The love of business

Every year many people all over the world go to their partners and excitedly claim they are going to start a business. Yet it is also interesting to know that there is an estimated 50% of those new businesses fail in their first year and a massive 95% of those remaining businesses fail in their second year, so the question is why the huge failure rate?

If we look at this from the emotional intelligence point of view rather than the usual logical left brain approach, we find that the number one attribute that keeps any business alive is passion and if the person or people running the business have little passion to what the are doing how can they withstand the knocks and blows that any business will take on its path of growth. Every business at some point will take a challenge, this could be in the form of a declining market, competition, lack of knowledge, lack of skills, low finance, disagreements with staff, or a depression and they are only the environmental issues. Other issues a new business can face are fear, anxiety, arguments between spouses, loss of income and stress which slowly eat away at the new business owner’s energy and drive making it harder and harder to remain focused, there is a saying in business that goes “you are just heading into a storm, your in a storm, or you are just leaving a storm. There is never any rest in business.

Hence the reason why it is essential to have a love of the business and never to go in to self employed for a pure money making idea. Although in saying that some will turn back and say “but it is what I can buy with the money that motivates me” but then we only need to look at the huge rate of business failures to see that that attitude still wont be enough.

So what is the answer? Well from the many businesses I have helped start the main successful ones are the people who use heir business to contribute to something which is bigger than they are, something which makes them a part of a community, something which draws them closer to people and when people contribute and get closer to others in the process, the people they are helping or serving (depending on how you look at it) will also want their business to succeed as they know that there is somebody out there who is looking out for them, and how good do you feel yourself when somebody is out there looking out for you rather than just trying to take your money, we naturally feel drawn to these people and therefore want to buy from them. People buy people, not things.

So to succeed in your businesses or to succeed even more, look at what passion you can find in there and what difference you make to your customers. Become interested rather than just interesting!