I always wanted to interview business people who have failed, the type that opened up a shop and six months later BAM they’re gone. No luck as yet, most of the people who have failed like this in business I have not had any contact with.

But the more you look the more you can see them (Business failures that is). There was a store here yesterday and now nothing, in fact my wife and I often have a hard time remembering what was there before hand!

What happened to cause these failures, could it have been prevented, could it have struggled on a bit further and get past the tipping point? I guess we will never really know.

I heard about a business that wrapped up many years ago, the guy who ran it said it went under due to a lack of knowledge of marketing, which funnily enough he ended up working in marketing and sales!

What does it, what causes these failures

• Lack of knowledge about business?
• Lack of start up funds?
• lack of product and or service knowledge?
• Lack of... oh I don’t know, pick anything…

It’s seems to be all about lack.

Is it that simple, have an abundance of information, funds and knowledge, put it into action and see results? Wow that would be a mind blowing thing…

What people do though is ignore this form of logic (to some degree) and get so emotionally connected to their business idea they ignore the logic. Sure there are plenty of people who have some of the logic happening but still get entangled in the emotion to go in a bit blind to the business situation.

My Accountant advised me to watch my ‘exit strategy’ on a business deal I did, nope I sailed blindly in, no exit strategy (didn’t know what one was…) and got cleaned out. (Should have stayed home and relaxed while paying someone to send $5 bills out to lots of people in the mail). sigh…

I guess the big challenge is somehow having the sense to look at the business idea from enough perspectives to make the research useful but too many people don’t know where to start or what to do next.

It comes down to research, let’s face it you wouldn’t buy a small child’s bike if you are an adult wanting to ride to work… (Unless you’re a clown perhaps…) So learn to ask more of the right questions to get more of the right answers to prevent the BAM effect ripping the guts out of your wallet and causing you deep emotional scars.