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There are a good number of reasons that businesses fail. Well, at least they appear to be different reasons. They tend to center around one aspect of operating an independent business: Personal accountability.

The major thing I've learned, being honest with myself, is: I'm responsible for my businesses failure, either implicitly or directly. No business "HAS" to fail! It may have to adapt, to change, to evolve, but they never "have to" fail.

In discussing these this fine, yet crucial, point I'd like to point out that if you're looking into a small business of your own you don't have to fail either. Feel free to learn from my mistakes. It's much more cost-effective than making all of your own.

In one of my previous businesses, my primary objective was to sell advertising. Some days, my reactions to the inevitable rejection were so immature and unprofessional that, looking back, I'm actually quite shocked that the person making the bad choices and myself are the same. Challenges occur all the time. Resistance to sales, at least when first calling on the prospect, is to be expected and even welcomed. The prospects objections, if looked at with a "positive" frame-of-mind, are found to be the very selling points that need to be addressed by the salesperson.

Was I putting forth my best sales efforts? Was I even putting in enough sales attempts? Sadly, no I wasn't. But this only brings to mind the understanding of: "If it is to be, it is up to me."

What if it's not a sales-based situation (ultimately it always is...but that's a whole 'nother story)? Is it a situation with employees? Family? Government regulations? Well, barring the calamities of life itself (acts of nature, criminal acts, et. al., from which even those things we can recover with proper preparation) any businessperson must understand that they need to be prepared for the unseen and they must integrate as many systems towards profit as is necessary to make their business profit.

Well, that's where personal responsibility plays in. If you're not prepared for the emergencies, and opportunities, that arise...well THAT'S your fault! I myself found my business being hurt by my own lack of preparation in my business dealings. I not only couldn't afford the problems that arose due to the lack of proper budgeting, I'd also missed out on certain opportunities to "buy right" when I should have.

My personal business failures are as much my fault as the credit for my successes are.

It's those folks who are "destined" to a life on a factory job (no offense intended towards factory workers. God knows we need them!), or some other form of supervised employment, that blame circumstances for their failures. "Circumstances do not make the man. They merely reveal him."; Voltaire once said. and it's as true today as it ever was.

Those of us looking into, or for, a business venture tend to be the types that understand that if they're looking for some aspect of change in their lives, it's just got to be up to them. No Cavalry is coming in to rescue them. No "milk of human kindness" is there to support them. Their lives are, simply, up to them. Well, it's exactly the same for your business. I've finally matured enough to accept, and work within, this reality. I'm operating another business even as I write; And quite well I might also add.

This point may very well be the hardest, most emotionally painful point for any entrepreneur to accept. The "man in the glass", who should be your best friend, can also be your hardest critic.

William Shakespeare put it best: "To thine own self be true. Then as must follow the night, the day that thou canst not be false to any man."

Learn more about this author, Donald Pennington.
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