Build, Grow, Fail, Repeat

Summary

Today, I want to talk about a loop that I think many entrepreneurs struggle with, something that is often unrecognised, and something that I personally struggled with. I've been in business for just over a decade and for six years, I struggled with this. It's what I call the success-failure cycle, the process of building a business, growing, failing, and then repeating the cycle. Build, grow, fail, repeat.

Now, some people say that you learn from your failures, that you can't be successful unless you've had a failure and that you wouldn't be the person that you are now without all those failures. I've learned a lot of my lessons through failure. I wouldn't be sitting here talking about what I'm talking about now if I hadn't experienced it in the past. So, whilst I agree you have to go through the failures to get to your destination, some of the failures can be avoided if you know what to look for.

So, this process of building a business, growing a business, failing, and repeating... build, grow, fail, repeat... I believe comes down to two fundamental reasons.

 

Reason 1: Not having the ability to recognise when your business is about to fail.

When you build your business, it's exciting. You build it, you grow it, but then it fails. Many business owners don't recognise when their business is about to fail. You have a growth curve that keeps going up, but you're going to overload your business. You're going to bring too much work in without the correct resources around you. You're going to stretch your cashflow. All these things occur with many start-up businesses.

You need to have the ability to recognise when there is a problem, when turnover is dropping, customers are complaining, you're coming up against challenges, key members of staff are leaving, when a process isn't working, you have to have the ability to understand that, and to fix your business. You can then go on to achieve the next level of growth.

Reason 2: Not being able to extract yourself from your business.

I used to tell myself things like, "Only I can do this, the business won't run without me." I often felt like I had to be the first through the door, the last to leave. It was hard work rather than smart work. It was working every hour, living a high-stress life, just to get the business to tread water, but that doesn't have to be the way. So, you should build your business from day one to extract yourself from the business.

Here are four key points that you can put in place to avoid the build, grow, fail, repeat.

Number 1: Systemise your business from day one. Build systems and processes. Any repetitive task that you find yourself doing, build a video around that, build some training around that, to get others to do it for you. Number 2: Understand your why, your mission, your purpose. Does your business match your why? Does it all tally up? If it does, you should push on, if not, you're most likely discovering what, for me, was a lack of fulfilment, and you will need to address that because it will come up and bite you. Number 3: Build a business that works for you, not the other way around. We often build this beast of a business that needs us to be in the business all of the time. So, make sure you make the shift to change that pattern. Number 4: Learn from others. Mentors, podcasts, training, books, audiobooks. There's so many resources from successful people now. We live in a time where education and knowledge is a new currency. You just need to be able to find the right person, discover the right information, and follow them, and hopefully you can learn from all of their mistakes.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.