Gyms have the most new members when the new year begins. I've been working out at the same gym for fifteen years, and it's always funny to see the new enthusiasts starting with my regular workout buddies, who drop out en masse after a few months. The same can be seen with business starters, but we even see a tripling of the number of starters since 2005. Back then, there were only 50,000 starters per year; last year there were as many as 150,000. Good for the economy, you would say, because SMEs are the engine. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer make it to their first entrepreneurial anniversary. Where just over fifty percent used to still exist after five years, that is now only about 30 percent after four years among the self-employed (about 98 percent of all starters)…
Key to success
What makes you a great starter and ultimately a successful entrepreneur? What skills do you need to possess and what other essential conditions must be present? That key to success must surely exist? There are countless books written about it and countless initiatives developed. One thing is for sure, you must at least have the necessary courage to start. I have a dream, but it's also good to be realistic… A good dot on the horizon, a tremendous amount of perseverance, innovative capacity, and good math skills. A few essential characteristics of a good entrepreneur.
Now, over the past twenty years, I have assisted about 25,000 entrepreneurs with my company who were struggling, so I have seen many causes of failure. At number one is the lack of financial insight, while according to the entrepreneur, it is often attributed to the crisis. Now, that doesn't mean that if you have complete control over your finances, you have immediately found the key to success. After all, accountants are not the top entrepreneurs in this world…. It does help. Knowing the difference between revenue and profit, making a distinction between business and personal expenses. I have encountered too many entrepreneurs who stumbled over this. Not a disaster in itself, as long as you can get back up and continue.
Other causes include: lack of innovative capacity or responding too late to a changing market, shrinking market, growing too fast, disputes with business partners, illness of the entrepreneur. Often, you also see that the entrepreneur stubbornly muddles through for too long. Entrepreneurship is lonely; you are ultimately responsible for your own choices, but it is advisable to have good people around you (business or personal) who can hold up a mirror to you and dare to give advice. And if you, as an entrepreneur, dare to look into that mirror, then you are well on your way. Because ultimately, you learn the most from your mistakes if you dare to learn from them. In other words, it's a matter of learning by doing!
About Jacqueline Zuidweg
Jacqueline Zuidweg (1965) is the founder and director of Zuidweg & Partners B.V., and Businesswoman of the Year 2012. When she noticed as a lawyer at a consultancy for SMEs that there was no good debt assistance for (ex-)entrepreneurs in the Netherlands, she started Zuidweg & Partners B.V. In 2012, she was named Businesswoman of the Year, and since 2013, Jacqueline has been a board member of the Foundation Young Entrepreneurship to promote entrepreneurship in education. Her book 'Falling, getting up, and continuing!' was published.
