Why 80% Of VR Business Owners Fail!

 

Today’s VR  business blog is part two of the Entrepreneur series. Last week I shared some very startling statistics about VR business failures and how often they happen, including the scary fact that 80% of VR businesses will fail within the first 5 years.

But don’t think you’re safe if you’ve surpassed 5 years in business. If you haven’t yet read the first blog, you’ve got to check it out to discover the Vacation Rental Entrepreneur’s #1 business rule. Now, let’s get into The Entrepreneur Part 2.

So, an Entrepreneur, a Manager and a Technician walk into a business…

This week’s post may sound more like a joke than reality, but before you laugh, you should know that it’s true!

Ever felt like you’re going crazy in your VR business? Ever felt like you wanted to pull your hair out? (I know I have; my bald head is proof!)

I’m pretty sure I know what’s going on. And with this new diagnosis, I think you’ll say, “Aha… that’s what’s wrong.” In fact, this diagnosis will help bring to light the questions you’ve asked yourself: Why am I not getting all I want done? Why am I not advancing? Let me know if you have an aha moment like I did and see this condition in yourself.

You ready? The craziness you’re feeling is likely because you have a multiple personality disorder. Yeah, I said that. You’re a bit of a nut case. You’ve got different voices in your head telling you what to do.

 

 

Now that we’ve put it out there and you’ve been diagnosed, you can properly treat your psychological condition.

The good news is, you can turn your craziness into brilliance. If you can get these 3 very different people who all live inside your head to stop fighting each other and start working together instead, you’ll achieve zen in your mind and your VR business. Now, doesn’t that sound nice?

 

3 Personalities in Your Head

 

So what are these 3 rivaling personalities in your head?

 

 

 

The Entrepreneur

The Entrepreneur is the dreamer living in the future, the vision caster. This person asks the question, “What if?”

The Entrepreneur in you was the one who said, “We should buy a vacation home.” Not just “let’s buy a vacation home” but also “what if we offer that vacation home to others?” You envisioned what that would feel and look like. You dreamed about redecorating it with the latest fashions – comfortable, yet chic. You imagined people calling you up and asking if they could stay for a week, maybe two.

It was the Entrepreneur in you that got excited about the possibility of running your own business, of starting a new adventure.

The Entrepreneur will ask questions like, “How must this business work?” 

The Entreprenuer is necessary for a business to reach its maturity but if the Entreprenuer is running the business there is likely confusion among others who are trying to keep up with the Entrepreneur’s new ideas and vision of the future.

If the Entreprenuer is the dominant personality in your VR business you may have a great plan, ideas and vision of what could be but no work will actually get done.  The Entreprenuer conflicts with the Manager because the Manager wants to manage the Entrepreneur’s creativity and new ideas. Everyone of these personalities wants to be the “boss” but none of them want a boss.

 

The Manager

The Manager makes sure that everything is moving along as it should. The Manager might say, “Show me how the business works and I’ll make sure it happens.” They’re pragmatic people who live in the past. They are sensible and only see what’s in front of them, only what they can see, hear or touch.

The Manager in you is detail-oriented and can do magic with putting systems in place that help things run smoothly. What once was chaotic and frantic now exudes the sound of a well-ordered machine. You’re pulling the strings. You’re making things work.

The Manger is about the routine of getting the jobs done.  If something’s getting in the way of the process, if there’s a problem right in front of them, they fix it. But they don’t like to mess with the big system. It’s hard for them to see what is in the future, like the Entrepreneur. In fact, they don’t really like change.

That’s an area in which the Entrepreneur and the Manager often have conflict because the Entreprenuer is constantly causing changes and improvements to accommodate the big picture in their vision. If the Manager is the dominant personality in your VR business you’ll have the property cleaned and maintained properly, great systems and tools in place, you’ll run a well oiled machine but no bookings or income will be generated, that is the strength of the Entrepreneur. The manager is a critical component in your VR business. Managers help to reduce costs and increase productivity by being efficient.

 

The Technician

The Technician is the one who does the work. They live in the present. They understand the inner workings of the process.  The Technician is posting the property on different listing sites, maintaining the website, working on the marketing, creating fliers and calling people back to book a vacation at their rental. They have a giant to-do list every day (assigned by the Manager) of things that must  get accomplished. Without the Technician, your VR business does not run and why many get stuck in this position.

You might hear a Technician say something like, “Let me show what I did and how it works.” Many Technicians enjoy tinkering with something to make it perfect. The danger is that they can become tunnel-visioned – so focused on one thing that everything else falls to the side. The Technician is the personality in you that says “no one can do it like me”. If a technician runs the business work will get done but there will be no structure or order of things that should be done. The technician needs the Manager to keep them in check.

If the technician is running your VR business there will be no growth because the Technician is too busy doing the work. Both the Entreprenuer and the Manager get in the Technicians way. The Technician just wants to do the work but the Manager wants to put reigns on the Technician and the Entreprenuer continues to give the Technician more ideas to implement and things to do. These are areas where the personalities experience conflict.

