the commonly cited reasons are not why businesses actually fail.
The SBA’s SCORE program claims the number one reason is cash flow; 82% can’t pay this month’s bills and just turn in the keys. Other researchers, including the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) repeat this claim and then add management issues and ineffective planning as the second and third reasons business owners punch out. We’ve all heard a dozen more.
Why do businesses fail?
I founded and built 13 businesses in 10 industries and professions on four continents and have advised hundreds of business owners personally. I can tell you that a business will very rarely fail because of any of the above. It just looks that way on the surface. They actually fail because the business owner is tired, and then everything else starts to fall apart around them. Those symptoms of fatigue get mistaken for the cause of failure.
If finances, management, planning or other business elements were fine at one point but are now daunting roadblocks, these almost always point to fatigue on the part of the owner or leaders, who have just lost enough of their energy to begin to let things slowly decay.
I’ve been there multiple times. When a business is that far in the tank, recovery is not easy, but it has always been possible as long as I was honest with myself and did the work to get my energy back. One of the best self-awareness questions I’ve learned to ask myself over the years has helped me identify early-stage fatigue, “What am I pretending not to know?” Feel free to steal it, and then be brave and ask a friend to answer it for you.
Waiting until these classic symptoms of fatigue show up is not the best time to find out you’re in trouble. It’s a long road back from a lack of money, people mad at your leadership neglect or wandering without a clear vision and a plan. The good news is that there are solid early indicators of fatigue that show up long before any of these, and if you catch yourself early, getting back on track from these early indicators is more of a tweak than a turnaround.
Related: The 6 Reasons for Business Failure, and How to Address Them
Are you reacting to the world around you?
From my own experience and the experience of hundreds of others I’ve worked with, if we’re focused on any of the following reactionary attributes, it’s a counter-logical (but very intuitive) early indicator that you’re already experiencing creeping fatigue:
Toughness – The ability to endure difficult conditions without breaking.
Tenacity – The quality of being determined or persistent, especially in the face of adversity.
Stamina – The capacity to endure prolonged stress or exertion.
Endurance – The ability to withstand difficult conditions over time.
Perseverance – Steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.
Grit – Courage and resolve in facing hardships.
Make no mistake, these are all great attributes, and I want every one of them. But for the most part, they are largely reactive or even defensive. If you need to put your finger in a dike, these attributes are your best friends. But if you’re regularly working from the mindset of any of the above and are being told by others how proud they are that you are withstanding all the storms, droughts and hardships coming at you, from my experience, you’re in the early stages of burnout.
Be proactive – Make your own business rules
What can we do? We need to adopt the mindset of a stream. A stream has all of the above attributes but only as a foundation for the most important indicator of success:
Relentlessness – showing or promising no abatement of severity, intensity, strength or pace: unrelenting
It might take you a minute to see this word differently because we’ve been taught that it is usually connected with something negative – “That salesperson is relentless,” “Our money problems are just relentless.” But if we see our lives and our business as a stream, you might join me in seeing that relentlessness is the defining hallmark of success and fulfillment, both as a business owner and as a human being.
Be the stream
A stream running downhill is relentless above everything else. Sure, it has grit, tenacity and all the other reactive attributes, and those defensive muscles provide a great foundation. But nobody ever won anything by just playing defense. Relentlessness is constantly moving forward and playing offense. I’ve seen countless great businesses reactively bracing against the storms with good cash, good leadership and a great plan, and they all fade against the forward energy of business owners with less going for them, but who are more relentless.
Vision is critical. A stream knows where it’s going – it is relentless about achieving its one goal – to get to the ocean. And Utter Clarity about where it wants to end up is the driving force behind its relentlessness. Every stream on the side of the mountain starts with the ocean as its goal, and it will do everything it has to in order to get there. If it runs into a beaver dam, it doesn’t get emotional because it understands it’s actually causing its own trouble by relentlessly moving forward. It just figures out how to solve problems while on the way to the ocean. If it has to fill up a lake, so be it. And make no mistake, if a stream appears to be meandering in a meadow, it isn’t. It relentlessly takes the shortest path to the ocean, even if sometimes it has to circle back right where it came from first.
Relentlessly toward the goal
Are we relentlessly moving forward, making our own business rules and causing our own trouble, or are we beginning to play defense with largely reactive attributes like toughness, endurance and grit? Streams and effective business owners don’t pride themselves in how they react. That would wear any of us out eventually. Streams focus on relentlessly moving forward and causing their own trouble.
We need the mindset of a stream.
Are you tired, or maybe not yet feeling tired but focused on the reactive and defensive attributes above? First, re-attach your business and your life to the end goal of what it will do for you when the business “arrives.” Then, start moving relentlessly forward again. Go cause your own trouble, stay in trouble and know that the trouble you’re proactively causing will lead you to where you want to end up.
Be the stream. Keep going!
