In the world of business, one mistake can cost an entrepreneur his entire company. While everyone makes mistakes, the resulting consequences are tenfold with business. Cleaning up after your reputation or surviving on a flawed business model that continually pushes you to spend more than what you’re earning are just two of the hardest things to do after a mistake is made.
Many startup businesses have seen their demise due to a single mistake that halted their operations and affected their branding. As a business owner, many will tell you that it is normal to make mistakes. Falling down multiple times and getting up is nothing but a part of the excruciating journey to success. It is important that entrepreneurs learn how to bounce back from a blunder.
However, what is more important is learning the history of the failed businesses and taking extra preventive measures to guarantee that you do not make the same mistakes. Here are some of the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make. Take heed from these and avoid them like the plague.
Get Overwhelmed By Tasks
Running a business can be extremely challenging. You will have a hundred things coming at you all at once. Lease agreements. Contracts. (Beware of a redline contract). Client Calls. Meetings. Hounding Investors. These are just some of the stuff that you will have to get used to dealing with on a regular basis. It is thereby quite easy to say that this overwhelming task will completely devour you if you do not become careful. It is then important that you get organized. Buy a planner. Write down all the tasks that you have to accomplish for the day and put it in a space that’s easily soon. This way, you guarantee that you finish your day without any missed task.
Expanding Prematurely
You may think that your business is doing great and that the next step is that you should immediately expand to make space for all the customers that you are getting. Unfortunately, this is a common mistake that brings about the downfall of many businesses. Rapid expansion requires a lot of resources to be spent. Resources that you may not yet have or can’t afford losing.
While expansion is a good thing, you must first make sure that your business is ready for it. Sometimes, a small boom in performance is already enough to convince entrepreneurs to expand or to add a second branch. They could not be far from the truth, however. With an increase in sales comes a decrease soon afterwards. Consult with business experts as to whether your organization is truly ready for expansion or not.
Not Adapting To The Market
It’s not a secret that the market is very volatile. With new inventions getting invented almost every single day, it can’t be helped that the field of any industry changes. Even the smallest innovation can uplift the biggest corporations and shake them to their very core.
While it is understandable that you should stay true to your company’s current mission and vision, you should also adapt to the changes happening around you. For example, the rise of social media has almost rendered traditional marketing obsolete. It is then only natural for you to adjust your marketing strategies to gear towards using social media platforms for more effective marketing.
Hiring Too Many Staff
While a startup is understandably burdened with hundreds of big and small tasks alike, it would be foolish to hire too much staff. Even adding a single employee onto your department when your company is at risk will definitely have negative consequences. Know that each staff of yours will require monthly compensation together with other benefits that come with employment. For startups, these may be resources that you cannot afford to spend which could drive you further into debt. Look at your business model and discern whether you really need additional staff or no.
No Competitor Analysis
Competition is tough. No matter how unique and innovative your product is, chances are you already have competition that has been in the business longer than you. It should be noted that when doing market research, a thorough report on competitor analysis must also be made. This will provide you with vital information such as who are your competitors, what are they doing, how are they doing their marketing, etc. Once you have figured out their business model, you can already determine what you should do better to gain an edge against them.
Slow Decision Making
While taking it low and slow is a risk-free way of handling a business, the chance for progress is also halted. Opportunities come and go in an instant. As a business owner, you need to learn the art of making quick, and more importantly, correct business decisions. Don’t look at a gift horse too much in the mouth as you may lose a golden opportunity. Decide quick and act fast so you do not miss out on too many opportunities. Often times, market trends and fads don’t stay long but the effect lasts a long time. If your competition managed to bandwagon to these trends and you didn’t, it would take a lot for you to win over the edge again.
Not Improving Their Customer Experience
Your product may be the best in the business but without investing resources on customer experience, you will still lose out on customers. Startups are sometimes too focused on how they can improve their product that they forget about the customers and how they deliver said products.
Setting An Unattainable Goal
When entrepreneurs start a business, the first step is to establish certain goals that must be met given a certain period of time. When first starting a business the “new” idea can be so exciting that business owners forget to apply logic into their goals. Often, they dream too high like earning $1 million by the end of the year. This is an impossible task that will just lower the morale of everyone inside the organization. An impossible task like that will also add unnecessary pressure on the backs of all employees. Study the market and determine goals that are achievable.
