One of the things they don’t teach in business school is the fact that successful entrepreneuring isn’t about one skill, but rather a well-rounded set of skills. The reason why so many fledgling business owners fail is that they either don’t possess all of the skills or they don’t put enough time into each of them.
In order for any business to succeed, an Entrepreneur must focus on five different things.
Vision – This is about where the company is, where it needs to go, and what products and services it either has or will develop for it to reach its goals.
Advertising and Marketing – Once the proper products and services are in place, they must be advertised and sold.
Production – Once sold, the products and services must be produced.
Quality Control – Once produced, proper quality controls must be administered to ensure customer satisfaction.
Accounting and Administration – The back end portions of the business must be controlled including accounting, finance, HR, and facility management.
In order for any enterprise to succeed, equal efforts and amounts of time must be spent on each and every one of these aspects each and every day. Take a moment and think about what I just wrote.
What I propose is virtually impossible. No entrepreneur is perfect. We all have our failures. We all possess individual strengths and weaknesses.
Most of us come from a sales and marketing background, so the first two aspects are easy. But what about the rest?
If you can’t produce, maintain quality, or handle the back end of a business, you will fail. If you can’t do even just one of those five aspects, it’s time to polish your resume.
This is why the failure rate of new businesses is 90% just inside the first year. That figure becomes 98.3% by the twentieth year.
That’s right. Understand the implications. Only 1.7% of all entrepreneurs make it to just their twentieth year in business.
If you can’t do it yourself, then you need to find someone you trust absolutely to fill in the gaps. Without that person, you’ll have no chance of success.
Let me leave you with this.
This is the time of year, when I’m able to follow up on older leads. I’m past the insanity of tax season and reasonably caught up with all of the other work that’s been put on hold, so I’m able to make a few telephone calls.
Potential clients generally only call when they have a problem. Sometimes it’s a bad accountant. Maybe they’re behind in their tax returns. They might be having problems financing a purchase, or maybe they’re just unprofitable.
But in one way or another, they all have some sort of accounting, tax, or finance problem.
So I follow up on my older leads, and one phenomenon happens every year. Many of those leads end up either being wrong numbers or people telling me that they closed down. Why?
Because they weren’t well-rounded entrepreneurs.
What we do isn’t easy. Most are incapable. But I’m telling you now, without question, doubt, or hesitation, that if you don’t handle the accounting, tax, and finance portions of your business, you will fail.
Again, most entrepreneurs come from a sales and marketing background. As such, they’re lousy at the back end, and this is where we can help.
If you have problems, no matter what they are, please call. Whatever you may need, handling accounting, tax, and finance issues is our stock and trade. It’s what we’ve done successfully for the past thirty-one years.
If you can’t do it yourself, then we can be that trusted partner dealing with the headaches and making the problems go away. Please call us today.
*Words from our exceptional leadership
