In the fast running world, opening a business is like a child’s game, but running it without making any errors is where the challenge comes in. Even though opening your first company gives you all the courage and happiness as you feel the confidence flow through your veins, that is not where your work ends.
It is possible to make the vision of the fast success and the impeccable weekends off with your loved ones and family come close and true only if you take each step smartly as you avoid the mistakes that are commonly made by many entrepreneurs.
And if you are wondering when does the challenges come in, or that you can easily dodge them without much trouble, then you just need to wait for a few months. The bravado would begin to give way to the insecurity and fear that would make all your visions and dreams vanish.
This is also when your 9:00am to 6:00pm would begin to make its toll, and this is what you need to avoid – the breaking of dreams and vanishing of visions! With the right steps that have been mentioned below (that has to be kept in mind for the future ventures as well), you can easily dodge the fear and insecurity that can flood you soon:
- Permitting Belief to Override The Business Plan
To own a business is not for the people whose spirit is weak. A keen and robust mind and heart are required to face the everyday work in and out. During the early days of your dream coming true, it is very easy to be excited and enamored with the idea that you have a business now. But this thought tends to make people fail to grind out the proper and the best business model for the company.
If you take all this lightly and just prepare a very thick three-ringed binder to offer the bank president to get an enormous briefcase of cash, then you are kidding yourself. Reality would hit you when the president begins to question you with things that your business plan cannot answer.
After all, this, if you still try with all the confidence to say that the plan would work, it would make no difference. In the end, you would have to walk home empty-handed. This is why it is better to keep the over-confidence in your drawer or cupboard at home while you spend time thinking about the business model before you can think about your happy weekends with your family. Since the visions can come true with the initial focus and handwork.
- Listening to what the Customers are saying instead of the Spreadsheets
Let us talk about an example here to understand the point better. There was a person who saw a Famous Health Club that left its place since it went out of business, and decided to take over it since he would not need to buy everything since all the equipment was still in the club.
Also, this person named Mike felt that he would not adopt the idea of Contract Signing since the last owners adopted this and did not succeed. The last owner was also into scamming the people with the contracts, which was another reason why Mike didn’t want to take up this idea. Mike wanted to work for the customer without keeping in mind the statistics available for the business model at that time.
So, Mike took up the business and did not make contracts, but that is where the evolution struck the company when another giant fitness chain opened in the town with a two-year contract, and the people would pay through the automatic draft. Since it was a new idea and something that incited the crowds, people began to sign the contract like doves, including the member of Mike’s fitness club.
By the end of this, Mike learned his lesson where a person should not be tempted to set up the business in the way the customers say they want it. This is not always the way, at times it can be okay to listen to the customers since it fits your business model, but when it doesn’t, it is better to trust your spreadsheets.
Ensure that the maths works before you accept all the customer demands just for making the sales since this would not work for the long run.
- Endangering the Retirement Fund of a Family Member
Remember the empty briefcase that you might have left with from the bank? Well, many people tend to give up on the banks and then go to their elders in the family to ask for money. Even if the amount is something small for you, it is crucial for you to understand that the amount would have been a big one when your elders worked at their time as they were lowly paid.
Moreover, if you carefully listen to them, you would see that your family’s elders would have used the money to safely invest by gaining a 100% certain interest they were promised about. So, instead of being an arrogant and young minded person, it is better to understand the situation and find the best solution.
Do not force your elder to accompany you to a bank to obtain a secured loan for you to use for your business. The advice is to avoid borrowing money on the savings or retirement money of a family member since they are aiming to live with that during their last days.
Unless they have a significant amount of money which they can lose, NEVER ask them to take a loan on the retirement amount. Yes, they would want you to succeed in your life since they love you, but losing their money would haunt you forever!
- Miscalculating the Time Required to Launch
Now to understand this, let us move back to the story of Mike where he found the equipment all ready for him to use. With this, he also felt that he could open much earlier and faster. That was when he decided to open the club by January 1st, which was the right time for the New Year’s resolution crowd to pop in. And as per his timing then, he felt that he won the lottery.
But the trouble came when it was three days before the opening and Mike was in trouble. He couldn’t sleep those three days and had to push the doors hard to open them. And they did open, but not without him at first suffering delusions, anxiety, panic, fears, tears, and stress of the most magnificent business failure ever known to man.
So, it is better to set the grand opening inside the buffer zone where you are ten days ahead of the primary day and ready with everything just as if the opening is tomorrow. The best way to open a new business without dread and anxiety is, by being prepared long before the time.
- Comparing Personal Experience With Business Expertise
Mike had started working at the age of 12, which was why he began competing in the bodybuilding and power lifting competitions when he was 18 years old. Other than that he was also a local gym trainer for some time. Eventually, all this experience would be best used when he had to open the Fitness Club, right?
Not even close! Mike knew how to train people but not how to retain them to stay in the club and pay for the membership. It doesn’t matter how great you are in doing something, running a business is an entirely different thing and lies on a different tangent. Hence, it is better to study courses and arm yourself for the business battle before you put your feet in the boat.
In the end, Mike sold his business where he hadn’t yet paid off all the loans and this just made him lose more than he had when he started off. But if these mistakes were avoided, no business can fall this low.
So, learn from these mistakes and remember them.
Contributed byhttps://startupr.hk/
