How to avoid startup pitfalls.
October 10, 2018 by Staff
Filed under Money/Business, Tech/Internet, Weekly Columns
(Akiit.com) Starting a business is a daunting experience. Whether a company is successful or not, all of them face unique problems. When starting a business, many mistakes made are easily avoidable.
Avoiding these mistakes from the onset can help make the startup experience much bearable. Be realistic in addressing your company failures and find ways to fix the problem head-on. Most startups usually don’t make it in the first five years. In this article, we will highlight major startup pitfalls and how they can be avoided. Starting a business will be difficult, but we are here to help you along.
Poor Management
Business failure is majorly attributed to poor decision making at the
management level. Most new business owners lack business management expertise in certain areas of business. They are not well knowledgeable in areas such as production, hiring, managing employees and finance issues.
As a business owner, you should recognize and list down what you don’t do well when it comes to managing the business and ask for professional help. Lack of doing so will lead to a quick downfall of the business. To fix the problem, startup owners should educate themselves on the lacking skills, on hiring employees that are skilled and finding out how to grow the business management to acceptable maturity.
Insufficient capital
Insufficient funding is a common mistake made by startup businesses. Many business owners lack ideas or have inadequate information about cash flow and initial costs involved when starting a business. This leads to closing down of the business even before you have a chance to break even. They also have unrealistic goals and expectations.
Its important to note that starting a business has its financial requirements which is totally independent and not related to finances that will run the business. Start up funds and running costs should be separate. Get enough funds to cover expenses that will be incurred, until the business starts making profit.
Lack of planning
Most businesses began without a clear and mapped out business plan. This is a sure recipe for failure. Startup businesses fail due to poor planning. It is critical that a startup has a business plan to help them run the business.
If a business does not have a business plan, it is essential that one is set up immediately and it should be realistic. It should also be based on the current information that is accurate with the future projections of the company.
No website and social media presence
A startup business cannot survive in this era without a social media presence or website. Companies nowadays are run on social media. Social media helps your business become much more visible to the world.
If you want the company to succeed, set up a website and social media presence to get the word out about your business. It is much more efficient than the ‘word of mouth’ strategy. Technology will give you an upper hand.
As a business owner, you want to succeed in business. Failure is not an option. Setbacks should be viewed as an opportunity to grow and learn to solve the issues immediately. Postponing plans, or assuming problems at the onset will be a plan to fail. Also, get to read books on business and learn from successful business owners mistakes and how they rose from it. It can help you in solving potential issues.
Infographic provided by; http://www.deskhub.com/
Staff Writer; Jerry Love