3 Reasons Today's Small Businesses fail- How to Prevent yours from failing

Our workforce has drastically changed over the past decade. Covid has brought about even more changes. The world has become digitized and meetings have become virtualized. New career paths like "influencers, social media managers, content creators, bloggers, and vloggers" have sprang up and are arguably a necessity to maintain a business in today's age.

Although this "new school" of businesses and careers exist, and barriers to entry into entrepreneurship are lower than ever before. In my experience creating a few of these "next-gen" type of businesses, the same old-school rules apply.

Here are three reasons today's small businesses fail- and ways you can circumvent failure in your own business!

1) Lack of Sustainable Structure, Systems and Processes

Individuals who hold the "next-gen" careers often operate as freelancers and solopreneurs. For example, someone who works as a professional YouTuber may take on EVERY aspect of their business - such as recording, editing, scriptwriting, audience engagement, brand partnerships, and marketing of their channel.

While this may be a necessity in the beginning, because you don't have the funds or traction to outsource, in order to sustainably scale your channel, these parts must be delegated.

You can use platforms like Fiverr or Upwork to find and pay affordable talent willing to take on some of these tasks in order to focus on the aspects of your business that generate the most revenue, or that no one else could do. Examples of this for a YouTuber or influencer might be coming up with the creative vision, or pitching your brand to larger companies for paid sponsorships.

2) Ineffective sales/pitch materials

A wise mentor told me that every person in the job market, from prospective hires, to employees, to startups to big business owners, is in the business of sales. Each of these individuals is constantly trying to showcase they're fit for a job, fit for a raise, fit to for a purchase, or fit for an acquisition. And each of these people have created materials to demonstrate their value proposition. For prospects it's their resume, for employees it's their track record, for startups it's their pitch deck and for big business owners, it's their past traction. Each of these people has a target audience for that proposition.

When I first started Fascinate, my business focused on STEM education for youth, it was purely a passion project. I wasn't able to sustainably do this work until I discovered what my services were, who my target customer is, what they expected to pay for my services, and why my services might offer a competitive value compared to others offering similar services.

Some of the most effective exercises I performed when building the early stages of my business were creating Logic Models, Pitch Decks, and showing these to prospective customers (in my case people who ran after-school programs for large non-profits) and receiving honest feedback. You can find some awesome templates for these on places like Canva and Pitch .

3) Failure to scale sales with effective marketing

Okay, so now you've figured out your customer, and you've set up processes in your business to ensure that you can outsource and automate tasks as needed. Now, it's time to scale your sales. Depending on your personality type and creativity, this may become one of those tasks you outsource or hire for, but generally in order to grow your business, you need effective marketing.

Today, you can find opportunities to market your products or services at a variety of pricing models. Many use Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, or Google ads to target customers from a similar demographic as those that are currently purchasing their products, but it's important to find the strategy that works for you. My most potent marketing strategy has been the usage of LinkedIn content creation to secure more speaking engagements, press and media opportunities, and consultations. I have curated an audience of potential customers over years of effective networking, and many of these people are slowly converted to paying clients through years of following my work.

Hopefully you can take some of these productivity hacks and elevate your small business! I also want to acknowledge this post's sponsor, Verizon, who has great resources for small businesses via their Small Business Digital Ready platform . Here's a link: https://vz.to/3p7fmFY