Start up business realities

While startup life seems glamorous at best when it comes to dizzying valuations, the truth of the matter remains that 70% of all businesses (with employees) fail within 10 years. Business failure is a harsh reality. While 80% will make it past that first-year mark, only about two-thirds of all businesses with employees are able to survive their second year. The fifth year? Just half. Ten years out? Just 30%. 

There are some specific reasons why these businesses are failing. 

• You won't fail unless you entirely give up. 
• If you don't put your customers first, the potential for failure skyrockets.
• Regardless of your situation, find a good mentor who can help you navigate the stormy waters of any business in the current climate.
• Focus on the long term. Do your best today.
• Successful businesses deliver the most value. Find a way that you can under-promise but over-deliver. Always over-deliver. No matter what the situation. If you're looking for a fast buck or to get rich quick, you'll quickly find yourself at a dead end. 
• If you can't connect with your target audience, your business will fail.
• The truth is that it's hard to sell anything to straight cold traffic.
• Businesses that lack authenticity and transparency will fail. 
• Staying afloat is exponentially harder when competition is fierce.
• It's easy to spend when the coffers are full. When the expenses spiral out of control, or a founder uses much of the company's money for personal or frivolous expenses, it's impossible for the business to survive.
• When problems do arise navigating those murky waters becomes an impossible task for newcomers without real business world experience. Businesses need to build up their board of seasoned advisers, and founders need to find trusted mentors, if they're serious about longevity.
• Your employee tribe and culture is crucial for long-term success.

Advertising

• Advertising is a means of communication with the users of a product or service. Advertisements are messages paid for by those who send them and are intended to inform or influence people who receive them to buy their products or services.
• Advertising is attempting to influence the buying behavior of customers or clients by providing a persuasive selling message about products and/or services.
• Politics is what happens when two or more human beings interact. Every organisation is political, and everything it does involves politics. Advertising itself is an intensely political activity. 
• The phrase “The customer is always right” was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909, and is typically used by businesses to: (1) Convince customers that they will get good service at this company and (2) Convince employees to give customers good service. More and more businesses are abandoning this maxim because it leads to bad customer service.
• Advertising encourages more consumers to buy products and services. As the demand for products and services goes up because of advertising, more people are needed to manufacture, supply, ship and test those products and services. Thus, more jobs are created.
• Advertising positively impacts society because it helps maintain mass communications media, i.e. newspapers, radio, magazines, and television making them much less expensive for the public.
• Advertising aims to present a product in the best light and the dramatization usually crosses the line into falsely representing a product.
• Political advertising is vast and multifaceted. Conventional wisdom holds that political advertising in general  and negative advertising in particular  is harmful to democracy.
• Advertising plays an essential role in the production of consumerist demand by inventing false “needs” and by stimulating the formation of compulsive consumption habits, totally violating the conditions for maintenance of planetary ecological equilibrium.
• Children do not have the ability to identify advertisements as marketing messages until they are in their teens. This means that marketing messages can be perceived as truths and those messages can stay with them until they become adults.
  In a study, the effects of branding were looked at and 3 to 5 year olds were given two portions of identical foods. One portion was given in McDonald’s wrappers. When asked to point out which foods tasted better, the children said that the ones with the McDonald’s wrappers were better.
• Advertisement leads to branding and branded products are not only expensive but also taxed more although they seem to be more clean, less adulterated and higher quality.
• An average child is exposed to over 40,000 commercials through TV every year. Children are spending more time watching TV than they are in school, meaning that they are viewing more advertisements.
• Consumption of fast foods has increased among children due to the advertisements. The rising popularity of fast foods and snacks has led to an increase of obesity, heart problems, diabetes and other serious health issues among children. Young and healthy-looking models are used, hiding the fact that these foods are some of the unhealthiest in the world.
• Many advertisements these days use beautiful young women to attract buyers. This will no doubt have a seriously negative effect on how children think. From chocolates to clothing, almost every ad seen is sexual in nature. Children then think that they need to look that way to be accepted.

The customer is always right until she or he chooses not to buy.

In today's intensely competitive world of consumerism most advertisements are eye catching with slogans. In colorful advertisements, untruths are glorified and truths appear in small print. Children should be protected from the ill effects of advertisements. Consumer awareness is important for understanding and evaluating the product will meet their requirements or not. Buy only what you really need. While in doubt, don'y buy - especially if it involves credit card loans or bank personal loans. 

Implosion of trust

• The year 2017 witnessed the largest-ever drop in trust across the institutions of government, business, media and NGOs.
• Trust in media fell to an all-time lows, while trust levels in government dropped and is the least trusted institution. The credibility of leaders also is in peril: CEO credibility dropped globally to an all-time low, plummeting in every country, while government leaders remains least credible.
• The mass population distrusts their institutions, compared to the informed public.
• The implications of the global trust crisis are deep and wide-ranging. It began with the Great Recession of 2008, but like the second and third waves of a tsunami, globalization and technological change have further weakened people’s trust in global institutions. The consequence is virulent populism and nationalism as the mass population has taken control away from the elites.
• Current populist movements are fueled by a lack of trust in the system and economic and societal fears, including corruption, immigration, globalization, eroding social values and the pace of innovation.
• Politicians and the government are in real trouble. People don’t think they are the solution. They simply don’t trust them. The majority of people believe blunt, outspoken, spontaneous straight-talkers over rehearsed and diplomatic communicators.
• The cycle of distrust is magnified by the emergence of a media echo chamber that reinforces personal beliefs while shutting out opposing points of view. People favor search engines and more likely to ignore information that supports a position they do not believe in.
• People now view media as part of the elite. The lack of trust in media has also given rise to the fake news phenomenon and politicians speaking directly to the masses. Media outlets must take a more local and social approach.
• The dispersion of authority is evident. An ordinary person is now just as credible a source of information about a company as is a technical or academic expert, and far more credible than a CEO and government official.
• Business is viewed as the only one that can make a difference. Many believe a company can take actions to both increase profits and improve economic and social conditions in the community where it operates. Moreover, among those who are uncertain about whether the system is working for them, it is business that they trust most.
• Yet business finds itself on the brink of distrust of the public seeing it stoking their fears. A majority of population  worries about losing their jobs due to the impacts of globalization, lack of training or skills, immigrants who work for less, jobs moving to cheaper markets and automation.
• Business is the last retaining wall for trust. Its leaders must step up on the issues that matter for society. It has done a masterful job of illustrating the benefits of innovation but has done little to discuss the impact those advances will have on people’s jobs. Business must also focus on paying employees fairly, while providing better benefits and job training.
• Trust in business & NGOs dropped. Employees are trusted more than CEOs. In many countries people have lost faith in the system. Trust in traditional media and social media dropped. Only online media received the biggest bump in trust.

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Now a days, we don’t trust anything, or anyone. Mistrust is high, morale is low and trust is in crisis.Trust has been so much corroded that we now trust leaked information much more than traditional news sources and algorithms over human editors. Trust in institutions has evaporated to such an extent that falsehood can be misconstrued as fact, strength as intelligence, and self-interest as social compact. To rebuild trust and restore faith in the system institutions must move beyond their traditional roles of business as actor and innovator; governments as referee and regulator; media as watchdog; and NGOs as social conscience. Companies can build trust by treating employees well, offer high-quality products and services and listening to their customers. With employees more credible than a CEO, companies should work harder to get their customers and their expert employees to speak and advocate for them as much as possible. Companies have to show that they are not just listening but are also learning and responding to any feedback that they are given. The winners will be those that are more open, responsive and leverage the collective voices of both their employees and their customers.