Five Reasons Entrepreneurs Fail

So many young enterprisers take business advice from other people who have never owned or operated their own business. There is so much more to running a business than just a good business plan. Only those who have been through the ups and downs can truly show others the pitfalls, risks and common mistakes. Take it from an entrepreneur who has failed: The expression, “Had I known then what I know now,” is not just an expression.

This webinar will point out the most common mistakes that usually produce tragic results. After nearly a decade of self-employment, Scott Albert will share 5 Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Fail. Many learned through experience…others through observation…all avoidable.

Seating is limited! Register today!

Click link for registration information https://student.gototraining.com/r/4820575986846902784

MGIF

Every Monday morning, I make a weekly agenda for myself.  Nothing extensive…just a few important items on which to focus for the week.  Every Friday, I am discouraged at the fact that so few items are crossed off of the list.  It seems like my weekly agenda rarely changes.  This is a problem that many self-employed people or small business owners experience.  While most workers embrace the notion of TGIF, small business owners live in the notion of MGIF, My Goodness It’s Friday!

As a small business owner, my number one priority…day in and day out...is the development of new business.  New business keeps me in business and assures that I can make monthly payroll.  A few core products or services will keep the doors open, but only new business can contribute to expansion or growth.  I am certain that any business owner or commissioned sales rep can sympathize.  As such, our daily grind includes cold calls, lunches, meetings over coffee and evening networking events.  It is a 24 hour a day task chasing down leads and possibilities.  I love it.  But what happens to everything else?

It is common to wake up on a Saturday morning and realize the phone bill was due on Wednesday.  Often we are responding to last Tuesday’s emails while we drink our Sunday morning coffee.  And, how many of us are up proofreading proposals at midnight while Jay Leno makes jokes in the background?  I also teach college courses two to three nights per week, coach my daughter’s softball team and play guitar in a local blues band!   Enterprisers have to live this way.  It is our nature.  So, good enterprisers must develop strategies to avoid the MGIF trap.

First and foremost it is critical that enterprisers hire opposites.  They say in relationships that opposites attract.  I have learned that in business only opposites survive.  When I first started hiring employees and consultants, I had a tendency to hire people just like me.  We ended up with a bunch of scouts trying to defend a fort!  Nobody was taking care of the day-to-day operations.  I learned over time to seek out people who like to do the things I do not like to do or simply do not have the time to do.  Now, I look for investigative characters, people who like to mull over data and think about daily problem solutions.  I seek out conventional workers, who are organized and very systematic; they are critical to new projects because they take care of all the nuts and bolts. 

A lot of my thinking was based on a career development theory set forth by John Holland.  Holland broke down the world of work into six categories: Realist (hands on workers), Investigative (thinkers), Artistic (creative people), Social (those who help others), Enterprising (leaders & risk takers), Conventional (organized and systematic.)  Using these definitions, I thought about which were most like me.  Knowing myself better than I did before and recognizing my deficiencies has helped me better identify opposites.  I am very Social, Enterprising and Artistic by nature.  Therefore, when organizing a training or taking on a new project, I seek out those with the opposite characteristics.  It is a work in progress, but I find business slowly becoming more efficient and effective having deployed this hiring strategy.  I still experience those MGIF moments.  Still, I did find time to write this article on a Friday morning.

Workforce on the Web!

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Workforce-on-the-Web-.html?soid=1112173962602&aid=MljD2-AAl58

Small Business Dilemma

Many of my colleagues and/or competitors would include education institutions, government agencies and even non-profits.  It is very difficult to compete as a for-profit company when most of my competitors are not-for-profit, which makes them eligible for many grants and contracts for which I am not.  You would think this might be the biggest challenge, but it is not.

As a small for-profit consulting agency, I am not restricted by bureaucracy, branding or a traditional way of doing things.  This, as many of you probably know, allows for some outside the box thinking.  But here’s an example of what happens.  At the end of 2012, as a courtesy, I approached a large government training institution about a concept to conduct a virtual workforce development conference, but was basically told they were not interested.  So, my company launched the project independently.  It turned out to be relatively successful, but not as successful as it could have been had I had an institutional partner to co-sponsor the conference.

Yesterday, I received an announcement that the same agency who told me they were ‘not interested’ will be conducting a virtual workforce conference this summer!  This happens all of the time in my business.  Large, non-innovative agencies will just wait for the little guy to be creative and then steal their concepts.  I’m curious.  Is this just specific to the workforce development industry or do other small businesses experience the same thing?