In this excerpt from Dr. John L. Terry III’s eleventh book, Mastering Business Success: 10 Essential Principles of Leadership & Execution, the business coach, author, and motivational speaker highlights the leadership pitfalls he has seen sink ships and the productive changes that could better steer any entrepreneur’s course toward success.

The ancient ninjas were masters at the art of chaos, sabotage, mayhem, and destruction. Their target was the unaware. These silent assassins lurked in the shadows, waiting for their target to let down their guard, become distracted, or get lulled into a sense of complacency.

As they stalked their prey, they remained close, often hiding in plain sight. Ninjas simply waited for their victims to lower their guard, allowing them to silently slip in and strike.

The best defense was awareness. Situational awareness, then and now, can prevent us from becoming the prey of a saboteur. Awareness limits our vulnerability.

In business, this same truth applies. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that 65 percent of all small businesses fail in the first ten years. One in five fails in the first twelve months, and half of them have shuttered their doors within five years of opening.

If we dig into the causes of these failures, we can identify seven common saboteurs, lurking in the shadows, waiting to wreak havoc. Like a ninja, these saboteurs bide their time, often hiding in plain sight, ready to strike at the optimum time.

They are waiting for an entrepreneurial misstep.

A lack of awareness leaves us vulnerable.

The first of these Success Saboteurs is a failure to differentiate. If nobody knows who you are, what you do, and how you uniquely do it, you’re the invisible man (or woman). So if you’re telling your story, that’s GREAT. But are you telling your story in such a way that you stand out of the people pile?

Unless you’re doing something differently in your messaging that allows you to (1) Stand Out (2) Get Noticed and (3) Get Ahead of your competition—to the eyes of the public, you’re all the same. Your potential customers are looking for someone who can uniquely solve their specific problems. They are asking: Do you see me? Do you hear me? Do you value me? Do you understand me? Can you help me? [. . .]

The second Saboteur is poor financial planning. Many entrepreneurs have a tendency to view their business through proverbial rose-colored glasses. They tend to underestimate expenses and overestimate income.

They believe the line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.”

They might, but it takes time to attract new people to your business. As a result, they mismanage the cash they’ve saved (or borrowed) to start the business. This can also happen when entrepreneurs seek to expand their business, as they don’t count the true cost in terms of time, resources, and money to make the venture profitable. This is one of the primary reasons most small businesses fail in the first ten years.

The third Success Saboteur is having a weak sales and marketing strategy, or no strategy at all. This is an extension of the first business misstep, as your distinctive message needs to be consistent across all your marketing platforms. Your website, newsletters, videos, social media posts, emails, posters, flyers, postcards, and all your marketing efforts must be designed with your ideal customer or client in mind.

Branding is essential—as this is the face you take to the marketplace. It creates a distinct entity, fosters customer loyalty, differentiates you from your competitors, and ultimately drives business growth and success. You want your branding to make a memorable impression on your target audience.

Fourth is a failure to systemize, delegate, and automate. Entrepreneurs often wear too many hats and rely on manual processes that don’t scale. Rather than delegating responsibilities, they tend to try and do it all to save time and money. But if they’re not efficient at performing certain roles in the business, they sabotage their success in the process.

Without solid systems in place, and qualified people to run them, growth becomes chaotic, errors increase, and the entrepreneur ends up bottlenecking the business by trying to do it all. The most successful entrepreneurs spend 80 percent of their time engaged in the 20 percent of things they’re best at doing. The rest, they delegate or outsource.

The fifth Success Saboteur is a lack of customer engagement. The customer is the lifeblood of any business. Why? Because without customers, there is NO business. The customers are the ones who fund the paychecks you and your employees receive each week. They pay the rent and utilities, as well as purchase the equipment and inventory you use.

When we fail to engage the customer, fail to create an exceptional experience for them, and help them feel heard, valued, and appreciated, we cut off our funding, sabotage our success, and limit our potential. When a customer walks in the door, they want something from you. They have a want or a need.

How you engage with them and the experience you create will determine if they choose to buy from you, and whether or not they will keep coming back.

Sixth on the list is poor time management. We are all given twenty-four hours a day. No more or no less. How we manage the time we’ve been given either sets us up for success or failure. With all there is to do, it’s easy to ignore the important things that need to get done and focus (instead) on low-value tasks that keep us busy, but not productive. [. . .]

At the beginning of each day, make a list of all the things that need to be done today. Once that’s done, identify the Top Three that are mission-critical to the success of the business and make that the priority. Once they are done, go back to the list, identify the next “Top Three” and repeat. This is how more things get done in less time, by prioritizing our day.

The last of the Seven Success Saboteurs is a failure to adapt and innovate. When you are content to leave things as they are, you’re accepting of the status quo. 95 percent of businesses live in this world. Markets evolve, technology advances, trends change, and people’s tastes and preferences shift with the times. [. . .] Failure to adapt and innovate in any industry is a Success Saboteur that not only stifles growth, it can shutter your doors in short order.

Albert Einstein brilliantly observed, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is the very definition of insanity.

Once we stop to innovate, we start to stagnate. The only way to change our thinking is daily personal growth. This is also how you raise your awareness to recognize the Success Saboteurs lurking in the shadows and take steps to thwart their attack.

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