Who is responsible for a toxic workplace? If you do any of these 3 things, look in the mirror. Make better and faster decisions with this simple 3-step framework. Starting a business is a challenge, but there are many areas you can focus on to ensure that your business stays afloat beyond the first year and continues to be successful. We asked several small business owners and executives to share 20 mistakes that new business owners should avoid when starting their companies.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 18% of new businesses fail during their first two years of operation and more than 55% of all companies do not survive beyond the fifth year. So how can you successfully launch and run your startup? We reached out to hundreds of small business owners, growth strategists, financial advisors, legal experts and business consultants to compile the 20 biggest mistakes startups make so you can avoid them when starting your own business. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an additional challenge for new business owners. Safety measures, such as face masks, hand sanitizer, and plexiglass dividers for staff and customers, can be costly.
In addition, at the beginning of the pandemic, lockdowns led to a reduction in spending, which proved to be a challenge for small business owners. Assuming that they can do everything themselves, underestimate the importance of marketing and not understanding the people who matter most. Your business won't take off if you hire a friend who didn't pass Composition 101 to write the text for your website instead of a professional copywriter or designer who made you laugh in the interview (but has terrible samples) instead of someone who has the design skills you need. There's no way around it as a new entrepreneur, you're going to be wrong.
But now that you know the 10 most common mistakes that new entrepreneurs make, at least you can avoid them. One of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make is thinking that a physical store is the best way to start. Our organic spice company started as a store in a busy area. We quickly realized that high traffic doesn't instantly equate to people coming in and buying, and that the location isn't good for our business.
Therefore, we closed the store after 2 years. I made the mistake of hiring too many people instead of the right people and spending money to fill the top of the funnel without having a well-defined process for managing the bottom of the funnel. The important thing about the mistakes that entrepreneurs make is to overcome them and not fall into despair. But one reason why many startups and new entrepreneurs fail is that they don't actually solve a problem.
When I started running my business, I undertook several projects after a verbal approval, one of the biggest business mistakes I could have made, if you ask me. Don't be afraid of failure; instead, learn from your mistakes and change your business model as needed. Whether it's because they're overwhelmed with everything they have to do or because they have a sense of success, they feel: “I get it, a lot of new entrepreneurs make the mistake of leaving learning on the back burner. The number you get is the number of possible business mistakes you can make throughout your business career.
Once you focus all your efforts on that idea and proactively address the other challenges on this list, you'll be able to survive some of the most devastating mistakes that many entrepreneurs make every day. Too many entrepreneurs make the mistake of assuming that starting a business is something they can do on their own. Entrepreneurship is not allowed to drown in shame and guilt after making serious or even trivial business mistakes. But a major mistake that many new entrepreneurs make is that they hire the people they like instead of hiring the people they need.
After learning the hard way that this wasn't ideal and that it caused a lot of stress, I would say that of all the mistakes I've made in small businesses, this is one of the worst. While a little fear and anxiety is totally normal, even healthy, allowing fear to run the show is like boarding an express train to Mistakeville. .
