Starting a business is exciting. It also means uncertainty, overcoming challenges, and pursuing opportunities. Following your vocation, or your passion, is fulfilling, but you need to be careful about how to start your business. While passion and mission are crucial, many entrepreneurs make essential mistakes at the beginning of their journey, which slows them down or derails their business. Knowing the common pitfalls when starting your business is necessary.
Starting a Business? Avoid These 5 Costly Errors
In this blog article, I will mention the main five ones. Let’s dive into it.
1. Lack of clear business plan
One of the most common pitfalls is that entrepreneurs jump into business without a plan, unthinkingly following their passion. Following passion is great, don’t get me wrong, but we need to have a minimum plan at hand that will cover the following components.
Above, you can see the overall sequence of thoughts that you need to put into your business plan. A business plan is not only a document. It is your guide first for yourself, then your team, and to attract potential investors. To add to the above, below are a few more points to consider.
- Outline your short-term and long-term business goals
- Continuously review and adapt to trends and changes
- Agility is key
2. Ignoring Market Research
Many start-ups fail because they don’t conduct the required market research. This is essential to understanding whether your products and services are attractive to your customers and if they are needed. Indeed, you don’t want to spend time and money on something no one wants anymore. You want to have revenue from your business.
How to avoid this pitfall, here are some tips:
- Create your customer persona. Who is your customer? Do an analysis. What is their age, where they hang out, what is their potential income, and what is important to them? You can have more than one customer persona.
- Conduct Interviews with your potential customers. What are their pains? What problem do you solve for them? Show them a prototype or sketch, or if it is a service, talk about it.
- Know your competition. There will be many out there who might do the same. Find this little nugget, you can add to your personality, ideas, and yourself to be different.
3. Poor Financial Management
Many entrepreneurs underestimate the importance of financial management. Do you have a buffer to survive when income is poor? How are you going to support your expenses? Overspending and lack of control are some of the many pitfalls regarding funds. Are you bootstrapping, or do you need investors? What type of investors are you looking for?
How to avoid this pitfall, here are some tips:
- Create a simple sheet for income and expenses
- Analyse after 6 months, which expenses you can remove or cancel, such as unnecessary subscriptions.
- Create a finance plan and stick to it. Sometimes, it will not be possible to follow strictly, so review it again.
- You might want to have a financial advisor to keep you in check, or your accountability buddy, someone from your team who can monitor regularly.
4. Do it alone
Yes, as business owners, and right at the start, we all want to do this alone. This is the case, though you need to delegate some tasks as you have only one brain, and stemming all alone consumes time, especially in the beginning. While as entrepreneurs we will have multiple hats, doing it for a long time alone will lead to burnout and frustration.
How to avoid this pitfall, here are some tips:
- Delegate tasks wherever possible. It might be your friends and family, partners, or freelancers. You can even seek volunteers or interns who might want to gain experience and are happy to support your mission and passion.
- Use technology, whether AI or any other automation, maximize the use of automation wherever possible.
- Seek mentorship or join any network that supports entrepreneurs. Sharing is essential so you don’t feel alone with your challenges. You might meet someone who can help, advise, and give you resources that benefit your business.
5. Neglecting Marketing and Branding
Even if you have the best solution, if no one knows it, you cannot sell it and find customers. Visibility is key. Without an overall marketing strategy, you will remain invisible.
How to avoid this pitfall, here are some tips:
- Create a strong brand. Your brand shall reflect your values, mission, and what you try to solve. My company’s name is: InnKick. Why did I choose that name? I came from my thought of being a coach who pushes clients to go beyond their comfort zone and see their full potential. Therefore I “Kick” them if you will and “Inn” comes from the first initials of Innovation and Inner self. I combined both to reflect on how I am helping and empowering my clients. Think about your story.
- Use social media. Whether you like it or not, you must be on at least one channel to gain credibility and visibility. Create content, send newsletters, and be on LinkedIn. Choose which channel clicks more with you and be consistent with your message.
- Invest in a trendy website, optimizing SEO. Frequently review and change to be more attractive, this is your shop window. I work with “Merthopia,” an expert in website creation and SEO optimization. And it makes a difference. With constant content creation and events, I ensure I stay on top of SEO without any Google ads, you can look for me and I appear under “Career Coach Geneva” and under “Laser Coaching “after all Google ads.
Consistent marketing efforts will help you build your brand and help your business flourish.
Let’s wrap it up
Starting a business is a rewarding and challenging journey. Avoiding the pitfalls above, like poor marketing and budgeting, no business plan, and trying to do it all alone, will help you begin on a strong footing.
I have my saying, “try fast, fail fast, and learn fast.” You will make mistakes; that’s part of the journey. What you learn from them is crucial.
Adding to the equation: your mindset is key. Consistency, belief in your business, and resilience are key components of success.
Another quote to add here: “Determination is key to success”.
Do you need help with creating your business?
For further advice, consultancy or coaching, I stay at your disposal. Just reach out.