Which personality do you relate to the most? Are you the Entrepreneur? Manager? Technician? My guess is, there’s one that stands out from the others.

 

Finding the Zen in the Middle

There is a solution. But it’s something you’ll have to keep working on. It might be hard. You may begin to slip back into your old ways, but resist! Bookmark this page. Seriously. Remind yourself of these principles; they will save your business from failing.

Here’s the answer: Your success is not in the dominance of any one of these personalities. Instead, your success in business is synergy between the 3.

Here is how most business owners operate their business in respect to the 3 personalities:

 

Unbalanced Personalities

Below is how we should balance our selves and the ideal personality formula:

 

Personalities Balanced

Which of these personalities is the most dominate within you?

How do you create synergy within these 3 personalities? You’ve already done the hard part: you’ve admitted you have a problem and you recognize which personality is the most dominant within you.

Now, you just have to start taking advantage of opportunities to get those personalities balanced and understand your weaknesses and strengths. You’ll want to work on those skill sets and get other people surrounding you who can help with your areas of weakness, so your VR business can soar like an eagle.

Do You Lean toward the Technician Personality? Stop working in your business so you can start working on it. Look to see what processes are chaotic or haphazard and try to work out the kinks. Take a day – heck, take 10 minutes – and dream about what could happen for your vacation rental business in the future. Write it all down. Draw pictures, if you want. What do you want your rental to become? Work on eliminating yourself from some of the Technician work, so you can make room for a more balanced VR business.

Lean toward the Entrepreneur? You may need to get your head out of the clouds for a bit and investigate what’s really going on with your rental. Talk with other vacation home owners and see if some of their processes will work for you. Not sure what your guests experience when they book with you? Go through the process yourself. See if you get all the information you’d want as a guest. Make sure all the links work. See if your staff respond in a timely manner. Create times in the day or week where you will be the Entreprenuer and other times of the day or week, you’re going to be the Manager and then the Technician. This will help you to pull out of your “personality zones” and allow you to switch gears into other personalities more systematically.

Lean toward the Manager? You, too, could take some time to dream about the future. Don’t be afraid of change; try something new. Your business can’t grow if you’re not willing to adapt. Start small. But start somewhere. And yes, you may understand the big picture of the process, but do you understand what it takes to do every single job to run your vacation rental business. Also do you understand what it takes to mature your business from a sales, marketing and business planning perspective? If not, start asking questions. Take time to understand the big picture, think of growth opportunities and advancements that can be made in your VR business.

 

Battling the E-Myth Misconception

 

Now that you are aware of these 3 personalities, you can understand a little more about the E-Myth. The E-Myth as described by Michael Gerber is the misconception that businesses are operated by Entrepreneurs. It’s true that the idea is formulated by the Entreprenuer but the reality is businesses are conceived by Entrepreneurs but end up being ran by the Technician (the one who knows how to do the work).

This is where the problem begins. Ever felt exhausted about all the work involved in running your VR business? That’s probably because you’re the Technician doing all the work and that wasn’t the idea the Entreprenuer in you had in mind when you started your vacation rental business. After a while many VR business owners experience a feeling of being overwhelmed. They do things they shouldn’t be doing and are not good at, which proves to be a key reason their VR business suffers. 

A part of that myth is that just because you know how to do the technical detail of a job, you instinctively know the inner workings of how that business should work.  Its like someone who knows how to bake pies deciding to open up a bakery, they know how to bake pies so in their mind they think they know how to run a bakery.

This is where we see businesses fail. Owners never wanted to do all this work, they wanted to enjoy the dream of the Entreprenuer and they sometimes become frustrated and feel like giving up their VR business and they may become a part of the 80% who lose their businesses.

A healthy and super successful VR businesses is operated by Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Technicians – even if they all happen to fall within the same (crazy) person.

However, if you have people who work with you, you can now watch to see which personalities they lean toward. Based on that information, you can begin to delegate certain jobs, tasks and roles to the individual that best fits into the mold of who should be doing it. You can also identify places where these personalities are missing and are needed. 

These are the 3 people/personalities/positions required to run a VR business properly, do you have the right persons working in the right positions on the right projects?

Are there areas in your VR business you need help with?

Remember, you need to work less IN your VR business and more ON it and that may mean hiring some help to lighten the load and increase the productivity. If thats you, feel free to reach out to me.  I’ll help you get your Vacation Rental ZEN!

In an effort to help anyone who can’t see the forest from the trees and wants to get their VR business to be more profitable and to increase its productivity, here is a 20% coupon for my vacation rental consulting services  Use Promo Code “MAKEMORE$” and I’ll help you personally figure out how to improve your VR Business.

(this promo code will expire soon) http://www.vacationrentalsmarketing.com/product/increase-your-profits-1-hr-private-marketing-coaching/

What did you think of this blog? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Now that we’ve laid down the foundation of operating a successful VR business I will begin sharing practical steps you can do to improve your business! If you haven’t signed up for our free newsletter, do so now! It’s absolutely free!

 

Now You Know!