6 Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Will Make
Every business owner is sure to make some mistakes along their entrepreneurial journey, but they will of course be easier to avoid if you know what to look out for. Keep these common mistakes entrepreneurs make in mind, to keep your business moving forward with minimal speed bumps!
1. They Try to Do It All Themselves
When you have an idea for a business, or take on the challenge of creating or franchising your own, it’s easy to get so caught up in your vision that you don’t want other people to come in and interfere with or alter that vision. You may feel like things must be done a certain way, and that the best way for them to be done is to do it yourself. But by focusing on what you’re great at and building a team to do the other parts of the business, you’ll be much better suited for the long term.
2. They Put All Their Eggs in One Basket
Keeping your options open will allow you to not miss out on investments that could be critical to your business. Diversifying your options also relates to creating and maintaining multiple revenue streams. Multiple revenue streams can keep your business strong when certain areas of your business aren’t doing very well.
3. They Move Too Fast or Too Slow
Finding the right speed to grow your business can be difficult. You want to make sure you do your due diligence and research before making big decisions, but you also have to know when to act when opportunity knocks. Having a mentor or other people on your team to help you gauge the right speed for your business can be a great asset.
For tips on finding a mentor, check out this blog post from our sister company Headway Capital: How to Find a Professional Mentor.
4. They Get Down on Themselves or the Business
Being an entrepreneur typically comes with a lot of highs and lows. You have to be able to keep level-headed yet optimistic to stay the course. When you hit the inevitable lows, just try to observe the situation and know it’s all part of the process. Don’t let the emotional side obstruct your vision. Instead, learn from the situations and turn them into a positive experience that can help your business later on.
5. They Lose Touch With Their Customers
The most common and dangerous occurrence of this is to lose touch with your customers, before they even exist. Doing testing and market research to understand that the product or service you are offering is actually something of value and solves a problem/fills a need is important. And as your business grows, listening to customer feedback and monitoring re-orders is essential to making sure your business is headed in the right direction.
6. They Keep Their Ideas to Themselves
Once you have an idea that you believe will solve a problem, it’s a fairly natural instinct to want to protect that idea so no one else will take it and execute it before you (or in opposition to you). But it’s important to realize that an idea is worth nothing without the right execution, and to execute your idea, you will need to gather feedback and get clients and partners on board. The more you share your idea, the more likely it is that you will find the right people to help make it succeed. If you’re really so concerned about your idea being “stolen,” just be confident enough to know that you can be the one to execute it best.
