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10 Deadly Mistakes All Entrepreneurs Must Avoid

Updated on by in Self-Improvement

“To Some extent, being an entrepreneur is a lonely Journey.” When Chad Hurley, founder and former CEO of YouTube says, it has the words have many dimensions. Entrepreneurship is not a quality or an ability which is transformed hereditarily via genes, one has to achieve it through rigorous training and through learning from experiences.

entrepreneur-mistakes

As the law of universe states, no man is perfect. And this law can be applied in the case of entrepreneurs too. No one is perfect here and all their efforts are to reach perfection. On this journey, mistakes are common. Committing mistake is human but repeating it is foolishness. Hence, everyone should learn from the mistakes of the past to avoid repeating them.

However, there are a few mistakes which can be avoided even for the first time and here are a list of mistakes, which should be avoided by any entrepreneurs.

1. Lack of Clarity in Vision

“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” – Scott Belsky. Co-founder, Behance.

Ideas can be generated with a little thinking, but you need more efforts to make it practical. To put your ideas into practical, you should know clearly, why you do business. If you do not have an answer to this question, how your partners, dealers, and customers will have? Hence, you should chart out a clear vision of your business. Please remember that you should never compromise with this vision for the sake of a few extra bucks.

2. Lack of Core Values for Company and Employees

“Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It’s a practice.” – Peter Drucker, Author and management consultant.

When you practice, you should have core values and principles to dictate each action. It should not be limited to yourselves, but should extend to your employees and the entire organization. Any action without a core value will never produce long-term benefits.

3. Lack of Proper Organization Chart

“It doesn’t matter how slowly you are going as long as you do not stop.” Confucius.

It is not the speed of the movement, but the direction is important. When you move in the right direction and when you keep on moving, success is just yours. Organizational chart plays an important role in showing the right direction to the employees. It will certainly help them to contact the right person in case of any emergency or clarification and thus, can make things moving smoothly.

4. Lack of Proper Job Descriptions

“The secret of successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world.” – Marc Benioff, CEO, Sales force.

When you plan to hire new persons, you should have a clear idea about the nature of work to be designated to them. Otherwise, you cannot hire the right person. For example, If you are looking for software testers with selenium tool, you must understand that selenium can be implemented using Java, Perl, ruby, python, C# etc languages. And you should also know Selenium automation testing with Java is the best combination. In this example, you should only look for people who have testing experience on Selenium with Java.

Similarly, you should be specific about the experience of the persons to be hired. All the persons who have undergone selenium training course online may not have the same caliber. A lot of things depend on experience too.

5. Confusion between a Passionate idea and a Sellable idea

“Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” – Guy Kawasaki. Founder AllTop.

When you are planning to start a business, thousands of ideas will come up in your mind. Another thousand will be given free of cost by your friends and well wishers. Here you should show the intelligence and courage to select the practical ones. At first, you see which all are the areas where you have enough experience and knowledge. Then do a bit of research to find out whether it is financially viable. These two things are essential to make an idea practical.

6. Diverting Entire Profit

“There is nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.” – Jason Fried. Founder, 37 Signal.

This is a common mistake committed by most of the business people. They all think that all the money left in the bank, at the end of the month is theirs and they can do anything with that. Expansion of the organization when it is not necessary is an area where a major chunk of profit is being wasted. Limit your personal needs and limit the size of the organization to meet your needs, not to meet your dreams.

7. Ignorance of Cost of Running the Business

“It’s harder to raise capital than you thought it would be. So plan well.” Richard Harroch. Venture Capitalist.

The real problem with many entrepreneurs is that they are not aware of the actual running cost of the business. A detailed planning is necessary to run the show smoothly. You can sit down for one day and pen down all your expenditures one by one. Add all and divide it with 365. There you reached your daily need. Now start planning on the base of this figure.

8. Jumping from one branch to the other

“Timing, perseverance and years of trying will make you look like an overnight success.” – Biz Stone, Co-founder Twitter.

There are many people who try their hands at different projects at a time and leave everything half finished. You should know that the unfinished projects cannot earn anything for you, neither money nor reputation. Keep on trying anyone and finish it. There the success and glory of life are waiting for you.

9. Not realizing the significance of Partnership

“Don’t worry about funding if you don’t need it. But worry about improvement” – Noah Everett, Founder Twitpic.

Most of the entrepreneurs are not realizing the significance of partnership. When you are enjoying one million and when somebody ensures 5 million, what is wrong in parting half with that person? Team work can take the people to new heights. Hence, keep out the ego and be ready for compromise.

10. Avoiding Confrontations

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates. Co-founder, Microsoft.

There is the tendency among many entrepreneurs to avoid confrontation when things going bad. That is not a good attitude. You should take things positively and should engage in arguments to understand the core of the problem and should solve it.

Certainly there are many other mistakes, which are very common, but these are the most common among them.

Author: Karthik

Karthik is a professional writer for ITeLearn.

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