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I saw reports today that three national retail chains are shutting down or severely cutting back.
That puts me into a more reflective mood. I realize that there are indeed times where it’s appropriate to given in to the painful reality.
This has happened especially in the context of volunteer organizations. Sometimes there just isn’t enough heart and momentum to continue – like we saw many times during the pandemic.
Read the rest of this entry »We’ve all been there, the greatest embarrassments of our careers.
The hard part is being really honest with yourself, as you probably saw the failure coming and just hoped that you’d be able to find your away around it.
Jim Collins articulated this idea well in Good to Great:
Read the rest of this entry »We try to make our businesses fairly resilient. Investments will fluctuate, customers will come and go, disasters will happen.
The smaller you are, the more you’ll feel it. That’s just the way it is.
But I don’t see leaders spending as much attention on critical roles that depend too much on a single person. Especially themselves.
Read the rest of this entry »How much do you trust those you do business with?
I’ve talked a lot about delivering to expectations, but this is something different. This is about trust and integrity.
The fact is that society only functions well when people are able to trust each other. Not only on a transactional level, but also at the personal relationship level. Let me give you an example.
Why is it that apologizing is one of the hardest things to do? Because it injures your pride.
I had this lesson smack me in the face a couple of times recently. It can be so difficult to admit I made a mistake, take responsibility, and apologize to those on the receiving end.
Maybe you’re human, too, and run into this at times. With your family, employees, or community.
Recently, CB Insights tabulated the top 20 reasons startups fail. There are some fascinating conclusions in there, but I simply want to focus on the top reason, the one which contributes to 42% of failures:
No market need.
At one level, this is the most obvious conclusion, not worth more thought. But let’s look further.
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I’ve written profiles for about 80 values-driven businesses, and one of them shut down last week. As I think about it, there are probably 7 or 8 which have failed in the last five years.
That’s better than average, actually, as the SBA estimated that 95% of startups don’t survive their first five years. But it’s not a comforting thought.
As someone who is trying to do something special, even world-changing, in your business, why don’t statistics like this cause you to just give up?
Read the rest of this entry »THERE’S A WELL WORN STATISTIC 
which states that 95% of businesses fail in five years. Or something like that.
I’m not even going to bother looking it up, because it doesn’t matter.
This is just a way to discourage people, to make me somehow feel better than you because I was able to land a real job while you’re … frittering your life away trying to do that “start your own business thing.”
It’s not real.
And it doesn’t matter.
The Values-Based Business 