You haven’t suffered enough, is that why you won’t change?
About a year ago I was at a BBQ with a group of friends and one of them announced he was going into business and wanted a few words of advice. For the sake of this article let’s call him John. A few of the people attending had run successful businesses and each one made the mistake of offering some advice on what he needed to do to succeed.
I say it was a mistake because everyone was met with the “my business will be different and that won’t happen to me” response. Then one of the guys gave up in frustration and before walking off said “best of luck mate you just haven’t suffered enough yet! Get back to me when you have and I will be happy to help”.
I realised he was spot on. Why is it that when people first go into business they are reluctant to take on any advice? And then once they are in the thick of the day to day of running a business they are then too busy to ask for help?
Recently I caught up with John and asked him how the business was going. He was busy working 6 days and sometimes 7 days a week. Then the usual story of trying to do the books at night, chasing debtors, his employees were all hopeless, not enough “good” clients, not making enough money etc. etc.
I reminded him about the conversation from 12 months earlier and he remembered the comment about “not having suffered enough”. He says he is suffering from the long hours, stress and uncertainty and wishes he had taken acted on the advice. Unfortunately he was now too busy and would like to chat again about how to improve his business “when he wasn’t so busy”.
I think that means that he still has some more suffering to go.
What John has to realise is that the difference between success and failure for him is some basic business knowledge. He just doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
As Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking that we used when we created them.”
[Next: why are business owners in particular so hard to help?]
Got something to say? Join the small business forum here at DynamicBusiness.com.au.
