Why do small businesses fail?

Using an old process improvement root cause analysis methodology, I asked “Why” five times to see where the answer landed.

 

  1. Question: Why do small businesses fail? Answer: They run out of money.

  2. Question: Why do they run out of money? Answer: They never raised enough money to cover all aspects of the business.

  3. Question: Why did they not raise enough money to cover all aspects of the business? Answer: They only focused on the product itself versus creating business operations to effectively deliver the product to the customer.

  4. Question: Why did they only focus on the product itself? Answer: They only focused on the product itself because they were not educated on “running a business” versus “developing a great idea”.

  5. Question: Why were they not educated on “running a business” versus “developing a great idea”. Answer: They did not know who to ask for help.

This was just an example. If you ask why 5 times, you may come up with a different answer and/or just disagree with mine.

At any rate, all small business owners should be educated on all aspects of running a business, from product development, to sales and operations, to service and fulfillment.

Don’t be one of those small businesses that fail. Operational excellence is one of the keys to sustainable growth!

Branner Consulting, LLC can help you identify, document, measure, monitor, and improve your key business operations processes. Our signature service is performing Business Operations Reviews for small businesses. Contact us today to get started. Using thought leadership and industry specific benchmarking, our team evaluates the current state of client’s day to day operations to determine best practices, lessons learned, and opportunities for business process improvements. We help you identify potential problems and help you solve them!