OPERATIONS
SMALL BUSINESS
7 Common Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Small Business YOU CAN BEAT THE ODDS AND EXPERIENCE SUCCESS BY FOLLOWING THESE TIPS.
by Luke Babich
unning a small business is one of the most challenging—and rewarding—things an entrepreneur can do. Even if you line up great investors, assemble a five-star staff, locate your home office in one of the best places to start a company, and have a killer idea, the odds for success are daunting. According to the latest numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about one in five (18.4%) small businesses fail in the first year. The odds don’t get better once you make it through that first year. By the five-year mark, almost half (49.7%) have failed; at the 10-year mark, just under two-thirds (65.5%) have failed. We’re not trying to discourage you. The truth is, the leaders of many of those failed businesses made the same, common mistakes. If they had been able to avoid them, they might have been among the third of businesses that made it past the decade mark. R
Here are seven of the most common mistakes that hurt small businesses—and how you can avoid them.
patient depends on perspective. Hone and perfect your processes and let them take you where you need to go—without fixating on where you’re going. As many business experts advise, be process-oriented, not outcome-oriented.
IMPATIENCE A famous adage notes that overnight success takes only a
decade. Growing a business is like growing a tree: It takes a lot of time and nourishment before it becomes a giant. If you’re out there measuring it every day, you’re probably going to give up out of frustration. Give your business time to find its footing and to flourish. Whatever you think is a reasonable timeline for seeing results, you should probably double it. How do you stay patient when you’ve got so much on the line? You likely have outside expectations weighing on you, a staff that looks to you for leadership, maybe even asset-based loans to worry about. Much of staying
OVERLOOKING THE COMPETITION
You should absolutely focus on your product and work on making your business as efficient, innova - tive, and profitable as possible—but don’t let that focus cause you to ignore the competition. Your business doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You’re competing for customers and market share against rivals, probably many of them. One of the hardest things for many founders to hear is that your rivals can teach you a lot, if not by emulation, then by omission. What are they not doing
26 | think realty magazine :: july – august 2022
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