Your Dream Business Will Fail.
A quick scroll on social media and you will find “celebrity entrepreneur” selling the dream. “Start a side hustle, do what you love, open your own business, escape the rat race”. They are selling a very dangerous lie. A lie that leads to 90% of small businesses failing.
“the most tragic possibility of all for an adolescent business is that it actually survives” - Gerber
The problem is, this lie is alluring and very exciting at first. I know, I fell hook line a sinker into the trap. Ant Oxley and OxFit were one and the same. Without Ant Oxley there is no business. Chief Floor Sweeper, Director of Sales, Head Coach, whatever needs to be done, no problem, hard work is my middle name. Michael Gerber in the E-Myth, calls this the Infancy Phase of the business. I might be exhausted, but I am living the dream. What I didn’t understand is that “dream” is what makes 9/10 businesses become a living nightmare.
I opened a gym because I love coaching, if I love coaching I should open a gym right? This is what Gerber refers to as the “fatal assumption”. If you don’t love every aspect of business ownership (sales, marketing, hiring, firing, systems, accounting, shipping, etc) then stop right now and go and coach for someone else. Just because you can do the day to day work of a business, does not mean you should run the business, in fact that is the exact opposite reason. Knowing the day to day work is what could crush your business.
It wasn’t until Michael Gerber called me “Greedy and Self-Indulgent” that I finally realized what I was doing. “I can outwork everyone, I can do it better than everyone else”, lead me on a path where I created the world’s worst job for myself. I didn’t have a boss, but the customers who were once an opportunity were now starting to feel like the problem, when the only problem was me. I needed help, I was desperate so the first person who showed an interest was hired.
Finally, I was free to live the dream. In the E-Myth, this is known as the Adolescent Phase and it’s great, until it’s not. There are no systems and structures in the place for the new employees and so they make it up, the business starts to change and you start to lose your die-hard customers, the employee leaves or you find the courage to fire them, but then you are back into the infancy phase.
This is where according to the SBA 400,000 small businesses per year close their doors. This sounds sad, but “the most tragic possibility of all for an adolescent business is that it actually survives” says Gerber.
You can change this mindset. I know, because I have. But you have to be willing to get outside your comfort zone. You have to be willing to become a real entrepreneur. You have to stop being romantic about your business and you have to learn to appreciate the “Entrepreneurial Model”. Your business has to operate according to clear and recognizable rules and principles.