7 Mistakes You Should Avoid in Your New Business

Running a new business is always difficult; you’ll have sleepless nights, be constantly revaluating your plans, and learning new things as you go – but the feeling of success and accomplishment far outweighs any of this.

Of course, things can always go a little smoother. If you want the best chance of success, here are 7 mistakes you should avoid during those early months:

Pic from Unsplash

1) Having Nothing to Fall Back On

Although having faith and confidence in your new business is part of the formula for success, it would be foolish not to have a backup plan should things go wrong. Do you have a job you can go back to? Did you invest all of your savings and remortgage your home to get the business off the ground?

If you answered no to the first question and yes to the second, you may want to rethink the situation. As the old saying goes, never put all of your eggs in one basket.

This also applies to the business itself. Do you have backup suppliers, a separate revenue stream, and how’s that record keeping coming along?

2) Poor Planning

For any business to have launched there had to have been some planning, but that doesn’t mean it was good planning – often it’s the first few months when things begin to unravel.

This might be because of poor market research or a weak business plan (overestimating market size and potential customers, over or underpricing etc), but there also needs to be a long-term goal as well.

If you don’t know where you see the business in a year and two years, how you will handle growth (or lack of growth), and what your next steps are, then it’s time to start thinking about it.

3) Inadequate Marketing

There are many different forms of marketing, from putting ads in the local paper and local store windows, to building a following on social media – the mediums you choose and how you use them will depend on the type of business you’ve created and who you are trying to reach.

The mistake most new business owners make is not doing enough marketing (especially true of brick-and-mortar businesses like stores or restaurants), or misunderstanding online marketing and thinking posting blindly on Facebook will be enough

4) Not Acting on Feedback

When you start a business (especially for the first time) you can feel very proud of your ideas and let your ego get in the way of progress. While some customers will always have an axe to grind or some members of your team and staff will always be very critical, genuine honest feedback needs to be taken on board.

If several customers don’t like x about your product or several members of the team agree with a suggestion, then make changes. If they don’t work out, you can always go back to the old way.

5) Overspending

Starting a business is always going to involve an initial chunk of capital but it’s those first few months when you’re prone to overspending. New ideas pop into your head, unexpected problems arise, you end up hiring more people – it all costs money.

Some of this is inevitable, but a lot of the time there are ways to spend less and get the same results if you do the research.

6) Being Too Frugal

At the same time, some new business owners are reluctant to spend at all, especially if they have used a lot of their own personal money. There’s a line between good financial planning and being cheap, and sometimes being cheap reflects in the business itself and devalues it in the eyes of the customer.

If you don’t put enough money in you could also limit the businesses’ ability to grow and reach its full potential.

If you’re in this scenario and all of your initial funding is tapped, you might consider a short-term solution like a 90-day installment loan from WeGot1000 or a similar quick online loan service.

7) Doing It All Yourself

This often ties in with being too frugal, but the business owner who tries to do everything themselves soon ends up getting burned out and damaging their business the process.

Whether it’s bringing great minds on board to develop, expand or improve the business, or simply hiring more people to delegate to and give yourself a break, a business needs to be a team effort to succeed.

Data suggests the majority of new businesses fold within the first year.

While there are many factors that go into this, avoiding these simple mistakes put you in a good position to succeed.

Do you have any tips of your own for new business owners? Let us know in the comments below.