High Failure Rate in Business Start-ups

[zivhave]

The SA gvt is promoting and pursuing business start-ups among young entreprenuers - very well, I have no problem with that. The challenge I come across everyday is disturbing. Business start-ups are so prone to failure due to management shortcomings more than any other issues. Would it not be wise to promote training with the same amount of energy?

[Dave A]

I'm inclined to suggest they should focus entirely on training and ignore promoting and pursuing entirely.

Your question raises an exceptionally interesting related issue - the relationship between training and "entrepreneurial success." And this runs a serious risk of turning into a mini paper. But follow this chain of short points with me and let's see how we go.

Entrepreneurial success is a mixture of entrepreneurial drive, ability and opportunity.

Ability comes from knowledge and training is an effective way of getting that knowledge.

However, a sound knowledge of the pain of business, particularly that of start-ups, reduces entrepreneurial drive rather than increases it.

Opportunity is fickle.

Therefor the critical element in ongoing entrepreneurial success is the entrepreneurial drive.

Entrepreneurial drive comes from motivation.

External motivation is temporary.

Internal motivation is more permanent, and powerful.

Complacency and comfort are the enemies of motivation.

Therefor, sustainable entrepreneurial success requires a strong sense of discomfort, frustration or ambition.

So how does providing easy opportunity promote sustained entrepreneurial success?

Give the knowledge. The rest has to take care of itself. Some will respond. Some won't. There will be casualties.

Now let's see what others might think of that little theory

[duncan drennan]

Entrepreneurial drive comes from motivation.

External motivation is temporary.

Internal motivation is more permanent, and powerful.

So how does providing easy opportunity promote sustained entrepreneurial success?

So let's assume that "easy opportunity" is equivalent to external motivation.

Assuming Dave's theory is right, then we are looking for internally motivated people to train (for highest chance of success).

So how do we attract the internally motivate people to assist them?

Raise the pain barrier to the opportunity just enough to demotivate those with external motivation.

just some more thoughts

[Debbiedle]

Bah! Humbug! Personally I believe that ALL the government should be doing is investing money in Staff Training!

Kidding aside - welcome Zivhave.

I don't agree entirely with Dave's theory either....I quote
Therefor, sustainable entrepreneurial success requires a strong sense of discomfort, frustration or ambition

IMO if either frustration or discomfort continues indefinitely no matter how much the ambition, there is no way the entrepreneur will be able to sustain it. Other relationships will falter and the balance of life will be disturbed.

What I do agree with is.....
Give the knowledge. The rest has to take care of itself. Some will respond. Some won't. There will be casualties.

I am amazed on a daily basis how the simplest and what appears to be the most basic of concepts of good business management to some, are lightbulb moments to others. Yes, I believe that small business owners should be in training......the dilemma? They can often neither afford the time nor the cost, government investment in this could therefore be a good thing!

Raise the pain barrier to the opportunity just enough to demotivate those with external motivation. Duncan, didn't know you had this cruel side to you! No more pain please!

[zivhave]

I believe Debbieble has a point. The economic environment has adequate controls to screen entreprenuers if the state intervention is minimal. Putting up artificial ristrictions may be dangerous to aspiring youths. The opportunity cost are not a joke even for the trialists.
I am working on a project for a black lady who wants to access her fifth business start-up loan. She has used her 3rd & 4th disbursements to pay off the first two! Its awesome how business runs on SARS' nose.

[Dave A]

Oh heck, zivhave. I had one marvelous group who stopped by my office looking for information on pest control. They had no intention of even starting a business. They simply needed to fill in a questionaire so that they could access a start-up grant offered by government. They were quite upfront about it all.

Government funding for start-ups is being raped senseless.

[Justloadit]

Give the knowledge. The rest has to take care of itself. Some will respond. Some won't. There will be casualties.[/B]

You can not give some one knowledge, look at our current exam results and the manner in which our education department simply ensures every one is promoted every year.
To achieve you need to be in discomfort. When you are hungry, you are motivated to do something to eat.
The internal discomfort is the feeling that what ever you currently have right now is not enough for tomorrow, and this is what keeps entrepreneurs on the go. My grandfather and father and their generations went through many years of hunger during the great wars, and this spurred them to always have more than enough for the possibility of lean years, and was the motivation for continuing to be entrepreneurs in their lifetimes.

If you have not experienced discomfort, you will never generate the motivation. Look at the current generation of youngsters, they simply demand from their parents, as they have no idea how hard it is to come by. As soon as they start to feel discomfort their attitude changes.

I have always ensured that my kids always worked for their money, my eldest daughter at 23 started her own professional business, my youngest daughter is studying and wants to have her own copyright/advertising business as soon as she is able to. This is the motivation that we are referring too in the above posts, its motivation started by the fear of starvation, or having nothing to eat, one of the discomforts referred too.

There is a number of discomforts which can be attributed to motivation.

Speak to any old timer, and ask them what drove them to become entrepreneurs, and what keeps them at it, even after retirement, you will be surprised by the fear of discomforts which motivates them.

[adrianh]

The most important thing in life is SELF DRIVE. Nobody will ever succeed at anything unless they are willing to drive themselves and persevere, be it at sport, study or anything for that matter. We live in a society where 90% of young people are taught by their parents that the government owes them because they fought for freedom. Those young people never learn to drive themselves, they simply sit back waiting for the government to bring whatever they want to them.

Why do Zimbabweans work so hard - because their parents never taught them to sit on their a$$es and demand, their parent had nothing and realized that the only way for the kids to do better is to drive themselves to accomplish something.

Entrepreneurship means absolutely nothing if the "entrepreneur" is not willing to put his nuts on the line and take FULL responsibility for his endeavour. Nobody can force anybody to learn of think for themselves, people have to get off their a$$es and educate themselves. There are many libraries, lots of stuff on the internet and even businessmen that people can learn from, yet the so-called entrepreneurs sit back and blame the government for the fact that they cannot get ahead.

And if you think that I had a privileged education because I am white then think again, I spent my entire youth stuffing about and doing nothing of value. It is not about what other people do for you, it is about what you do for yourself.

[HR Solutions]

@ Adrian we are once again on the same chapter

[flaker]

I spent my entire youth stuffing about and doing nothing of value. It is not about what other people do for you, it is about what you do for yourself.

No offence meant nor any debate intended but just think about this. Yours was still a "privileged" upbringing. you could choose to do nothing and i'm guessing here live on your parents or even if you had a very menial job you earned so much more because of your colour. & if by chance you needed hospitalisation you enjoyed the Cape waterfront (i forget the name of that hospital). makes you wonder

[Justloadit]

Has anyone been to Baragwana lately?
and please I am not trying to defend apartheid in any way, but before 1994, it was one of the top hospitals on the planet, where may European doctors requested to be transferred to do their practical and to learn their trade at the top hospital.

Today you will be lucky to see a patient on a bed, the beds have been stolen, and the patient even has to bring in his own linen and pajamas, because the laudary service is brocken, and private companies no longer service due to non payment.

I was party to saving one of the laborers that worked for my father, who had been near fatally stabbed in the chest, next to his heart, at 2o'clock int the morning, well I thought he was going to die, he bled so much that his coulour changed from the loss of blood, and barely breathing. We waited over an hour for the ambulance to arrive, and never thought I would see him again, and was taken to Baragwana. The doctors there managed to revive him, and after a 6 month recovery was able to return to work. Under the same conditions, would he survive today?