FAILURE is the new SUCCESS

Whilst there is an abundance of information available on SUPER SUCCESSFUL businesses, with articles, news feeds, books, magazines, podcasts all brimming with news of the next ‘over night success’, I’ve spent the last 3.5 years studying businesses that fail!

I’m not referring to the local corner shop or yet another car valeting company that is no more, I’m talking about brands which used to dominate the British High street, but are no more! (Companies like, Toys r Us, Woolworth, Comet) you see, I learnt a long time ago, you will always learn far more from failing that you ever will from winning!

Think about that for a second! 

When was the last time everything was going exceptionally well, the enquiries were flooding in and you were struggling to keep up with demand, did you STOP and spend time analysing WHY it was happening? You simply don’t. You get on with servicing the current demand, enjoy the moment and celebrate accordingly.

No, it’s only when things don’t go as well as we had planned do we stop and begin to frantically ask WHY?

So what can we learn from studying failure? What lessons can be gleaned and used to prevent the same fate be falling ourselves, that we may learn sufficiently that the opposite may be the result?

LOTS.

You see, whilst there is far fewer people happy to share with you the failure within their business, the information is harder to come by and often more scattered causing us to have to really dig around to pull the information together. SO MUCH information can be learned if only we ever thought to look.

Over the past 3-4 years I’ve studied almost 150 high street brands of yesteryear to learn what caused their downfall And the results were SHOCKING!

Whilst there were a hundred and one reasons (otherwise known as excuses) given as why the company had failed, it boiled down to 2 fundamental flaws which ultimately determined they were destined to fail!

From this I began working on what actions could, should they have taken to prevent this, and remain the high street brands we all knew and loved.  It’s taken me well over a year to compile the results sufficiently to formulate a program to which business owners can follow to mitigate the same fate which has resulted in launching our #ADDAZERO Business Challenge.

One element which fundamentally caused businesses to fail was where the emphasis was placed between People, Systems and Processes!

The other element can be identified by acknowledging EVERY business can be segmented into 8 parts.  It is of fundamental importance that every business owner acknowledges each of these 8 parts and the relationship each has each other.  More than 65% business failures could be identified as a failure to acknowledge the impact change either within or impacting one part of the business had on the other parts.  The moment the equilibrium was upset, a silo mentality could soon be observed, where parts not affected failed to amend accordingly to compensate for the change, ultimately resulting in an unsustainable business model and eventual failure.

Our #ADDAZERO Business Challenge has been devised to aid business owners in 3 ways:

1. Ensure the business has a stable foundation to prevent cracks from appearing as the business moves from a growth to SCALE business plan.
2. Identify the additional requirements on which to build a SCALE business model without affecting the foundations.
3. Identify the final additional resources required should the business owner wish to replicate, franchise or exit the business.

What I’ve also found is that whilst ALL these aspects are required, the reluctance of business owners of either established or sizeable businesses to return to STEP 1 even if only to ensure they have everything crossed off, and their desire to move to parts 2 and 3 prior to fully checking and implementing part 1, resulting in poor results and a volatile growth plan!

This is by no means a ‘quick fix, overnight success story’ but it does ensure you have a stable business capable of significant and sustainable growth without risk of going or growing broke, and with the stability to be unaffected by change by having the flexibility within both people, systems and processes to ‘ride any storm’ and come out the other side victorious.

To determine if your ready to begin the #ADDAZERO Business Challenge, simply click below to access our e-book which you will require to complete and return in order to establish if you and your business are ready to #ADDAZERO!