Common Business Frustrations

1. Small businesses fail at a discouraging rate: 57% fail in their first year; 80% are gone after five years.
2. Most small business owners work too hard and receive too little reward.
3. Most businesses are in chaos. They lack a way of doing business that works.
4. For most business owners, their businesses don't serve their lives; their businesses consume their lives.
5. Most small business owners don't have a personal life plan that purposefully guides their daily actions.
6. Most small business owners don't understand that they can and should create a business that works without them.
7. Most small business owners perform too many functions (wear too many hats), and have no plan for freeing themselves from the technical work of their businesses.
8. Most small businesses don't have a system for recruiting, hiring and training effective people.
9. Nearly all small businesses are organized around the existing people, rather than business processes. This leads to inconsistent performance and creates havoc when someone leaves.
10. Most small business owners blame poor results on their people.
11. Not feeling they can depend on their employees, most small business owners feel trapped in the business.
12. There is usually confusion within organizations about who reports to whom. Accountabilities in small businesses often overlap and are unclear, which adds to the confusion.
13. Most small businesses don't produce consistent, predictable results.
14. Most small business owners don't know who their most probable consumer is.
15. They don't know how to identify and appeal to the emotional needs of their consumers.
16. They don't examine the impact that their entire business process has on their customers.
17. They market and sell "by the seat of their pants" rather than by applying proven marketing and selling strategies.
18. Most business owners believe extraordinary people are the key to a successful business.
19. Most small business owners don't realize that in the best businesses, systems run the business and ordinary people run the systems.
20. Most people don't view business in a holistic way, as an integrated set of systems that interact with each other.
21. Most small business owners don't use quantification to measure effectiveness, and documentation to ensure predictability.