This question arose during one of my regular meet-ups with a couple of friends who set up their businesses at the same time as me and now are either struggling or have given up.

Careful consideration arrived at these points:

• Lack of processes in place: certainly in my case I didn’t have a series of processes as to how to run my business. This boils down to understanding what your business is about, what your customers really want, and how you can give it to them. Once this is established, the methods of how you are going to achieve this in the most efficient manner are the processes.

• Complicating my message: I suffered greatly with this one, as I had amassed a huge amount of information which I tried to impart to my customers, only resulting in bemusement and furrowed brows. Ideally a small business, especially a sole trader, should concentrate on one or two subjects or items that can be fully concentrated on, to make it easier to create efficient processes to market your service or product to the public.

• Lack of time management: this was one of my downfalls. I stupidly paid a great deal of money to subscribe to a course to learn how to manage my time, and failed dismally because it was aimed at American males in Sales that had nothing in common with my business and lifestyle. Also because I was trying to accomplish too much at once, with that nagging feeling that you aren’t getting done everything you want to, thus resulting in my running around like a headless chicken and achieving nothing.

• Lack of understanding my business problem: it was finally when I completed a SWOT analysis that I realised where I had been going wrong. It was showing me the bare-faced truth, even if I didn’t like it. By coming to terms with my inefficiencies, lack of business sense and resources, it dawned on me that it was time to give up. Every business should analyse its progress over the past year to see where it has to improve for the next.

• Lack of resources: this includes finance and outside help. Certainly my cash flow had taken a huge battering during the recession (that time management course, a client dying on me owing me a lot of money, and wasting my money on BNI in a group where nobody was interested in marketing during a recession). A reduced bank balance meant I couldn’t afford to outsource my activities to other professionals to alleviate my time problems and accomplish my ideas I so badly wanted to put into place. I needed to upgrade my software and to learn how to create videos, webinars, audios and much more.

• Lack of direction: I had ideas, but not the ways to make them come into fruition. I could watch other businesses accomplishing what I wanted to do, but didn’t understand the processes of how to make it happen for me. I knew I had a lot of knowledge, but didn’t know how to deliver it so others would want to use it for themselves. This resulted in nobody coming forward to ask for paid projects to give me that boost I so dreadfully needed, even if I had known how to fulfill it for them.

• Not giving a good impression: totally confusion on my account didn’t give the right message to my potential customers. If I didn’t even know how to explain exactly what I could do for them, how my business operated, explain details in simple ways so they could relate it to their own businesses, why would they want to take me on? And even if they did approach me, my lack of processes meant that I didn’t know how to find out exactly what the customer needed and how to accomplish it for them, how to manipulate the situation around to help me and make it easier for my business, how to protect myself against failure.

This isn’t beating myself up, it’s purely the realisation that some people are ideal candidates to manage a business, and others aren’t and should remain as employees, which is exactly what I have returned to being.

Related posts:

1. But what is this advert really saying?
2. How can questions help small businesses?
3. Buddies for Start-up Businesses?
4. How to get your leaflets to start working for you
5. How blogging and article writing help market businesses

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under Businesses, Just me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.