Nowadays, it’s very easy to start a business. The hard part is turning your business into a successful one and one of the key elements in driving a business to success is to avoid the following mistakes.
Assuming You Have No Competition
In general, every business should have competitors –even a monopoly has competition, albeit very small or indirect. Usually, if a business doesn’t have any competition, then it is assumed that either it’s too new to be on the radar of other companies or it’s already dying with other companies shutting down and moving out of that particular business.
You see, rather than being a strength, a lack of competition can be indicative of serious weakness. However, there’s a difference between not having any competition and assuming that you don’t have any competition. And, one of the best examples would be Google.
In 1998 – a time when there were lots of search engines – Sergey and Larry launched their new “product.” Back then, while some companies took it as a little threat, others simply didn’t even consider it a competitor. Fast forward 10 years and its market share for search is 90 %. Fast forward another 10 years and its market share is still 90 %. And, needless to say, that within 20 years, Google became one of the most profitable companies ever created.
Having Unrealistic Financial Goals
First, let’s define “unrealistic goals.”
If you are just 5 feet tall, for example, and you are dreaming of joining the NBA, well, this is an unrealistic goal. If you would like to remain healthy and have 6-pack abs but you are not willing to follow a diet program and work out, you are being unrealistic. If you are a computer programmer and dream about becoming a surgeon, you are being unrealistic.
Conclusion: Unrealistic Goals + Unrealistic Actions = Unrealistic Life
And, the same applies to the business market.
Yes, it’s great to set high goals, especially if you can use them as a motivator for you to expand your company and increase your sales and profits. The bigger the goals are, the more time it will take, but great goals can push, motivate, support and enforce. However, the unrealistic financial goal drops into play when it goes beyond the form of realistic value.
When you are running a start-up, you can’t set immeasurable and unattainable financial goals as these unrealistic goals would only drag your company down. Take Bill Gates, for example. The man is worth more than billions today and yet when he initially set out to start a software company, he didn’t set on planning to become a billionaire.
Doing Everything Yourself
The greatest mistake businessmen often make is that they assume the key to success is to do it all by themselves. While it might have taken you a lot of hard work and effort to set up the company, you need to remember that the foundation of a great team is one of the main elements that energizes, engages and drives a company to success. Relying on your own abilities and competencies will only drive you to both emotional and physical exhaustion. However, when you rely on a team that works well together, it will foster a spirit of loyalty, camaraderie and synergy that will shape the company culture and bring it closer to success.
Hiring the Wrong People
Nothing can hurt a business more than hiring and working with the wrong people. No entrepreneur wants to hire the wrong person for a job, but sometimes it’s very easy to bring in the wrong person. This would then not only waste time and money, but would also bring a ripple of negativity in the business.
However, mistakes happen! And, when a person is not a good fit for the tasks or a department, the person can either be coached or retrained. But, in some circumstances, nothing can repair the damage caused by the “wrong person in the wrong place.”
