Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting Your Business

By: Jay Canning (CEO)
Category: Entrepreneurship
On: 21 February, 2024

Starting your own business is an adventure filled with opportunity, excitement and great challenges.

As a new Entrepreneur, I’m sure you want to bring your vision to life, and potentially change the world. And of course, you want to make a living while you’re at it!

You know as well as I do though, that this journey has plenty of pitfalls. As we’ve mentioned in previous articles, 90% of startups don’t make it.

Broadly speaking, this is because the decisions involved with a business are complex, and often loaded with risk.

Due to this complexity, it’s no wonder that only 10% of entrepreneurs make it through.

Don’t be discouraged by the numbers though - because there is a way to escape them!

The first step to achieving that is understanding and avoiding the most common mistakes that new founders make.

Top 10 Business Mistakes

 

#1) Not Enough Market Research

An incomplete understanding of the target market and the needs of customers can lead to a product or service that doesn't meet demand. Comprehensive market research is essential for a business to be successful.

 

#2) Mishandling Risk

If there is a lack of balance in the approach to risk, a business can easily fail. Too much risk and the business is unnecessarily exposed, and if there’s too little, new ground can’t be broken.

 

#3) Execution Shyness

Pulling the trigger isn’t easy for everyone, and hesitation at the final moment can be a common problem. Execution is crucial for success, and over-analysis is its enemy.

 

#4) Out-of-Tune Marketing

Even the best products in the world need visibility. Marketing is the bridge between great products and the people who will buy them. Getting it right is a skill, and a lot can potentially go wrong.

 

#5) Lack of Innovation

The market is always evolving, so adaptation is key for a business to stay relevant. Without the right creative thinking, it’s easy to become obsolete.

 

#6) Neglecting Values

Pursuing success and profits at the expense of your own internal values leads to incongruence between your business and yourself. This is not sustainable.

 

#7) No Networking

Trying to do everything alone is a fool’s game. Every successful entrepreneur has a valuable team and network behind them, so neglecting this is a recipe for failure.

 

#8) Not Trusting Gut Feeling

It would be nice to have enough data and evidence to support every move you choose to make in your business, but life isn’t that simple. Sometimes your gut feeling is all you have to go on, and so not trusting your gut can end up costing you greatly.

 

#9) Making The Wrong Decisions

In a way, this is an amalgamation of all the previous mistakes. Every single thing that happens in your business is based on the decisions you make, and so ultimately your decisions are everything. This means that anything that goes wrong comes down to an incorrect decision.

Number 10: The Crucial Business Mistake Nobody Talks About

This is the point where this article deviates greatly from all the other articles written about this subject.

There is a hidden but highly crucial mistake that lots of entrepreneurs make, and it’s actually the source of what I call the 90/10 problem.

The clue is in mistake number 9...

As we mentioned at the start, 90% of businesses end up failing, and the reason for that is that 90% of founders don’t make the right decisions.

The thing is, we get our decisions from our thinking processes, and when it comes to those, we are all completely different and unique.

Every entrepreneur, and every human being in general, has their own specific preferences when it comes to how they approach their thinking and decisions.

This means that two different entrepreneurs with very similar businesses could end up making completely different decisions when faced with the same problem - marketing, for example.

This could easily mean that one of them fails and the other succeeds!

And so, mistake number 10 is...

#10) Not Understanding How You Think

How you think determines how you make key decisions.

And if you can understand how you think, you will understand your natural preferences and biases. Sometimes these will serve you well, but other times they can increase your risk of failure.

Being aware is enough to tip the scale, because with full awareness of how you think, you can fully mitigate the risk on your decisions.

Instead of falling victim to the unconscious whims of your mind, you can make sure you craft each vital decision fully consciously.

This means that you can engineer each and every decision for success, and escape the traditional 90/10 odds.

Find Out How You Think Today

The great news is, you can actually find out how you think and make decisions today, right here at Effective Intelligence.

Thanks to the Rhodes’ Thinking-Intentions Profile, you can uncover the hidden mechanisms of your own mind, and start engineering high-quality decisions for your business.

Ready to take control of your decisions and plot your path to success? You can get started over here.

And also, you might have been wondering why our earlier list of business mistakes was colour-coded.

This simple but powerful colour-coding system allows you to quickly grasp not only how you think, but also how that links to the real problems you need to solve.

All will be revealed through the link above. Click it if you want to find out more, and I’ll see you on the next one!