5 WAYS TO FAIL AS A BUSINESS
A lot of times business owners are always reading up about ‘5 ways to expand my business’, ‘How to make 1 million dollars in two weeks, etc. Funny how we forget to also read about failures of other business and what could be avoided when running your own thing. These five things I’ll list are actually 5 things I did at different times that crumbled some of my businesses in the past and has made me a better business woman today:
- NOT HAVING A PLAN FOR GROWTH:
Its always so interesting to see how we are excited to share the news of starting a business with friends and family and how the ringing bells of congratulations makes us so excited and gets to us too quickly engulfed in the hype that we forget to actually run the business like a business.
I started my first clothing company at a very young age. All I wanted to do was make clothes and sell and make profits from it. Because I had no plan whatsoever on how I was going to scale my business or even expand it, I watched months of hard work and efforts go down the drain. I was too focused on taking all the profit made in the business and using them for personal consumption.
Since I didn’t have a growth plan and didn’t seek for any professional advice I ended up not investing back into the business and over time it became unsustainable and I had to shut down. If you do not have a plan, create one now!
2. HAVING AN UNFOCUSED, HALF-POSITIVE MINDSET
There’s nothing that can kill a business even before it kicks off like a founder with a half-positive mindset. The moment you start to look at your business like you will fail, you will fail. Mindset is everything. I had to learn this the hard way. When I was running my writing company with a few employees working with me…..the moment it looked like revenue wasn’t coming in all I could think of was, the business isn’t working, the business won’t work and at the end of the day, my doubt won. I became exactly what I was thinking I was at that point, a failure.
I easily recognized this particular failure hack (LOL) because few months after my writing business shut down I started a small branding and communications company Yogi Creatives and the positivity I had when starting was unbreakable and in less than a year of starting we worked with different businesses different parts of the world and for every time there was a lack, you could hear me going “How can we make things work better? How can we improve our value”. I was no longer interested in seeing the negative sides of things, I just knew that every challenge was surmountable. That’s your first step to winning. Changing your mindset from half-positive to all-positive and being motivated by every goals you set will tremendously improve the results you get in business.
3. UNDERESTIMATING WHAT BRANDING CAN DO FOR YOUR BUSINESS:
Inconsistency of your stories, company values, product colors, total design and outlook has way of making customers loose their trust for you. Yes, those simple things you overlook have a way of making people think you don’t know what you are doing hence they cannot trust you with their money or time. If you are about growth, be about growth and be conscious of it. Let every part of your business have a unifying element visible to the layman. Ensure your marketing is in line with your brand goals and vision. Tell consistent stories about your people and customers.
Never underestimate every action you take in your business, no matter how small, because one minute you think you can do anything you want with your branding and the next minute you are running around looking for a PR company to help you clean your mess. Please send an email to yogicreatives@gmail.com if you need any help with handling your company’s brand guide and overall communication style.
4. BEING THE WORST MARKETER OF YOUR OWN BUSINESS
As funny as the sub-heading above seems, it happens. It happened to me. When I had my clothing business, I usually was the last person to sell myself. If you are doing that now thinking that you are trying to be humble, you’re not. Nobody, I repeat, nobody should be able to sell your business and services you offer better than you. If you cannot market and sell, you have no business starting a business.
The trait of every great entrepreneur is the ability to sell. If you have issues doing so, don’t worry, it is a skill that can be learnt. Once you have worked on creating full-positive mindset as we discussed earlier, you are half way there. The side of selling you should always be ready for is the 1,000,000 Nos you might receive. Always focus your attention on getting the 100 Yes that will change your business and life perspective for better.
5.OFFERING MOST OF YOUR SERVICES ON CREDIT FOR CUSTOMERS
I know you are trying to be nice, you are trying to accommodate everybody but if you keep selling your services and business value on credit then you are already half way into closing shop. The fastest way to get into this credit-selling bubble is to not know who your target market are. Your business is not for everybody. Read that line again.
Knowing who your target market are helps you know how to come up with a win-win pricing strategy to avoid rendering your services without getting any monetary value for it.
These five outlines listed above are things I tried out because I didn’t know any better and I hope you get to avoid them now that you have read this. I wish you the very best of luck.
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