According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, 25% of new businesses make it to or beyond15 years.

• The BLS documents:
• 20 % of all new businesses fail during the first two years
• 45 % of businesses fail during the first five years
• 65% of businesses close during the first 10 years
•  
• At The Abundant Concierge℠, we suggest that in the lifestyle consultant industry the number of failed businesses is higher than these statistics. And many of the businesses that do survive, never make it past the stage of being a hobby business versus a company that provides asustainablelivable income, much less a company over six-figures annually. 

Four Steps to Keep Your Concierge Businesses from Failing

1. Investigate the Market Before Launching

You’ve always wanted to open a concierge or lifestyle consultant business. And you finally have the means to do so, but your desire to open is naïve to the fact that the sector you want to work in is already saturated, and elusive, thus making it very difficult for a newcomer to break in.

This mistake can result in business failure from the start. Whether you’re a concierge or lifestyle service consultant, it’s essential to research and find an unmet needin the market before attempting to fill it. When you try and push your service as one more choice, you’ve failed to become a top reason for the choice. Before you start, knowing how you differentiateyour service offerings, makes it a lot easier to find and keep customers, instead of convincing people that they should spend money on you rather than someone who has been around for a while. Afterall, if they’ve been around for a while, they are likely to be doing a pretty good job at it. Our industry is part of the trust economy, and folks need a reason to need your service, to want your service, before they will trust you enough to let you in.

2. Seek Out Expertise

You may have the expertise as a fashion stylist, a housekeeper, a concierge, a personal chef…however without a roadmap of how to achieve the goals of your business, it’s easy to get sidetracked and make unnecessary mistakes leading to expensive failures.

The good news is there is a “yellow brick road” to success.

An experienced business coach can guide you in creating clear achievable goals. A good coach can help you navigate potential problems ahead of time. When problems surprise you (and they will) a coach can also help you to navigate effective and efficient solutions. A lifestyle industry business coach can help you to determine if a pivot is needed to get the concierge business back on track, so you can accelerate your success.

An investment in coaching can assist you in determining strategies, resources and timelines that should be charted and implemented before costly mistakes are made. The more expensive your business errors are, the greater the chance of failure. An investment in coaching can be a game changer in avoiding pitfalls.

3. Financing

One of the reasons many go into the lifestyle consulting or concierge industries is that thanks to the internet, they believe you can launch and run the company with little or no startup money.

While it’s true that starting a lifestyle is a lower cost than many other businesses, there are still investments such as insurance, bookkeeping, advertising, and in some cases software, and so on. Stretching your finances during startup may mean that your business never gets off the ground.

Investing in yourself is highly recommended in your initial budget. A coachcan amplify and accelerate the results you get. Coaching can help you to be realistic at the beginning, and during the up and down journeys you’ll have as a business owner. Using a coach during planning stages can help you plan to have enough money that will last you until your business has cash actually flowing in.

4. Obtaining the CEO Mindset

When you’re new to the world of soloprenure/entreprenure, you may think it’s an easy shift from our corporate world. Afterall we left our corporate jobs for a reason. However, working on your own brings all kinds of unanticipated mindset challenges. It can also unfold hidden talents and deep desires, that you didn’t know were inside you.

An outside perspective can help you to navigate these. The investment of coaching with someone who’s not afraid to tell you like it is can instill a confidence that takes you from entrepreneur to CEO. A coach can help to uncover unconscious paradigms that hold you back and instead help you to break through them to tell a new story. A coach can help you to stretch yourself and your service offerings.

The Bottom Line

Whether you use a business coach, or another method of learning, stay committed to investing in yourself through the process. Coaching can help you to avoid many of the pitfalls that surprise lifestyle business owners and instead lets them become a part of the 25% that make it to 15 years of business ownership.

It takes a village to create success. No one does it solely alone. If you’re looking for a tribe, we invite you to join The Abundant Concierge Facebook page. If you’re committed to taking your business to the next level, we invite you to contact us at Concierge Business Coach for a free consultation to learn more.

Karen Knight is founder of The Abundant Concierge and owner of Essential Concierge, a luxury and commercial concierge company. She brings extensive c-level experience to her coaching including hospitality, city marketing, destination marketing, theme parks, corporate and private event planning. She and the team at Concierge Business Coach provide a wide array of customized learning and coaching options for the lifestyle entrepreneur. We support the mindset to produce the outcomes that CEO’s want for their business.