When It Comes To Goal Achievement Are You A 5%Er Or A 95%Er?

Did You Know:
  1.  95% of businesses never achieve their goals vs. 5% – who do?
  2. 95% of entrepreneurs are stuck barely paying the bills and earning just $50K per year and that only 5% of all entrepreneurs break 7 figures ($1M or more)?
  3. 95% of all businesses never plan how they will exit the business?
  4. Only 10% of business owners ever exit or close the sale of their business?

On the surface, these numbers appear to be extreme. Something is very wrong when entrepreneurs put so much effort, commitment and passion into their business and don’t reap the rewards of achieving their goals. And yet these numbers are proven by some venerable experts and organizations.

Evidence

Jay Abraham

Jay says 95% of business owners do not reach their goals for two reasons. Goal achievement eludes them because:

  1. They don’t really have goals in the first place. All they have are hopes and dreams. Unless you turn those hopes and dreams into real goals with purpose, passion and a deadline, you can’t join the 5%.
  2. They have no plan of action and implementation. All the planning in the world does not make a goal happen. To reach your goal, you have to action, consistent, trackable, measurable action to monitor where you were, how far you’ve come and how to get to the goal getting done.

Family Firm Institute

In a lecture presented by the Family Firm Institute, the researcher made a startling statement reporting on the results of their 2010 survey: Only 3% of all family businesses make it to the 5th generation. A full 70% of all family owned businesses don’t even make it to the 3rd generation!

The goals and vision of the founders and the second generation do not get carried forward in most cases. Because there’s no specified exit strategy, each generation is reinventing the business for their own benefit. Individual objectives for the business and what’s in the best interest of the business can diverge and make it hard for the firm to continue.

XPX Summit

At the Exit Planning Exchange Summit, one of the speakers was Hawley Wigder of Fulcrum Group who helps business owners hire executive talent to strengthen these businesses and increase valuations. Hawley said that 75% of the businesses he deals with have no plan for when or how they’ll exit the business. And worse, they don’t know what to do with the business when they do want to exit. So without a plan, even if they are currently very successful, they get stuck in the 95% who do nothing and leave their exit up to fate instead of being one of their goals.

Dan Kennedy

In a video presentation, Dan made the distinction that only 5% of all marketers and entrepreneurs get specialized knowledge, take fast action, and are fast implementers. He said that those same 5% are the winners who have money to retire with. In contrast, he said, 95% of the population will retire broke.

So how does this apply to you?

Take the questions we started with. Turn these questions around to ask about your goal achievement in your business:

  1. Are you a 95%er whose businesses never achieves its goals or a 5%er who does?
  2. Are you a 95%er entrepreneur stuck barely paying the bills and earning just $50K per year or are you a 5%er working to break 7 figures ($1M or more)?
  3. Are you a 95%er who never plans how to exit the business or a 5%er with a clear goal of what your exit strategy is and how to achieve it?
  4. How badly do you want to be part of the  10% of business owners ever to exit or close on the sale of their business?

Your answers today decide how and when (if?) you exit your business on your terms, on your timeline.