You might have embarked on a journey of entrepreneurship with your dream startup with great enthusiasm and energy. However, you soon realize that maintaining day-to-day business activities is itself challenging and if you aren’t prepared for challenges, then you may soon fall out of the race.
THE U. S Bureau of Labour Statistics has provided data that says, over 20 per cent of businesses fail during the first two years of their operation itself. Moreover, around half of all businesses don’t survive after the fifth year.
Thus, you must avoid some fundamental mistakes to save your passion for becoming a successful entrepreneur. Following are the seven mistakes you should avoid to get successful at your startup or business.
1. Not doing proper research work
Renowned writer Mark Twain had once said, “Supposing is good, but finding out is better”. This quote is perfectly applicable to business ventures. With proper research, you open the door for new knowledge and findings. Proper research helps you know:
- The recent market trends related to your industry
- Your customer base in a better sense
- Marketing strategies employed by your competitors
2. Not paying keen attention to financial aspects
Financial aspects are the crucial building blocks of any enterprise. Thus, it becomes extremely important for you to have a comprehensive financial plan.
A comprehensive financial plan helps you prepare a budget for your business. It also gives you clarity on how much money is at risk. And you can develop the business plan with the available money in your hand without inviting sudden losses.
Not paying keen attention to the financial aspects of your business is the biggest mistake you will ever encounter in your entrepreneurial journey.
3. Not having a backup plan at hand
A startup has great potential for risks and challenges. Despite having an incredible business idea, you may incur losses at any stage of your entrepreneurial journey. Thus, it is wise to have a significant backup plan that you can consider in adversities. This will also give you mental stability knowing the fact that all your resources and efforts are not at stake at the same time. Not having a backup plan is a great risk you have to bear.
4. Focusing more on profit-oriented results
Your entrepreneurial journey is not about that landmark selling record you have achieved, but it is more about maintaining that success in the longer run. While focusing more on results or profits, you might miss on the fundamental aspects of your business. You need to have a strong foundation for your business to propel and prosper. Also, the business strategies you are deploying over time, kind of infrastructure you are maintaining have a great impact on the overall success of your business. Thus, focusing more on profit-oriented results by disregarding the fundamental aspects of your business is not a healthy approach.
5. Missing out on knowing the customer base
Forming a solid customer base is more challenging for startups than established businesses as you have to start gaining loyal customers from the scratch. The market analysis can help you understand the kind of customers you should focus on. If you miss out on knowing your customer base, you will soon lose your target customers. And no business activity has any value without customers. So prioritize your customers and retain them in a long run.
6. Making poor recruiting decisions
Hiring the desired people is very crucial while considering overall business operations. You can’t simply rely on candidates’ educational or other credentials. You need to develop a streamlined hiring process that can fetch the right employees for your business. The recruiting team should go deeper and consider objective factors while employing new staff. By making poor recruiting decisions, you may incur a great loss of efficiency and expertise.
7. Falling short on SEO content
SEO plays a significant role in attracting traffic to your website. It facilitates your content to get more search results on various search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. It boosts your website ranking while improving its visibility. It has the potential to produce SEO content that fetches you a priority position in the search listing. It helps you to reach more people and can establish you as a specialist. Thus, if you are neglecting these benefits and no optimizing your content on the blog or the website then naturally, your website will land upon the second or third page.
Concluding thoughts
Commencing your entrepreneur journey with a great idea or budget could not guarantee you the success you wish to achieve. While passion is a crucial driving force, you should not miss the planning part of it. This write-up has outlined seven mistakes you should avoid to gain and maintain success at your startup or business.
