Ten Most Common Mistakes All Entrepreneurs Make

We all humans, so it’s okay for us to make mistakes. Businesspeople also fail sometimes because they’re not perfect either. It’s impossible to stop making mistakes completely, but in this article, Tozex team will share the most common ones so that you can avoid them. Without any further ado, let’s have a closer look at these errors!

1. Not Spending Enough on Marketing

The goods or services you provide may be truly outstanding and profitable for everyone in the world, but if they are not popular enough, how will your business prosper? Everyone has a social media presence nowadays, so online marketing can help you to get to the top. You need to splash out on it to earn even more. Stop thinking about the cheapest online marketing solution and focus instead on finding a specialist who can give you the outcome that will turn your business into a real empire.

2. Providing Enormously High Salaries from the Very Beginning

When starting a company, entrepreneurs should strive to minimize their expenses and not give out the biggest salaries possible. Many startups face this mistake when they are financed by investors. They stop thinking about their losses and eventually end up broke. Then, the investors leave to mitigate the damage — no one wants to sponsor a project that doesn’t bring in a profit.

When starting a business, try to live on your savings, or if you do want to take a salary, take as little money as possible.

3. Not Having a Clear Idea of How to Make the Business Profitable

Any company should bring in a profit. While some companies don’t (Tinder, for example, has an estimated value of more than $5 billion but doesn’t bring in a profit), not all the businesses are that lucky. About 10,000 startups fail every year because they don’t generate enough income to stay alive. To survive in the market, you need to have a clear plan for making a profit from the very start.

4. Choosing a Bad Cofounder

They say that finding a cofounder is just like finding the love of your life. You need to understand each other without speaking and be able to overcome the problems together. You wouldn’t want to get married to a stranger, right? The same is true for business. You need to be sure that your potential business partner has the same views as you regarding your work, and you need to be able to work hand in hand and be prepared for hard times.

5. Doing All the Work on Your Own Without Delegating Work

The error people often make when starting a business — they believe that they could do everything on their own. It’s not that they are selfish; they just don’t trust other people. Beginners don’t believe that other people would care as much as they do, so they take on too much responsibility.

You shouldn’t have doubts about your co-workers. Learn to distribute the tasks evenly. You are paying them to do their jobs, right?

6. Not Listening to Your Clients’ Opinions

You may believe that you know what your clients need, but you can never be sure until you actually talk to them. Not paying enough attention to your clients is the easiest way to fail and go bankrupt. Talk to them using online polls or communicate offline. Ask them about their likes and dislikes and the changes they want to make. The people who buy your goods or services are the best people to ask for advice.

7. Trying to Save on Legal Fees

Not long ago, there was a situation, when a specialist was consulting for a startup and looking through their marketing budget. They were using their own money, of course, and while the sum was not huge, it was decent. The owner told the consultant that the company had recently changed their privacy policy and didn’t spend an extra $400 by making it look very similar to the old one, which means that he didn’t ask a lawyer to look it through.

Don’t try to save on legal fees. Yes, it may seem expensive to have a lawyer look through your documents, but it will save you quite a lot of money and anxiety in the long-run.

8. Spending Money on Things You Don’t Need

Leasing a great office in the city center may seem a great idea, but do you really need to spend that much money? Not long ago, we were sent an eBay listing for vintage arcade machines. They were repossessed from a startup that had gone bankrupt.

Spend your money on things that will boost your sales and ensure a bright future for your company. If you want to buy something nice for the office, buy it as a reward for accomplishing a business goal. Don’t let chaotic spending bring your business down.

9. Being a Perfectionist

News flash: there is no such thing as perfect. If you spend too much time trying to perfect everything, you could miss your window of opportunity. The quicker you launch, the quicker you can get the user and market feedback required to adjust, scale, and grow your business. In fact, several software-as-a-service startups launched before their products were ready. These companies wanted to gauge interest and see if their target markets would sign up at their price points.

10. Not Seeking Advice or Help

If you need help, ask for it. It doesn’t matter how scared you may be or what kind of problems you’re facing. There’s a great possibility that another businessperson has faced the same problem. The entrepreneurial community is very friendly, and lots of people are ready to share their experience and provide some advice. You just need to ask for help. Your business will get a lot better when you start asking your fellow colleagues for their professional advice.