I had a really interesting conversation with an
extremely frustrated former business owner this week and I have a feeling that
it might well resonate with large number of you reading this.
The business owner (we will call him Norman) had
started his business in 2003 and, in the first year, it far exceeded all his
expectations in terms of growth. During year two, he found himself having to
hire more and more people to keep up with the demand for his product and his
team quickly grew to over thirty people.
As for Norman, even though he had all these people
at his disposal, he was working more hours, fighting more fires, seeing less
and less of his family, and his stress levels meant that he was finding himself
making more and more trips to the Doctors or Chemists to get a magic pill to
help him feel better.
In early 2005, Norman decided to reduce the size of
his company and so that he would be able to overcome his stress and get closer
to his family once again. He reduced his marketing, the size of his team (which
he found really stressful!) and the number of hours he spent at work. He did
this with the expectation that his stress levels would dramatically drop; in
reality, that never happened… He soon found himself working even more hours,
fighting even more fires and, surprisingly, for less reward because with less
work coming in, there was less profit dropping to the bottom line.
After a few months and a lot of soul searching,
Norman decided to reverse his decision to downsize and started growing his
business again. Once again, the business grew really quickly and Norman’s
health began to decline until one day in 2006 he suffered a heart attack. Fortunately, it was a minor one and he was
able to recover quickly.
Once again he found himself downsizing his business
and laying more people off. It was just as stressful the second time around.
Fast forward seven years and we find Norman still
stuck in the loop of growing, stressing and downsizing.
Eventually the whole experience took its toll and
Norman suffered a further heart attack. This time though it was different his
recovery took a lot a longer and in his absence his business went into sharp
decline. When he finally got back to work he realised that his values had
shifted and he was now placing a much bigger emphasis on his family and
himself. He also realised that he didn’t have the fight in him to rebuild his
now struggling business so he decided to close it and that meant the loss of 35
jobs.
A sad end and yet a story that, although the
circumstances may be different, is being replicated day in day out throughout
the UK.
An interesting question here is “How many years was
Norman in business?” easy you might say “He’s was in business twelve years.” Has
he really or has he like so many business owners, been in business just one
year yet lived that same year twelve times?
Norman is no different to a vast majority of the
people who are brave enough to start their own business. He started off with a
great deal of enthusiasm and big dreams that quickly dwindled and got forgotten
about during the day to day busyness of running his business.
It is a sad fact in the UK that for every business
that opens its doors today 80% will not see their fifth birthday and a further
five years out and 80% of the remaining 20% will not survive to see their 10th
birthday. A simpler way of putting this is that for every one hundred
businesses that open their doors today only four will survive to tell the tale
in ten years’ time……
It
needn’t be that way….
Over the coming weeks we are going to focus our blog
on ideas, strategies, tactics and a system that Norman and any other business
owner could use to ensure not only survival but also that they thrive in any
business environment.
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