Kansas City Business Coaching for Aspiring Business Owners

Why Small Businesses Fail: 3 things you need to know

by Shawn Kinkade on June 27, 2009

Plan for success photo by WorldIslandInfo at FuturistMovies

About 1/3 of Small Businesses fail in the first 2 years, and just over half fail within 4 years (according to an SBA Study done in 2005). These are always controversial studies – how do they define Small Business? How do they define failure? Wouldn’t there be a big difference (higher?) failure rate in the last 2 or 3 years? All great points, but in general we can agree that there are a lot of businesses that don’t make it.

On the other hand, there are also lots of examples of businesses that are still in business but aren’t really making it. I ran across an interesting article in Fortune Small Business that initially caught my eye because it was about a local Kansas City business. The article on ‘Why Small Businesses Fail‘ is about a home furnishings boutique in Prairie Village called the Curious Sofa (caution the site loads with music on). If you haven’t been, Curious Sofa is a great store with lots of interesting stuff to look at.

Here’s the part from the article that I thought was really interesting:

Dusenberry’s financials explained clearly why her business has potential – and why she’s in trouble….But here’s the thing: Her statements show that she’s lost money eight years in a row.

Every year, Dusenberry said, she told herself that she was going to work harder and sell more stuff, but working harder doesn’t fix a broken business model.

Working hard, loving what you do, and having a skill or product that other people want enough to pay for are all part of the puzzle, but there are other things that are even more important and if you don’t figure them out, it can be a long way down.

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Are your Business Cards really helping you?

by Shawn Kinkade on June 24, 2009

In case you’re wondering – this is what it looks like…it’s a meatcard, more specifically it’s a business card made out of meat. I was just in the process of ordering new cards, but decided these weren’t really what I was looking for (although they would generate a lot of attention…).

I’ve needed to order new cards for quite a while and finally last week I managed to get that done. The actual ordering part isn’t hard, but I knew that I wanted to make some sort of change to my cards and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. The Meatcard is too much for me but it is important for your card to stand out in some way.

If you’re like me, you likely have a stack of business cards somewhere near your desk from past meetings that you’ve had. If you spread all of those cards out, how many of them actually stand out?

More importantly, if you threw your own in the pile, would it stand out?

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Do you Gnome your Customers well?

by Shawn Kinkade on June 20, 2009

photo by Per Ola Wiberg

Although it’s starting to get too hot, it’s still gardening season and my wife has been doing a lot of work on our yard and flowers. Some of it’s clean-up and the stuff you have to do every year, but a lot of it is finding new plants and flowers and figuring out what’s going to live and what’s not (and why).

We’re within a 5 mile drive of at least 1/2 dozen places that sell plants – several big box type of stores and a few local nursery operations.

The big corporate stores compete almost entirely on price – although they’re not necessarily the cheapest across the board, they are generally going to have lower prices. However the overall quality is pretty suspect (unless you get there the day of a new shipment) and you are unlikely to get any real help or service.

It’s tough competition for the local stores…or is it?

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Have you ever been sunk by sunk costs?

June 11, 2009 Small Business Strategy

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of Sunk Costs – it’s one of those discussions that intellectually most people understand – as long as it applies to someone else! However when it comes to your situation, things aren’t always so clear.
Just so we’re on the same page, sunk costs are essentially old investments (time [...]

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Are You Battling the Marketing Monsters?

June 8, 2009 Marketing

photo by DuckBrown
It can be really tough to be in Professional Services – especially if you’re on your own.
Lawyers, Accountants, Doctors, Chiropractors, Consultants – there’s a bunch of people that fall into that list and all of them go out and fight the good fight during the day and then you’re expected to [...]

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