How the financials are performing. Usually small business owners lack either time or knowledge to monitor the overall business performance, meaning if the business is on red or black numbers. Day to day and lack of good financial foundations inhibit operators to check the facts over time.
I think it's caused by lack of knowledge, as you said, lack of managing capabilities, most of them doesn't know accounting, say reading a balance, cash flows, asn something worst, I've seen, that in retail where cash is abundant, some people do not understand that this money is not theirs, is borrowed money by the suppliers.
I’ve seen that too. A lot of people think that business is magic. Heck, plenty of publicly traded companies think that too!
Adding my experience as the owner of a small corporation, for me the struggle is _time_. We have taken the time to build things slowly and methodically; intentionally trading fast growth for building a foundation. In a way we’re intentionally operating in a manner that is anti-modern-startup.
No matter how lean our processes, despite the fact that most of our accounting processes are automated in an ERP, and having the benefit of formal college courses in corporate accounting, there are still manual tasks I have to perform _all throughout the business_ (and in finance) that I struggle to balance with other tasks.
One of the most practical things small businesses struggle with is human power. Hiring an employee is expensive, and for us, we’re in the middle ground where we don’t have enough work or income to justify bringing on someone else.
I refuse to sacrifice my work/life balance and I’d rather spend my career building a business that can pay off in the long run rather than next year. Lately I’ve needed to spend more on the “life” side so I have. That’s a luxury I have, which I acknowledge. Not all have that.
1) There is a strong Cargo Cult ideation in our industry. Hence every startup is looking for a React developer who also have experience with Kafka and BigQuery.. and .. and... . And when the followed cults like Tesla, Netflix, .... began to layoff, guess what? our little cargo cult followers began to layoff, because that is the way to become the next Uber,Tesla,Netflix,whatever....
2) Lot of MBA C-Suite admins have arrived to our industry. And this is bad. We are not more an isolated island where code reigns, defines our position inside the hierarchy and so on. Now, politics, friends, nice looking people rule our dens. We are the operatives, the Storm Z cannon fodder. For every one of us, there are 300 waiting in line to "do the job".
