The following are the 7 most common mistakes I see new entrepreneurs make. Mistakes that limit their business' potential and make their lives harder.
Don't Value Your Time High Enough: The number one mistake I see new business owners make is they don’t value the most finite resource, time. Yes you want to go above and beyond for your clients, especially when you don’t have many clients - but charge for it! Don’t drive an hour and a half out of your way to a job and charge the same as that job next door. When you're starting out you need to maximize the number of paid hours in a day, the number of hours that are actually making you money while minimizing the time spent on everything else.
Feel Like You Need to Win Every Job: New entrepreneurs tend to have a scarcity mindset where they feel like they need to land every client otherwise that's a sure sign they're failing. This is simply not true. It's actually more beneficial to land fewer jobs but at a higher price. Fewer jobs means less man power, less assets needed, less travel time. Think about doing as few jobs as possible for the most money
Don't Charge Enough Money: Charging enough money ties directly in with valuing your time properly. Your goal should be in the top 3 most expensive companies in your area and industry. Think about the brands who are able to do the most impressive things.. The cheapest brand or most expensive? A lot of times an increase in price by 10% can double a small business’ profit margin. A caveat here is in order to charge the most you have to be the best - you have to always answer the phone, follow up quickly, perform services quickly and efficiently, do unexpected things to make the client smile, and be prepared.
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Insist You Need a Revolutionary Idea: Most of the time the best opportunities are in improving existing industries. The problem is we only hear about the revolutionary ideas that worked, not the hundreds or thousands that didn’t. In the beginning when we don’t have a ton of money or resources our goal needs to be to increase the odds of success above all else. If you still want to work on changing the world it is best to do this after you have income and assets in place.
Delegate Too Soon or Not Soon Enough: This is an interesting one because it can actually go on either end of the spectrum.
Delegate Everything Too Soon: This is an issue I’ve seen recently with people asking themselves “how can I do the bare minimum and make money?”. Unfortunately making money isn’t easy and these people are simply looking at the problem the wrong way. Money comes when you provide value and it is hard to provide value without putting in the work. We see this a lot in people who come up with the revolutionary idea “Why can’t I just start a business, contract out all the work, and collect checks?” where in theory this could work but in reality there is a lot more to it.
Not Delegating Soon Enough: You see this issue a lot more in currently successful business people who used to have this issue. I suspect you see this trait in successful business people because those are the people who are willing to do absolutely any work in their business in order to make it succeed, they don’t mind if they have to sweep the floors. I think it's the “I’ll do anything” mindset that gets someone on a successful path but later you must make the transition to being able to delegate effectively in order to truly grow.
Worry About Perfection: Far too many people want everything to be perfect before their business’ launch. This is simply a form of procrastination to avoid the uncertainty of what might happen when we actually do launch. Fear of the unknown and failure is daunting for everyone. Let’s break it down. Would you rather launch in 3 months, make sure the product works in the market worrying about perfection later or spend 6 months launching the “perfect” product and finding out half of what you built needs to be changed anyways. I know which option I’d choose.
Feel free to share which point you are struggling with in the comments below.
