Old habits might die hard, but they can also kill your business!
Every entrepreneur understands that the chances of success in business are very slim. 90% of all startups fail, and 10% of all these failures happen within the first year of business. With such a small chance of success, you would want to do anything you can to prevent the risk of failure.
If you are new to the business world, it is natural to end up making mistakes and falling into bad habits. The only way you can succeed and become one of the 0.00006% of startups that become unicorns is to be aware of what you’re doing wrong. With that said, here are some common behavioral traits that hinder the success of your business.
Staying in your comfort zone
While the comfort zone is a safe space for most people, for entrepreneurs it is the worst place they can be in. The core tenant of entrepreneurship is risk-taking. In fact, starting a business in the first place is a risk in itself. To succeed in your business, you must constantly be ready to experiment and make changes when the experiment does not work out.
Even if the experiment fails, stepping out of your comfort zone can help you learn new life lessons, meet new people, boost productivity and learn how to handle failures and get back up and try again.
Not delegating tasks and roles
One of the worst mistakes that entrepreneurs, particularly solo entrepreneurs, make is believing that they can do it all by themselves. They get caught up in thinking of their business as their baby and cling on to every single task. If you do this, you are in for a rude awakening.
Wearing every single hat in your business makes it so that if you’re not there, whether you are out for a vacation or you are out sick, everything would fall apart. Trusting your team is an important part of establishing a successful business. You invest a lot of the company’s resources in hiring employees, and it is important that you use their skills. Doing everything by yourself not only runs the risk of you burning out, but it also fuels a lot of resentment in your team. It will make them feel like you don’t trust them.
Micromanaging
Some entrepreneurs are so fiercely protective of their business that they tend to micromanage every single task they delegate to their employees. Much like the previous point in this list, micromanaging can also create an environment of stress and frustration among employees.
Some of the most common traits of a micromanager include not trusting your employees; checking in with them multiple times a day; wanting to be cc’ed on every single email your employees send and having an unusually high turnover of employees. Micromanaging stifles independent decision-making and hinders healthy work patterns. Try to remember why you hired the people on your team. Trust them to know what is the right thing to do and to come to you if they have any questions.
Lowballing your products
While you might typically assume that charging less money for your products than your competitors is a great idea to get more sales, it is actually counterintuitive. If you set a low price, you are keeping your profit margins slim and shoving yourself down a price trap.
A price trap is a situation where you believe that you would increase prices once the product gains enough traction but fail to realize the customer would be unwilling to buy at the higher price point. It forces you to continue to sell at the lower price, eventually giving up on the venture as a whole. You shouldn’t be afraid to charge your customer what your product is rightfully worth. If the customer realizes that they are getting a better product at a higher price, then they will choose your product over the competitors.
Not planning for the future
Most small businesses are so caught up in day-to-day operations that they lose track of planning for the future. However, this failure to make plans can end up resulting in the stagnation of your business.
A typical business plan should include a clear description of the business; current and future needs of the company and its employees; possible threats that exist in the market sector and the financial budget of the company. It is crucial that you make time for regular goal-setting sessions with your staff. Besides keeping you and the employees up to date with the progress of the business, these sessions will also give you a fair idea of when you can consider expanding your operations on a national or global scale.
If you have one or more of these habits, consider this a red flag that you should actively work to eliminate for long-term growth. While they may not seem like much all by themselves, doing these things regularly and/or in conjunction with one another can have disastrous effects. Knowing about these habits can prevent you from being blindsided if you suddenly see yourself falling into any of these patterns.
Also read:
- When Should You Start Expanding Your Startup Business?
- A Startup’s Guide: Tips to Expand Your Business Globally
- How Does a Startup Become a Unicorn
- Pitching Tips That You Can Learn from Watching Shark Tank
Header image courtesy of Freepik
