What makes businesses fail or stagnate?

Pretty simple question: What dooms certain businesses to fail or never grow beyond where they are at right now and presumably have been for years?

If you ask the business owner, it’s always the same answer: money. Except it’s not really money, it’s fear – money is easy to obtain if you have an idea and can justify it to someone who actually makes a business extending currency to people that can pay it back with the business profits.

Most of the time, the problem is in getting things done. Some like to call this execution, but as I mentioned before, if you’re a particularly earnest idiot you are still doomed to failure, despite your execution. (footnote: every single NCAA athlete hoping to go pro)

In the end, it really boils down to two things that are within your own control (third being the information / due dilligence but that can be outsourced / learned): work ethic and embrace of change.

Work ethic – Let’s face it, unless your big business idea is playing lottery or legalized gambling, few things will come to you if you just sit on your ass. If you are not wired to work hard for what you want, if the ends do not justify the investment in time when you’d rather be doing something else, if you are not capable of motivating yourself when things seem their darkest… business ownership ain’t for you.

Embracing change – People are afraid of change. Tony Robbins did a presentation at TED and asked the audience if they liked surprises. Everyone yelled out “Yeeaah” to which the response was: “Bullshit. You like the surprises that are good for you.” It’s true, given the option of doing something that requires a lot of effort, retraining, thinking and reading people often opt for same ol, same ol. Even if the same ol’ crap is the reason you’re in the funk to begin with, it beats thinking and reading!

When these two superpowers combine, you get what I like to call “The Law Of Best Intentions” where people generally mean well, want to do good, are hungry to succeed and are temporarily motivated to do just that. But just as motivation is the act of raising your ass out of the chair, it works the opposite way in reverse. The act of your ass slamming back into the chair and continuing to do what you always did before gets you the same results or lack there of.

In a nutshell: If you can’t motivate yourself to work hard to be rich, go work for someone else.