1. Poor Preparation. I constantly run into small-business people who are so enamored with entrepreneurship that they fail to do proper pre-venture planning and preparation. Jerry Useem, when editor of Inc. magazine, said: “…most (entrepreneurs) are no more in touch with the reality of failure than say, the average 16 year old is in touch with the reality of death.” Entrepreneurs have a dream, and they are so caught up in it, they can only see success—and not the pitfalls that lay in wait for all unprepared businesspeople. Consequently, those pitfalls can be fatal.

2. Lack of Perseverance. Starting and running a successful small business is hard work—usually VERY hard work, and too many entrepreneurs are not up to the demands. Then, when something runs off the track, they don’t have what it takes to go that extra mile to get it back on track. Hard work alone will not necessarily make your business a success, but you can be sure that the lack of hard work is the kiss of death in a small business, especially a startup. Moreover, there is nothing wrong with “failure”—Thomas J. Watson once said that to have more successes, you needed to have more failures. The key in this instance is to “fail hard, and fail fast.” That is; work your business hard to the point of success or failure—don’t just let it wither and die on the vine. Too many entrepreneurs give up at the first real challenge their business encounters.

Obviously, there are many, many specific reasons why businesses perform poorly, but it has been my experience that if you dig down deep enough, you will find that some form of the above reasons are at the root cause of their problems.

Now, how do you think we can help small-business owners overcome these basic weaknesses?
Bob Foster´s last blog ..Small Business—Be Prepared

But, the thing that really concerns me today, is the loss of jobs in the U.S.—at any wage rate. I just read that 45% of the 27 million small businesses in the U.S. say they are currently not profitable. These businesses make up half the nation’s private, nonfarm GDP. In addition, I’m developing a “working paper” on the REAL failure rate of businesses in the U.S. (it’s much greater than the government acknowledges). Considering these two conditions, I am at a loss to come up with many ways to improve the situations you outlined in your comment.

I wrote a post recently on the continued, if not accelerating, outsourcing of jobs—both white-collar and blue-collar—and am concerned that if we ship all our jobs overseas…what will we have left? Does that mean that the U.S. must reduce its standard of living, and wage rates, to compete with the low labor costs in other countries? I find that intolerable.

So, what can we, and other citizens like us, do to turn this abysmal status around and help provide jobs that pay a living wage to all employees?

Thanks again for your comments—I truly appreciate them.
Bob Foster´s last blog ..Small Business—Be Prepared

1. Much has been written on the causes of this failure and in his Book “The Working Poor David Shipler wrote “many agree the biggest cause is the problems of the poor/woking poor is that the challenges they face are “interlocking” but the solutions are done in isolation”. For example, a good job is one thing but if you are unhealthy and don’t have insurance a job alone is not a solution.

2.In his book “Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets.” author Steven Goldberg observes that in the world of non profits to much money has been given to to many programs that have made to little a difference. He advocates a “centralized planning” approach for societal change. The same can be said for government spending. Massive bureaucracies handle billions of dollars in “isolated” programs like education, housing with no accountability for the results they produce.

3. Corporations get taxed and receive tax breaks and incentives for a variety of reasons. But again, how this revenue gets dispersed and spent…who knows. Could this be done more efficiently? The “living wage” initiative is something that perhaps could be implemented by better use of revenue generated from companies. To be brief there is a formula used to calculate a wage based on the cost of living in a particular area. If a company doesn’t provide health insurance for example, the hourly wage increases to cover the costs of the employee getting insurance.

Centralizing planning and control of government programs and decreasing the number of “buckets” the money goes into would perhaps be a way to take an integrated, not isolated approach to improving the quality of life for all. A living wage could perhaps be a solution to wage stagnation…

Just a thought!
Dave Wheeler´s last blog ..Strength…