Business Advice for women is often about how to ensure that you manage to run your new business, feed your family gourmet meals each evening, look like a model and still manage to get romantic in the bedroom every night.

So, I decided (devil that I am!) to give you “anti advice”. I am going to give you 7 Tips that are absolutely 100% GUARANTEED to make you fail in business!

1 Whatever you do, do not have a Goal

Determined failures will have one thing in common – they will have no goal and therefore absolutely no idea of where they are going with their business.

2 Do NOT write a Business Plan

The last thing you want as a committed failure, is to have a clear, well considered plan. It is far more sure a path to failure to take each day as it comes.

3 Make sure that you do not have a clue about your sales and marketing strategies

“Sales and marketing strategy” can be a scary phrase. Failures never move past this fear to discover what it actually means and how to get one. They spend huge amounts of money on advertising, without knowing whether or not it works – but hey! – at least they get to see their company name in adverts all over the place!

4 Leave your Goal as one big amorphous mass!

A goal is something that should make your toes tingle – that’s how exciting and huge it should be! As our determined failure doesn’t have one anyway, they have no need to break it down into baby steps. If, in a moment of weakness, you set a goal – don’t worry, you can still fail. Leave it as a “huge hairy goal”. Don’t break it down into tiny little steps which, if you take every single one will ensure that you get to your goal.

5 Milestones and Rewards

This one is a little irrelevant as the committed failure doesn’t have a goal, or it they do, they certainly didn’t break it down into manageable chunks. So therefore, putting dates on when certain things will be accomplished won’t be necessary at all. On the other hand, failures are very good at rewarding themselves for a job not done, so the rewards part is very relevant indeed. Therefore, when it comes to rewarding yourself, make sure that the reward is something that is wildly inappropriate and very expensive.

6 Do not keep records – at all

One way that can help with my guarantee of failure is to make sure that you do not, under any circumstances, keep track of anything. This list includes (but is not exhaustive) your finances; your stock levels; your ordering dates; your customers preferences; your staff; your expenses….

7 And Finally…..

If, after following my advice to the letter, you manage to succeed and not fail, I’m sorry. However, when you reach your goal, make sure that the moment passes without acknowledgement or celebration. After all, who gives a damn about reaching a business goal?

If, having read this article you change your mind and think that you might like to take the unusual step of deciding to change your tack and move from failure to success, perhaps you could consider the following:

“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.” John Dewey

Do you want to fail?  Or would you rather succeed?

Do you need help with formulating a goal and a business plan, but haven’t got a clue where to start?  Subscribe to my online Business Problem Solutions programme and let me help you! It launches 1 December 2009 and it is going to revolutionise your business!