Written By: Avishek Singh

4 Reasons Most Business Don’t Reach 6 Figures

It was in the year 2010. Back then, I was preparing for a competitive examination. I stayed with four enthusiastic roommates who were always keen on becoming rich. Every day, one or the other used to come up with a revolutionary idea, at least they thought so. One day, they finally decided to put a revolutionary idea into practice and started a business. Later that year, I moved out for my studies. Nine years later, I came across a facebook profile of one of my roommates and could not stop myself to call him. He is married now and works in the IT industry. There were so many things that have changed. I was eager to know about their business. Surprisingly, it was shut in the same year, I had moved out. 

Did you know that less than half of the business survive past the 5th year of its incorporation? 

Why do businesses fail to live up to their expectations?

In-ability to foresee a problem: Anticipating a problem and taking measures to minimize or prevent it, is a key leadership trait. Most people are so overshadowed with their achievement of starting a business that their visibility is quite short-ranged. 

Example: You started your business and began selling your manufactured boots. With the steady rise in the number of customers, you are all set to invest more and expand your business. What you fail to notice is that you never followed up on your customers about the feedback. May be out of curiosity, people may have bought a product, but they may have a superior liking for a competitor’s product due to whatever reasons. This may eventually turn out to be a lethal problem for your business life. The business which once looked like reaching 6 figure mark, dies a slow death. 

Hyper Activeness: Do you know what is important to take forward from day 1 of the business to its entire life? Enthusiasm. We begin a task with all our energy and as we are into it, the energy, the focus, and the curiosity keep drifting. As a result, it directly impacts the business. 

Example: Shyam Anand began his business with a lot of curiosity. His friends congratulated him on his new journey. He was keen on developing brochures, newsletters, distributing pamphlets and busy advertising his stuff. With initial failure, he recognized that things aren’t as easy he thought out to be. Thus his curiosity level goes down. He begins turning up late for his business and invested less time for building it up. Lack of active participation and grit to continue further kills your business. 

One Man Army: a Most business which do not have a team, fail to live up to its potential.  Why? A business requires advertising, marketing, reaching out to people, identifying a problem, fixing it before the damage happens and most importantly, for creating a network. 

Example: Ravi Das started his business of printing examination question papers for the schools by collaborating with schools. He resisted the idea of making a team as it would

require dividing profits, and add many other responsibilities. Mr. Ravi worked quite hard to get the first order and eventually got one.  He had a target date. He began working day in and day out to complete his order on time and then one day he fell ill. His productivity went down terribly. Imagine, what difference it could have made if he had a team. A new business started with the intention of reaching 6 figure mark, just couldn’t keep up with the expectations due to the lack of a good team. 

No Target Audience: Selling your trendy sports shoes to a group of senior citizens who have little interest in your product is a waste of resources, time and money. Focussing on the target audience thus becomes so much more important. 

Example: Mr. Sharma had a family business of manufacturing cycles since 1960. Back then it was acceptable to make a simple traditional cycle as everyone used this mode of transport. Over the years if Mr. Sharma’s business model does not change, and continues to make a traditional-looking cycle, his business would fail to compete further as the target audience for cycles have changed drastically. 

These are the core reasons why most businesses fail to reach 6 figure mark. If you are planning to begin one, do keep these factors into consideration. Good luck for your new venture.