Why Do Small Businesses Fail?

By Daryoush Ashtari

It is some time that I try to be online on Clubhouse as much as I can and participate on many rooms. Most of the rooms that I have participated in so far are related to sales, marketing, business expansion, startups, and the rooms that are for people stuck at one point and seek for help. I see some people try to really help those that need help and some just try to catch some need people to take some money from them.

While people talk, introduce their business, or explain their problems, I check their websites and what I see is unexplainable. Most of the websites have been created by non-professionals, they tried to make something at no cost and either used WordPress or use online page builder services. When I check the codes, I see so many HTML tag errors, SEO issues, incorrect use of HTML headings, and other tags.

They consulted with no one, or wrong people, no marketing or poor marketing, legal requirements not noticed and considered. So many times, I don’t believe they trust such websites, but they expect people to trust them. This is the point that I have noticed in very few rooms. When people talk about their problems, moderators ask “Do you do business with you?” This is a very broad question and covers so many other aspects as well, but here, I focus on the website or online part of the business.

Successful businesses are team-based, not based on a single person. Every person has a responsibility and that is why they succeed. One-man businesses most of the time either fail or they always struggle. But why?

They want to do everything by themselves.

1. Why should I pay someone else to create a website? I can do it myself. they just install an open-source CMS like WordPress and without doing any research, install any plugin they want. The sad part is that in many cases the money they pay for the plugins within 1-2 years is much more than when they asked a professional programmer to build them a website by coding.
2. For marketing, why should I pay, I can do it myself.
3. For sales, why should I pay, I can do it myself.

And the result, they struggle all the time.

I do business with me and any company like mine, but don’t do business with any one-man company. Why?

1. When someone wants to do everything by himself/herself, the quality of service is poor. He cannot focus on quality because is distracted with marketing and sales too.
2. Every business has its own rules, terminology and …. You might be a great programmer, but you cannot do the sale or marketing for ordinary people. You might be the best lawyer, …. But you talk in your own language, with your own terminology. You are professional in what do you but not in other things. That’s why you need the service of someone else that is good in marketing and sales. These people know how to translate what you do into non-technical language. Because of the way you talk, people don’t understand you. This is why you need someone else to do the marketing and sale for you. These people listen to what you say or offer and tell the people with the terms and language they can understand.
3. I have seen so many websites that have serious errors that prevent SEO efforts return good results. They spend and spend while by fixing these issues, all the SEO efforts return the result with less investment. Of course, sometimes, these errors cannot be fixed if you are using template-based services because you don’t have code-level access to fix them.
4. Your website is your business card, your office, your supermarket, your mall in the virtual world. If you have a physical office, a physical store, … do you decorate it like that? Honestly, why should I do business with someone that doesn’t care about his own business? When you don’t care about your business, how can I expect you to care about mine and help me? You yourself need help first before trying to help me.

Consulting with experts and hiring experts to create your website and do your marketing, may look expensive, but at least will generate you result.

But consult first. I am a programmer, but coming directly to me and saying Daryoush I need a website and I want you to do it for me, I will say NO. What you must do is before going to a website developer, talk to a marketing and sales expert. Then when you make your decision on who must do the marketing for you, then come to me or go to the web developer you want and say I need a website based on instructions, content this marketing team will provide.

If you noticed how I introduce myself on social media, I always say I would like to cooperate with marketing teams. Why this is the reason. Working this way, in bringing you so many steps closer to success and I want to help people succeed. I don’t just build a website; anyone can do it. what I do is to provide a solution, and this can be done by a team working only.

There are some people that as soon as you approach them, the very first thing they do is to try to change your website. Maybe they are right, and that is the very first thing you must do and maybe they are wrong. They must provide proof of why this website must be changed. For technical issues, if you can, I always recommend changing your website from WordPress to a custom coded one, but you are the one that must make the decision. CONSULT WITH AN EXPERT FIRST!

Most of the websites that I have seen on clubhouse have copyright and many other legal issues. For example, they claim they don’t track visitors and use cookies only for internal use and performance of website issues, but they track all activities of users. There are people on the internet that look for sites with such problems so that they sue them and make money from them. Sooner or later they have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars fines and court penalties. Why? Because they wanted to make it cheap. And there are many people that are aware of such things and prefer not to do business with them because they are not sure you will exist next month or next year or not.

The cheapest solution is not the answer. If you think so, you are not ready for online business. You need to learn and get ready for it first if you want to succeed. And you will go out of the loop when you understand what is wrong.