Do you know why most entrepreneurs play the short game and fail within the first two years? And why the select few entrepreneurs that are playing the long game are the ones that ultimately end up successful and build great lasting businesses that go on to make a difference in the world?

Let’s dive in to explore.

What causes most entrepreneurs to go out of business

When I started in business, I played the short game like all other beginner entrepreneurs, and the truth is I had no other choice. 

I had just quit my IT job to start a business and be an entrepreneur. I had to make an income as quickly as possible to pay my bills and ensure that I had food on the table. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t have to rely on anyone else for money, take on debt, or ask for loans, so I needed to make money for my business as quickly as possible.

I have realized that when you’re focused on the short game, you’re focused on how you can build something as quickly as possible that generates money in your bank account. You make a fast mistake and learn fast, and you do things with the mindset of lean and meanness.

This is probably the strategy you should take in your first few months in business. This way, you can validate your business idea and get your proof of concept ready.

However, the mistake that most entrepreneurs make is that they continue to adopt this mentality throughout the length of their business.

They’re still playing the short game, even after being in business for more than 2 to 3 years. They still focus on making as much money as possible while offering their clients mediocre products and services, producing mediocre results.

That is what causes most entrepreneurs to go out of business. This is the reason why most courses and programs online don’t work. This is why most people think online gurus are scammers because they’re just focused on the short games.

Once my entrepreneurship experience grew, I built my first business and sold it with good profit. Then I built Ummahpreneur, and I started to divert my attention and focus on business towards playing the long game.

The long game in business is very different. Instead of immediately focusing on making as high of an income as possible, your focus should be on a few things.

Now, these few things are what we call the three fundamentals of business and why you should focus on them.

1. Create an amazing product & service

The first fundamental is to create an amazing product & service and continue to refine & improve it over time. You need to give 100% on the quality of your product because what really creates lasting growth over-time for any company or business is your client satisfaction.

You need to ask yourself, how satisfied are your clients with your products or services? At Ummahpreneur, alhamdulillah, we have a stellar reputation. We only have five-star reviews, and we’ve never had someone come out and complain about our services, programs, and mentorship. 

We’ve been able to do this over the last three years because we’ve focused relentlessly on how we can structure our mentorship programs, offer our students more support, and provide them with the best experience possible. After all, ultimately, we know if our students are successful, which reflects on our ability to deliver results and our reputation as a business and is extremely important to us.

If Ummahpreneur is able to help Muslim entrepreneurs build & grow businesses and achieve their goals, then ultimately, Ummahpreneur is going to continue living on for the next 20-30 years and grow to where it needs to grow.

But if our products & services and the things that we do ultimately are no good to our audience, then it’s only a matter of time before people speak out, and you will see our downfall.

So your first, ultimate goal should be to create the best possible thing that your customers experience within that field. 

2. Providing tons of value and building an authentic audience

Number two is giving tons of value and building an audience that believes in what you have to offer, even if they aren’t necessarily paying you.

This is something that people underestimate. In the current world of social media, attention is the most important currency.

If you don’t have attention, then you don’t have an audience that you can serve, provide help, or value to. Ultimately attention is what’s going to dictate the long-term success of your business.

So it’s essential as part of the second fundamental that you build an audience of raving fans. The way that you do this is really by providing them with authentic value and doing this for free.

This is why we have our youtube channel at Ummahpreneur because, despite the number of people who watch our video, we don’t even really care or look at the views. We just want to make videos and build things that serve and help people.

Even if no one watches our videos, even if this doesn’t reach anyone, we will continue doing this no matter what.

So, whenever people are looking for a solution to building a halal business or getting help in business from a Muslim perspective, I pray that they will find these videos beneficial and get some value from them. Maybe consider working with us one day and benefiting from our mentorship and services.

3. Building out systems and processes in your business

The last fundamental will be building out systems and processes in your business to fire yourself upwards.

This means that as you’re building the best product or service, you need to build systems and processes for it to scale. You need to organize your business into different departments. Like, as the marketing department, the operation department, the sales department, and so on. 

For every department in your business, you have to organize the processes for these systems.

You need to put things in place so that you can hire people to do the job for you and fire yourself upwards into that CEO role and have people in place in your business that is taking care of the day-to-day activities.

As an entrepreneur and CEO, your goal is that you want to work on your business and not within your business.

For example, if you create social media content every single week, then you have a process from researching to creating it. You can create a step-by-step doc of the process so that when you hire someone new, you can provide these steps for more efficiency and productivity.

Remember, you want to become a business owner, and you don’t want to become a self-employed freelancer.