Mistakes are normally part of any entrepreneurial life. They are here, and often it is good to make mistakes as early as possible in order to learn fast and use that learning for your business improvements.
But, even some mistakes are really acceptable in the early stages of your company or in some of the next project stages, however, some of them can be catastrophic consequences for you and your business.
In my ten years of experience, I have seen many entrepreneurs with really many mistakes of different types. What I can say is that I have not seen entrepreneurs who aren’t making some mistakes in their entrepreneurial journey. But, the following seven mistakes I think are most horrible when it comes to you as an entrepreneur.
1. You are not building real relationships with your customers.
Yes, today you have many useful technologies that you can use in building different types of relationships with your customers. But, it is not enough for you as an entrepreneur. Simply, with these technologies, you can’t replace the real handshaking, the real talking with a cup of coffee, the real exchange of good words, and so on. So, don’t make such mistakes to not build a real relationships with your customers.
Related: 20 Common Entrepreneurial Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Building a real relationship with your customers will ensure in the eyes of your customers that you are like them. You are a human person who also has emotions like them. In such a way, you will build strong trust that will help you on your entrepreneurial journey.
2. You don’t have systems on which your company will base all operations.
One of the crucial tasks for you as an entrepreneur is to ensure enough stability in the daily operations of your company. Yes, uncertainty around your company will make it impossible to have stability. But, you can’t use it as an excuse and leave everything in the external environment uncertain. This is one of the biggest mistakes I have seen many entrepreneurs make.
You really need to build systems that will be in the battle with this uncertainty in order to ensure that your company will create the same value or better all the time for the customers and ship it without some bigger problems.
3. Your unique competitive advantage is based only on prices.
One of the biggest mistakes I have seen at many entrepreneurs is their focus on the price as the one and only competitive advantage for their companies. But, in such a way when we make real analysis, they simply understand how much they have lost from their profitability because of this. Competition on the price is one of the easiest ways to compete, and in today’s world, anyone can compete on the price. So, it is better for you to choose a different competing strategy in order to ensure the long-term sustainability of your company.
4. You don’t have a continuous improvement process.
Even you think that you have the perfect processes in your company, however, you need to be aware that there will always be specific possibilities to improve them. Often, I have heard from entrepreneurs questions in the form of why I need to work on improvement when everything is ok. But, what if ok can be even better ok. Doesn’t it make your company better than the rest of the world? So, don’t make such mistakes to not improve your processes on an everyday basis.
5. You don’t innovate products, services, processes, and business model.
Improvement is one thing, but innovation is something that will bring the exponential growth of your company. Continuous innovation in new products, additional services, better processes in your business, and totally new business models will always put you and your company ahead of the competition that will not have possibilities to simply copy your success.
6. You want to learn everything about how to successfully manage your company.
As human beings, we always want to learn everything possible that will help us in managing our companies. But, it is simply not possible. Here is laying one big mistake when you try to know and be an expert in everything. You can’t ever learn everything, because there will always be something more that will need to be done. So, put learning aside, and start learning by doing. Everything else that is not worth time for learning you can delegate or outsource to other professionals and it will cost you cheaper.
7. You think that you are the one and only, an irreplaceable person in your company is another mistake.
I know that you are an entrepreneur, a person who starts and builds your own company. But, simply it is not possible for you to be the person for everything. If you want to build a really stable business, ready to grow for many years, you will need as quickly as possible to understand that what you are building will need to make you replaceable. So, someone else needs to take some of your responsibilities in order to free your time to focus on the most important things for the future of your company.
