Entrepreneurs are no different from other people in that we all make mistakes. The difference is that when an entrepreneur makes a mistake, their business suffers. The good news is, many of these mistakes can easily be avoided. Let’s take a look at the five most common mistakes that stifle entrepreneurial success and how to avoid them.
Common Mistake #1: Operating Without a Plan
Planning and having a business plan are your primary roles as an entrepreneur. In fact, business experts recommend you spend at least 25% of your time as a business owner planning. To begin a business without a plan, and to continue without analyzing and changing your plan as you grow, is a sure way to struggle to succeed. It’s like heading out for a drive and not knowing how to get where you’re going.
So what’s the cure? Plan! Start with a business plan that outlines your audience, competition, vision and mission, product or service and marketing strategy. Once you have a plan, schedule time into each and every week to plan your business. Analyze what’s working, what isn’t and where you’re going to go from here.
Share this plan with your Virtual Assistant too so they can envision your business every successful step of of the way. They can keep you on track when you start to stray off from what you originally planned to do
Common Mistake #2: Managing Your Business Instead of Leading It
As a small business owner just getting started, it makes sense that you may be the one person who does everything. However, as you grow that practice isn’t going to continue to make sense; you’re going to run out of hours or end up eliminating tasks that are necessary to grow your business.
You don’t, for example, spend all your time invoicing and bookkeeping if your time could be better spent coaching clients and bringing in profits. Leading your business means knowing that it’s better to focus on your specialized skills and hire or outsource to others for their specialized skills. Leading means building a team of people to help you grow your business rather than trying to do it all yourself.
That’s where your VA comes in…make sure you learn to outsource work to them so you can spend your time wiser on your business needs.
Common Mistake #3: Not Having a System
The most successful entrepreneurs have a system that keeps them productive. It may be something as simple as using Outlook to prioritize your tasks and then not closing the door to your office until they’re all completed. It may be something more complicated. The point isn’t what system you use – that’s going to be personal to you – the point is to have a system that helps you stay organized and productive.
Ask your Virtual Assistant to research a project management system to keep your organized which will highly benefit your business. A few to look at are Central Desktop, Smartsheet orBasecamp to name a few. Get them to set you up with a greeting card referral campaign program to increase your database over the course of the New Year.
Systems make business easy to run for everyone involved.
Common Mistake #4: Overextending Yourself
It’s so easy to have your fingers in too many cookie jars. When you start experiencing business success, you want more – it’s only natural. So you start other businesses, you launch new products or services and you partner with others. Unfortunately, all this activity pulls your focus in many directions. The result is that you’re only able to devote a small part of your attention to each project rather than your full attention to a single project, and that affects your success.
The cure? Make sure, before you take anything new on, that you can devote your full attention to the project and give it the focus it deserves.
And if you can’t devote the time but still can’t let it go…consider outsourcing the idea to a team of Virtual Assistants who will project manage it for you.
Common Mistake #5: Trusting the Wrong People
Trusting the wrong people doesn’t mean you’re susceptible to scammers, it means that you’re putting your faith and commitment into people who are not going to help you grow your business. This includes partners, employees, contractors and even services.
Before you take any steps to forge a relationship with anyone, assess whether it’s going to help you grow your business, set goals for the relationship and establish measures to track and evaluate your success.
If you’ve already made one of these mistakes, not to worry. They’re survivable and may even lead to bigger and better opportunities. Don’t be hard on yourself. Mistakes means you’re actually pushing yourself and striving to achieve your goals, and that in and of itself is a wonderful thing.
Excellent post. I find so many times that as business owners we do make mistakes, but only look at it from dollars and cents lost. So much of this is learning from mistakes and learning from others at forums or at blogs. It’s also a matter of having a game plan for “bouncing back”.
Whenever I make a mistake in my business, I ask what really went wrong and what could I have done differently. After all, they don’t teach entrepreneurship in school. It is up to us to learn and keep finding great resources such as this article.
Again, excellent post.