Common Mistakes Small Entrepreneurs Should Avoid

Running your own business is no small task, and can be a challenge when you have a family to think about as well. It is therefore important that you set yourself up for success, and make your business as efficient as possible. 

A huge part of running a business is learning from your mistakes. A small entrepreneur would be naive to think that no mistakes can be made, and things will always go smoothly. 

This is not the case.

Fortunately, learning from mistakes is one of the best ways to grow your business, and catapult it forward. Mistakes show that you are a forward-thinking business, are willing to take risks, and use critical thinking to adapt your strategy to move your business forward in the right direction. Playing it too safe to avoid mistakes, can lead to limiting yourself and your business growth. Trying to aim for perfection in your business is natural, but will paralyse you. 

Learning from your mistakes means taking the lessons from the things that do not go as planned. It can show you something that you didn’t know before, and what areas of your skills, or the business you can improve. Not only should you look at your mistakes, but you can also look at the mistakes of other businesses within your industry, and perhaps the gaps that are limiting business growth. This can be key to growing your business and getting ahead of your competitors. 

To help you on your business journey, here are some of the common mistakes small entrepreneurs make that you can learn from.

Small Entrepreneurs – Not having an adequate business plan 

While many good things can come from hard work and passion, a successful business requires an adequate business plan. Many small entrepreneurs will start their business with an idea, and try to build it on a foundation of assumptions. Unfortunately, this can be extremely limiting. Instead, a business requires a business plan, regardless of how small it is. When starting a small business, you will need to know how to register it, the proper legal structure and what steps you need to take to make it successful. A business plan is an extremely important document for a variety of reasons, for example: 

• To establish milestones that will guide your activity 
• To learn about your ideal customer’s needs and struggles
• To understand your competition, the industry and the gaps you can fill in the market 
• Research any assumptions about the industry and ensure you launch on the correct information
• To ensure your business venture is feasible 
• To identify your financial needs and attract investors if necessary 
• To ensure you are pursuing the correct idea
• To understand what skills to need to employ
• To create the necessary strategies, such as marketing, to position your brand in the industry 

And much more. A business plan will be the foundation of your business and evolve with your business over time. 

Not considering the journey from your customer’s point of view

You may have a pretty website, but is it easy to follow and functional? Many businesses create beautiful websites that are great at attracting attention but lack the information a customer needs to make a purchasing decision. This is usually because businesses will fill the website with industry jargon, without considering where the consumers are on their buying journey. Many customers will find you at the beginning of their journey when they don’t know what is going to solve their problem. It is your job to create content on your website that is going to resonate with them, provide them with value and tell them that you have the solution that can help them. Make sure your website is filled with tutorials, advice, guides, and other helpful tools that will positively inform and help them. 

In addition to that, many businesses overcomplicate their website and make it slow, and difficult to navigate. This inevitably increases the bounce rates and decreases trust and credibility. While there should be a huge focus on design and search engine optimisation (SEO) to ensure the website is visible on the internet and attracts customers, it needs to be balanced with the customer experience. Make sure your website is easy to navigate, and customers can quickly find your blog and your products/services. Ensure there is a clear way to contact you and a call to action on every page. 

Small Entrepreneurs – Trying to do everything alone 

One of the biggest mistakes that small entrepreneurs make in business is to think they are alone and try to accomplish everything without any help. While you don’t need to hire a big team on a full-time basis, there are a variety of tasks that you should consider outsourcing. A business venture is a complicated journey to navigate, and one that no one can do alone. A range of specialist skills are going to be required at different stages, and will be the difference between getting by and accelerating your growth. For example, you may need to use a registered office address service in order to streamline your mail and call handling – and with it customer service – and to improve the status of your brand in the eyes of your customers. If you run a product-based business for instance, you more than likely have hired out a warehouse to keep your items ready for distribution. You can handle this alone, but it may be wise to hire a handful of employees to oversee everything efficiently. To make their job easier, buying equipment such as a mobile work platform, industrial ladder, and lifts, will make picking and packing streamlined. Additionally, you may also require a website developer to build a website to market your products and services, a graphic designer to create your business logo and branding, an SEO specialist to get your website seen and drive traffic and much more. Recognizing when to seek expert advice can drastically improve your business’ online visibility and performance. By incorporating specialized knowledge, you can avoid common pitfalls and ensure that your efforts are more efficient.  It is much more cost-efficient to hire the help of a specialist service, agency, or company, as they will already possess the skills and can get it done quickly and to a high standard. This will save you a lot of time trying to learn the skill and take on all the tasks yourself and instead, give you valuable time to focus on the activities that you do best. Accepting help, in the form of employees or freelancers is a great way to grow your business, and utilise your strengths. Without help, you may see your business slow down, which will start to impact the quality of products and services that you can provide as you attempt to juggle everything. It can be difficult as one person to try and keep up with the demands of the business.

Learning from mistakes that you make, or from the common mistakes in the industry, is a great way to implement valuable lessons and adapt your business so that it can grow to new heights.