Nibletz Staff
Here’s a fact that will shock absolutely no one: running a business is hard. Not only that but starting a new business is even harder. If you’re planning on setting up your own business, then you need to be willing to put in a lot of work every single day. Not only that but you need to be ready to deal with a lot of different problems. There are always going to be issues that come up when you’re running a business, and the last thing you want is to be caught unawares. Even worse than that is when you reach a situation where the problem in your business is because of a mistake that you made. Of course, it’s only natural that mistakes are going to be made in the early days of your business when you’re still finding your feet, but it’s important that you try to make sure to avoid as many of these mistakes as possible. With that in mind, here are some of the most common mistakes made by new startups and how you can avoid them.
Leaving your data unsecured
There are few things that have made it easier for newer and smaller businesses to compete on a larger scale than digital data storage. After all, you once had to keep all of your documents and data stored in physical files in your office, something that could become unwieldy very quickly, both in terms of the space the data took up and your ability to access it as easily as possible. However, that doesn’t mean that digital data storage is completely perfect all of the time. As with just about anything, it comes with its own set of problems. One of the biggest of these issues is the danger of some kind of technological disaster causing you to lose all of your data. Say what you will about physical files, other than a fire or theft, it’s pretty hard to lose all of your data at once. That’s why it’s so important to have data backup in your business as well as having as many security measures around your data as possible. Not only that but you should think about things like cloud storage so that your data is held in a secure environment rather than your own server which is potentially more vulnerable.
Failing to support your employees
Even if you’re the kind of person who excels at creating a product or many of the other things that go into making a business truly successful, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be that great at managing people. This can be a major issue since there are few things more important to the continued success of a business than the people in it. You need to make sure that you’re always taking care of and supporting your employees. If your employees don’t feel as though they’re being valued, then they’re not going to be willing to put their best work into whatever they’re doing. Even worse, if employees feel as though they aren’t being appreciated, that can lead them to decide to leave your business altogether, leaving you in a pretty dangerous situation. Even simple things like recognizing great work or being flexible about working hours can make employees feel much more valued and more inclined to give 100% to your business all of the time.
Trying to do everything yourself
This is often something that comes from the fact that many businesses start off as single person endeavors. When your business was very small, it might have made sense for you to handle everything from the accounts to the marketing, but as it grows that becomes are a far less viable option. The problem is that a lot of business owners don’t tend to fully realize this and they try to keep taking care of everything little thing themselves. Not only does this leave your employees feeling a little pointless but it also leaves you feeling completely and utterly exhausted. As the business owner, you’re simply too important to the business to risk burning out altogether. You need to think of your role as more of a bird’s eye view of things. You can give guidance and instruction to your employees, but they’re the ones on the ground doing the legwork that you no longer have the capacity to do.
Letting your ambition get out of control
Having clear goals and ambitions is incredibly important to any business. After all, the moment that you decide your business no longer need to keep pushing itself forward is the moment when it begins to stagnate and fall behind the competition. However, there’s another side of this coin that far too few new business owners tend to consider. If you get too ambitious and try to hard to push your business forward, you could end up losing control of things. A larger business comes with more responsibilities and higher expectations from both customers and investors. If you and your business aren’t ready to meet those expectations, then things are going to fall apart very quickly. It’s much better to stay within your limits until you’re absolutely sure that there is as little risk as possible in branching out in a new direction.
Keeping your customers at arm’s length
One of the things that a smaller business simply cannot afford to do is keep its customers at a distance. It’s one thing when a huge, established company has some kind of distance between them and their customers since they have a lot more influence over the broader culture. When you’re running a smaller business, you can’t compete with that so you should instead think about how you’re going to be able to connect directly with your customers in a way that a larger business can’t. By doing this, you’re leveraging your size in a way that turns it from a disadvantage to a specific selling point. If you interact with your business in the way a larger company would, you’re always going to end up falling short.
