A lot of the conflict on those shows is contrived. That show is almost like a procedural drama where the owner's hopeless, resists change, finally sees the light, and then all is set aright by the end.
At least in the 5 episodes I've seen.
At least in the 5 episodes I've seen.
That show, especially in the first couple of seasons, skipped the usual reality-show tropes and really dug in to the nitty-gritty elements of running a successful restaurant -- which it showed pretty clearly are the same as the elements of running any successful business: know your customers, watch your money, care about your work. There was real human drama in that show that you just don't see very often on TV.
Of course, then they brought it to America and threw all that insightful stuff out to make room for trumped-up shouting matches and canned sound effects of rattlesnakes. What a disappointment.
Both versions are up for streaming on Netflix, if you want to see what I mean; make sure to look for "Ramsay's" in the title to get the UK version. Watch the first episode of the first season and you'll understand the difference.
That said the type of 'businessman' the author talks about is everything but fictional. In my 7 years running a web consultancy agency I've come across a lot of these wantrepreneurs who value their status and opinion more than value provided to their customers. I also have been trying to avoid this type of customers as the 20/80 rule applies here very much: 20% of your customers give you 80% of your headaches. My experience with a lot of these 'family' businesses is also that these people often get into the business by heritage and not necessarily because they want to.
Having said that I agree with the premise of the author's article since I've worked with too many small business owners in my early days of web development and most of them seemed to reject our tech/marketing strategy for theirs even though they usually waited until a crisis hit before calling us to begin with.
You'll hear people saying BS things that you'd never expect a business owner to say, much less a scripted one.
And not all businesses he talks to are "saved" in the end. Some are just hopeless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y4b-DEkIps
In other words: when you run a failing business, the only thing you know for certain is that keeping on doing what you've been doing will fail. Will a particular new plan work? Who knows. But you need to be open to doing something.