Why Only 5% of Businesses Ever Work "On" Their Business Successfully with Andrew Frazier

Andrew Frazier, CFA and author of "Running Your Small Business Like a Pro," recently shared his insights on the Dear Business Coach podcast about the critical elements that separate struggling entrepreneurs from successful business owners. With over 15 years of experience working one-on-one with more than a thousand business owners, Frazier emphasized three fundamental areas where most businesses fail: understanding their most important job, managing numbers effectively, and positioning for growth financing.

"Many business owners don't know their most important job," Frazier explained, stressing that "their most important job is sales and marketing" and recommending "at least two hours a day you need to spend doing sales and marketing." He noted that fear of numbers often becomes an entrepreneur's "Achilles heel," stating, "If you don't have numbers, how are you going to measure how you're doing? How are you going to improve?" Through his "masterpreneur playbook," Frazier guides business owners through five critical steps from startup to scale, addressing the sobering reality that "one out of a thousand businesses ever does that successfully" and "maybe 5% of businesses ever work on their business successfully."

His approach goes beyond traditional bookkeeping services, offering what he describes as a "coach-sultant" relationship that helps entrepreneurs develop "the knowledge or the leadership skills" necessary to create businesses "that can run without you and that can be scalable."