How to have success before you begin

Statisticians say that 50% of small businesses fail annually and 95% will close operation in 5 years. This stats sends a chill down my spine whenever I read it, I have always tried to pretend it’s not there. I often see everyday how some small business begin and close not less than 3 months. My failures are result of my haste to launch my ideas. In time, I have learned that no matter how noble an idea might be it doesn’t mean it would succeed. Even if you plan to offer something for free and you think it’s a great idea and everybody would like it, you’d be shocked that no one would patronize you. If coca cola decides to offer free drinks for just a day and 100s of people converge, to the casual eye it might seem like because it’s free. But you go and announce on TV and radio that you have your own free drinks and it’s for free, you’d be surprise that not many people would look in your direction. Coca-Cola has taken years to prepare, so that they are known worldwide and just a small whisper here and there, through word of mouth, you’d see lots of people gather though they never announced through the media. 

Preparedness is a word I never heard in school. We used to equate planning to preparation. For instance, if I say am planning I also mean am preparing.  I think this perception is erroneous, sometimes you have to go beyond just putting things on paper; you have to take some courses, do some attachments to have experience, gather some money and so on. Lacking any of these might make you not finish the journey.

Preparation = planning + background activities + time 

When you are planning and doing background activities and you are giving plenty time then you are preparing. 

The bottom line of preparation is that it makes you grow up or bring up yourself to the standard where you are competent enough to deliver. Lawrence J. Peter in his book, the Peter Principle states that a person would be promoted to and stay at his level of incompetence. It simply means that if you are good at something, very soon you’d attempt a bigger one which you may not be competent for and when you start to fail you stay there. The amazing thing is that we always want to do something bigger than us and as such we need to prepare before we end up embarrassing ourselves. I have seen great friends’ embarrass themselves and being laughed at thereby giving people free entertainment.

In the castle of wizardry, a novel by David Eddings, there was this queen who was supposed to lead her husband’s army to war. On that day, she had to motivate the army with her speech, but she was mesmerized by the size of crowd and couldn’t speak. Now there was this drunkard who was among the crowd, he laughed at the queen that she was dumb and this made the queen angry enough to speak with fire and passion, making the army to follow her to battle. The writer said that, this was the reason why the drunkard was born; he had been preparing and waiting all his life for that particular day. Your life is a preparation for a great day; I hope you have the eyes to see that all that you’ve been through have molded you into arsenal that can deliver a great result. Now before you show up what you’d achieve has been achieved already. As a teacher, I know what my students are capable of, when I give them assignments I already know what they’d get that’s why when one of them copied a story from a book, I caught him.  

Prepare very well. Put everything on paper. Do your audits, situation analysis, set your objectives and strategies. Give yourself time to go over what you’ve done.  Do more research, the longer you take to prepare the better, haste brings defeat.

Enemy of preparation is haste. The great hurdle before you is a sign post that you should take your time to prepare for whatever you do. It is very tempting when you have a new idea, you want to commence immediately. Now that’s tricky because if you do that failure would be staring you in the face.

Sometimes life gives us just one chance. If you blow it you might not be allowed to take a remedial action. People don’t have time any more, whatever you do in your small business, if it’s a website, food joint, a cafe, take your time to set it up. Some people would only give you one chance and you should be able to grab them with that one opportunity. Our chances are becoming slimmer every day but if you prepare well, all other things been equal, your success is already attained.