Over the past several years, I've had the opportunity to work with hundreds of businesses.
And while I prefer to have really long-term relationships with them, sometimes it just
doesn't work out.
Sometimes it's because those businesses fail.
And because I work so closely with a lot of those business owners, I can tell you why
the majority of those ones that I work with happen to fail, stay tuned.
Hi, my name is Mike Mancini, helping you market simplify and impact your business.
So why do most business owners fail?
Why do most businesses go down?
I can speak to this from personal experience of why some of my past businesses have failed.
And in retrospect, it's very easy to see.
And when I look at some of the businesses I've worked with in the past and why they
are no longer operating, it is for one reason.
And one reason only.
They don't know.
They don't know their business.
They don't know what's working.
They don't know what's not.
They don't know what to do next or where to spend their time.
Let's break all this down.
The number one thing they don't know about their business is they don't know where to
put their time or efforts.
I have seen countless people working on their business plans, perfecting their business
plan, trying to get their business plan perfect.
And they never get open.
They never get off the ground.
They never get a single client.
A business plan can be useful, but if you are going to spend all of your time perfecting
your business plan, versus opening the doors to your business and actually making some
money, then you are never going to have a business.
All you're going to have is an incomplete business plan.
You can't spend all of your time planning and none of your time executing.
You must get out there, get in front of people and start to build your business.
The next thing they don't know about their business is the things that they haven't tried.
And some of the reasons why they haven't tried them is number one, they're too scared to,
or number two, they just don't want to.
They might've seen other things that people have tried and they're like, "Oh, that's too
overwhelming or that's too hard.
Or I just can't do that."
And the minute that they start to believe that they're already running into roadblocks.
Running a business is not easy.
Running a business is always changing.
You have got to get out there and you've got to try new things and you've got to especially
try things that scare you.
Number three, and this might be one of the biggest things that I see when I'm working
with businesses is, they don't want to learn because they think they know it already.
I talk to these people all the time, when we start looking into their business and into
their marketing.
We start to figure out, all right, where are you spending your time?
Where are you spending your money?
The problem is they will sit there and tell me, "I've tried this, it doesn't work."
Well number one, maybe you tried it incorrectly.
Number two, sometimes they've tried these things five and six years ago.
Technology changes, trends change.
Just because something didn't work six years ago does not mean it will not work today,
especially if it's done correctly.
And I'm not saying that some of the things they've tried haven't worked.
What I'm saying is, they are shutting the door before even really understanding how
it could work or what may have gone wrong in the past.
As a business owner you don't know everything, things change businesses, change industries
change.
You have to be open to learning more about it.
The number four thing of what they don't know about their business, is they think they know
everything about their industry.
I get it.
These people are experts.
They do know a lot of things about their industry, but they don't know everything.
They don't know what's working for all of their competitors.
And just because something works in New York in your industry doesn't mean it's going to
work in a little town of 2000 people.
You have to get out there.
You have to learn.
You have to try things.
You have to open yourself up for failure.
The number five thing they think they know, is they think they know everything about their
business.
Am I an expert in my business?
Absolutely.
But do I know everything that I need to know about it?
No I do not.
But that does not mean that I stopped trying.
I don't like accounting.
I hate accounting, but I understand I need to know enough about it to tell people what
they need to do.
To tell people what I need from them.
To explain or to have that communication with my accountant on what I need to do.
There's certain aspects of my business that I understand better than most, but am I still
learning?
Absolutely.
I happen to deal in Google Ads.
Do I know everything there is to know about Google Ads?
Absolutely not.
That's an industry I'm trying to learn every day.
Inside my business, do I know everything there is to know about Google Ads?
Am I the be all end all?
Absolutely not.
I have a team that works with me on that and you'd be shocked at how much you learn from
each other if you have that communication.
Number six is people believe they know what works for their competition.
Unless you are inside that business or you have inside knowledge, you've seen the books,
you've seen the returns, chances are you have no idea.
I can't begin to tell you how many businesses I work with successful and very, very entry
level businesses that don't track their leads.
But they think they know where all these other companies are getting their leads from.
How do you know?
Are they tracking it?
Are they giving you that information?
Because they're a major competitor, they're probably not.
Oh, you saw them running a commercial, so you want to run a commercial?
How do you know if that's working for them?
Oh, you see them all over the internet using paid ads.
Are they doing it correctly?
Is it profitable?
You don't know.
You cannot think that you understand how your competition works or what works for them.
You need to get out there.
You need to try certain things.
But most of all, you need to track what's working.
And what's not.
If you're trying to compete with a Fortune 500 company, I promise you they're doing marketing
things that you can't even imagine yet.
You cannot compete on that level.
You have to compete in bite sized chunks.
You need to try certain things.
Some things are going to work better for small businesses than they are for large corporations.
Don't look at what that Fortune 500 company is doing and try to emulate it.
You have to make it work for you, especially when it comes to marketing.
And the last reason why a lot of these businesses fail is, they are being lazy.
They don't know what they don't know about their industry, about their competitors, about
what's working and what's not, about how to scale.
They don't understand how to take that next step and to try to figure out what is going
to work for them and what is not.
Now, this isn't meant to break down why every business fails, because obviously these aren't
the only reasons.
However, from my experience, from what I see and from what I've done in my own businesses
that have failed, these are some very big problems and some gaping holes.
Inside the businesses I've had that succeed, these holes aren't as glaring.
We know where every single one of our leads comes from.
We know that we need to learn more about what we do.
We know we need to learn more about our competitors.
We know we need to look inside to our own business and figure out what is broken?
What needs help?
Where are we good?
Where can we expand?
So I hope that showed you some things that maybe can help you out inside your business
and keep it from failing.
If you think of some other things that other people should avoid to help their businesses
become successful, do me a favor, let us know in the comment section below, I'd love to
hear about it.
And if you want to see one of the most important tools that we use in our business and it's
free, I have a lead tracking spreadsheet over to the right.
This is where we track 100% of every single lead that comes into our business.
Why?
Because we know that 41.5% of our leads come from our business partners.
We know that 17.54% of our leads come from YouTube.
We know what is working.
We know what is not when it comes to our marketing so that we can take our money and put it towards
what is.
This is part of understanding and knowing what's working inside your business.
Not guessing, not sitting here saying I know it's working because the phone is ringing
because that is not how you track.
I need to know that 10.69% of our business comes from paid leads.
I know that 24.94% of our business comes from referrals.
How do I know that?
Because we track it and we track it religiously.
Over to the right hand side you'll see a link for that video as well, as well as some of
our other tools that we use inside our business day to day.
Thanks so much for watching.
Hope it helps.