How not to Succeed in Business

Here it is: the absolutely guaranteed secret of success in business...

Identify what people want and provide it to them efficiently.

Honestly. It really is that simple.

This, of course, begs the question, “If it really is that simple, why it is that there are so few successful people?”

So the real issue is not so much how to succeed in business as how not to succeed. There are three basic methods of failing to succeed in business.

Method One is to fail to identify accurately what people want. Most failed businesses make the mistake of trying to sell what the entrepreneur thinks the customer wants rather than what the customer actually wants. This is an easy mistake to make, given that customers are often unclear, not least in their own minds, what they really want. The lack of clarity may deceive the entrepreneur into thinking that he can exploit the uncertainty by clever marketing. This is a classic error because, although clever selling may be deceptively successful in the short term, it cannot build a viable business if what is being sold is essentially unwanted.

Method Two is to fail to deliver what it wanted in an efficient way. This covers both relative inefficiency – where one is simply not as efficient as one’s competitors – and absolute inefficiency – where one is so inefficient that one cannot even turn a profit even if one has no competitors! Inefficiency can take many forms – inefficient marketing, inefficient financing, inefficient strategy, inefficient cost control, inefficient management, inefficient operations, inefficient pricing, inefficient administration, etc – any one of which can destroy a company with a sound business idea to serve an accurately identified customer want.

Method Three, however, is by far the most common.

It is, quite simply, not to try – or, at least, not to try properly.

The vast majority of people do not try at all. This is not necessarily to their discredit. They define success by standards other than financial. They have other priorities – perhaps their families, or a hobby, or a political or a charitable cause – and money is only a means to an end to them. They may well be right.

Yet there are others who do try, but try so half-heartedly that they would have been better off not trying at all.

Although commitment does not guarantee success, it is a necessary precondition. Anyone setting out to succeed in business must understand that it demands focus – at least in the key phases. It demands that one works when others are idle, and that one invests when others are spending. One must accept that enterprise is risk – and risk means being prepared to sacrifice.

All sorts of people have found success in business. Private enterprise is the only true meritocracy. Yes, it helps to be intelligent or good-looking or socially skilled or born into money or well-connected, but there are people who have succeeded without any of those advantages – and people who failed despite having them all.

Many multi-millionaires are people from a poor background with little education and little in the way of social sparkle. Some are plodders. What they had was a commitment to their businesses, based on a commitment to succeed.

While it is true that many with a similar commitment still fail – either because they make mistakes or because the ball bounces the wrong way or, most commonly, through a combination of both – it is unlikely that one will ever succeed without it.