If someone told you, right before you got out of the gate, “Sixty-three percent of all businesses fail within the first six years,” would you still want to start a business?
That’s the figure according to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means most people stand a little bit better than a 50/50 chance of, at minimum, staying above water; we’re not even talking about profitability.
Given that reality, it’s good to remind ourselves of why we wanted to do this business thing in the first place. Some people want to make more money. Perhaps it’s about taking care of your family, or taking care of them in the style you’d like. Maybe you want to be a better provider, a better parent, or a better spouse. It could be about more freedom, or more quality time.
Some people start a business because they believe it will give them greater security. They realize that working for somebody else and having someone else make fundamental economic decisions in their lives just doesn’t give them the kind of control they want. So they start a business for a different lifestyle.
Whatever the reason, the same fundamental question remains: what’s so important about any of this? What’s really behind it all?
I think—just as important as taking care of loved ones, or being successful, or being in control, or even being free—we are most basically fulfilling the creative impulse to grow something, to make something that didn’t exist before, and to nurture it as best we can. It really helps to understand this when it seems like the steam may be going out while trying to get your business up and running. This isn’t and can’t just be about money—though that is a pretty obvious goal for whatever those reasons we see above.
You also can’t ignore the “maverick,” individualistic impulse to do something different, or something completely unusual, so you build a business, go out there and you learn something. You develop a core expertise, gain some experience, and build your business around that.
There are so many basic human elements to creating a business—freedom, or accomplishment, care for others, individual expression—it makes you wonder how we could stand to live by not starting a business?
Our reasons better be more than just “success,” though, because if you make it past that 63% mark, the bigger that you get, the more the headaches come, and then it just kind of gets worse ifyou don’t know what you’re really getting into—if you’re not properly educated to give yourself a chance to make it well beyond that 63% mark.
This is the essence of what takes that 27% percent of successful business owners beyond those first six years. It’s knowing that success is not just measured in numbers alone—but again, when those numbers increase, it sure as hell does feel good, yes or yes?
It’s also understanding that success as a business owner entails reaching down into yourself, your creative spirit, and bringing that out into the world meaningfully. It’s as spiritual as it is material, and we’d all do better for ourselves and our impact on the world to honor that.
What’s your opinion? We want to hear from you!!!
