Mistakes Wildly Successful Entrepreneurs Never Make Twice

When you enter the business world, it’s inevitable that some things won’t go your way. The worst part lies in the fact that there are some mistakes that you’re likely to make no matter how hard you try or how much effort you invest in preparing for your debut in the business world. While there’s a certain degree of tolerance here, there are some mistakes that you can only afford to make once. Here are six of them.

Not having an objective

This particular issue may not seem like that big of a mistake, however, a lot of people make it completely unknowingly. Just knowing what direction you want your company to take is not enough, you need to have a real quantifiable objective. In fact, it needs to be easy to describe so that you can identify keys to success and be fully aware of it when you reach or fail to reach the goal. Most importantly, it needs to be realistic, even though you shouldn’t be too scared of thinking big. Still, setting the bar too high can leave you disappointed, while setting it too low may not make any difference upon a successful completion.

Ignoring your personal brand and appearance

The next important issue is one of your appearance. You see, when people decide to do business with your brand, they might start taking a closer look at you, as a person, as well. Instead of just looking at your company’s website, they’ll probably also look up your personal blog or try to find you on social networks. So, try to polish this a bit but make sure not to make yourself look “too professional” seeing as how you don’t want to appear trying too hard.

Aside from this, you also need to think about the message that your stance sends during meetings in person. Your stance, your gestures (non-verbal communication) and even the vehicle you arrive in may change the way in which you’re perceived by a potential investor or a business partner. Let’s say for instance that you’re visiting New Zealand and have to go to the meeting straight from the airport. Sure, getting a cab would be the simplest thing to do but finding a cheap car rental may be a more efficient solution.

Counting on others to change

While believing in others is usually recommended, counting on them is not always the wisest choice. Sure, it is possible that your unconscientious partner or employee will see the fault in their ways and reform themselves but if you make a plan in which you already see them as changed, you’re usually destined to fail. This is due to the fact that any plan that depends on someone else acting out of character is a bad one to begin with. When planning, especially if your business depends on it, you need to look at reliability and consistency as, by far, the most important factor, even more important than a potential gain.

Going for comfort over progress

One of the major problems that you’ll have to address as an entrepreneur is the choice of comfort vs. progress. While, on paper, progress may seem like an obvious choice, this is only because you’re forgetting about the most commonly used synonym for progress – change. No matter how lucrative or necessary, change is always difficult to handle, which is why a lot of people prefer to postpone it for the sake of comfort. All you have to do here is remember that your business will have to evolve at one point, either way. The longer you postpone this, the greater the difference you allow your competitors to make.

Fixing weaknesses instead of exploiting strengths

While this may seem controversial, especially due to the fact that everyone out there knows the good old phrase “You’re only as strong as your weakest link,” you need to look at this from the right perspective. By trying too hard to fix the downsides of your company, you risk stretching yourself too thin. So, what do you do? Ideally, you would focus on your primary tasks and outsource everything you hate doing or everything that you do inefficiently.

Evaluating employees only based on performance

Once again, this is a mistake that’s dangerous due to the fact that it’s incredibly intuitive. Namely, seeing as how you’re not supposed to fraternize with your employees, evaluating them based on their performance seems like the most logical next step. However, what good is an over-performing employee who leaves you just a month after you give them a raise and a promotion? Moreover, is it worth to keep an excellent employee (performance-wise) if they are an emotional vampire and, thus, reduce the performance of the rest of your team? These are just some questions that you’ll have to ask.

Mistakes are a natural side-effect of effort, especially in fields that are as volatile and creative as a business world. Moreover, these errors allow you to learn in an efficient and reliable way, the only downside of them being that they are too expensive to be made twice. Fortunately, if you manage to learn about them from a different source, you might be just lucky enough to avert them altogether.

About the author

Diana Smith is a full time mom of two beautiful girls and a business coach. She is interested in topics related to marketing and advertising.

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