What does it mean to be “grounded by lack of perseverance”? Most people give up too easily, too quickly. Most things take time. Remember the saying, “Good things come to those that wait”? The key is to have an informed opinion on how long it will take for something to reach critical mass, and to then ensure that you persevere to get past that point. This means accounting for all required resources: people, money, equipment— whatever is needed. You have probably heard that over ninety percent of all new businesses fail, and it’s true. But the cause of those failures is not often examined. There are two primary reasons that a new business fails: the business does not have adequate capital to achieve cash flow positive status, or the owners give up on their business before it gets the chance to achieve success.
Not having enough money is simple enough to understand. If you run out of money and can’t secure more, your business will fail. But that is more an issue of not planning for enough money in the first place to achieve success. Suppose you have a business plan that will take X dollars in cash, and will need fourteen months for the business to become cash flow positive. If the business doesn’t have enough money to make it to fourteen months, then starting that business under those circumstances is foolish. In fact, your plan and predictions are probably not as conservative as they should be. Using the example above, it may really be that you need 1.5X or 2X to ensure that there is enough capital, as it may end up taking eighteen to twenty-four months to become cash flow positive.
Some managers or business owners get impatient. They create a plan that says X will happen within twenty-four months. Then, twelve months into the plan, they get nervous. They feel they are not getting enough traction, and they bail out. Now, there are certainly situations where you should abandon an idea, such as when a competitor comes out with a bigger, better idea and spends half of what you are planning to spend. (Time to rethink your business plan!) But, in many cases, if the new business owner had stayed the course and saw the plan to fruition, there is a good chance it could have succeeded, perhaps to an even greater extent than originally planned.
You must constantly reevaluate your initial plans: change and modify them, while pressing on. This is the only way your plan has a chance for success. Don’t be grounded by a lack of perseverance and give up too quickly.