Our obsession with building successful small businesses should stop

Our obsession with building successful small businesses should stop. We should rather have an obsession with building successful entrepreneurs because businesses come and go but entrepreneurs should last for as long as possible. Our obsession with successful business removes the human element and we do not look at the entrepreneur as a person but a resource, a resource than can be stretched, stressed and pressured into eventual collapse. We build new businesses knowing that most will fail and we let the entrepreneur fail with it by leaving them drained, financially ruined and alienated from their loved ones. We do this as if there is an unlimited supply of entrepreneurs. Are you a business owner, am I correctly describing how you are being treated in your business?

I am tired of this, I am not a simple resource, I am a person with dreams, vision and a family. If I am going to build a business that serves my customers, then it should serve me as well.

We look at Google and we look at Facebook as super successful companies and we all strive to build something like that. But their day of failure or demise will come. It happened to Nokia, it happened to Kodak. It happened to many big companies throughout history.

That said, this happens more regularly with small businesses. You see more failing small businesses than you do successful small businesses. And as an entrepreneur since 1999, I wish successful small businesses upon EVERYONE who starts one. But I myself have built and lost some businesses.

But those of us who will fail, they need to survive when the business fails. Not lose your life savings, not lose your family and a stable living environment.

But sadly, that is what is currently happening. Entrepreneurs lose everything when they lose the business (in most cases). But, the customer carries on regardless. They will find another service or product provider.

That is why I developed my Life Design for Business Owners process. So that we can build successful small businesses and build successful entrepreneurs at the same time. We design businesses, why not design the life of the business owner too? It is a simple process of reframing. Instead of you being the building block on your business, the business becomes a building block in the life of the business owner. Start this process by taking the following action.

So to all entrepreneurs, to all small business owners, get clear on your needs. Get clear on what your business SHOULD give and make sure it gives it to you as much as it does to the customer. So when the business fails that you will also survive. We have strategy sessions about clients needs, why not have a strat session about the business owners needs? If you look at your business model you will see the customer, why not see yourself in it too?

Don't get caught in the old entrepreneurial thinking of you serving and serving until maybe, possibly, iffy, your business will give you something in return. That DOES NOT work. Think of how your business can serve the customer and serve you.

"Ask not what you can do for your business, but what your business can do for you" - Willem Gous

Once you see your business as a resource providing for your life and your needs, you lose the bulk of your fear of the business failing. Remember, if you built a $100 million company and you lose it, you will simply build another one again because that is your level of doing business. The same applies to live, if you almost lost everything this time around, you will have the same the second time around.

Please, stop this obsession with building successful small businesses and have an obsession with building successful entrepreneurs. We will get more out of our entrepreneurs this way. We will all benefit more this way. We might just even have entrepreneurship deliver on its promises of growing economies and providing employment.