There’s no rule book to becoming an entrepreneur. There are no guarantees in the life of the businessman and no matter how big you get, there’s still the threat of the competition beating you right there. However, there is one guarantee that you’ll always fail if you never try. Now that we’ve gotten the niceties out of the way, let’s get to the meat of the matter. Entrepreneurs fail more than they succeed. And often, it’s because they don’t learn enough or work hard enough and make a few crucial mistakes that derail their entire plan. Here are a few mistakes that entrepreneurs repeatedly make that derail their business.
Lack of Vision
This is a classic mistake that would be entrepreneurs have. They have no idea what they’re trying to do. Now this is not to say that they don’t have a viable product, but they have no idea how to market it or sell it or profit from it and they’re inability to look ahead and their myopia traps them in a box.
Lack of Focus
This is decidedly different from the previous point in two specific ways. Lack of Vision means not being able to see what you have to do to succeed, Lack of Focus means not being able to concentrate on what you already know how to do. And the other way it’s different is that people with vision often distract themselves too often with delays and excuses to stop themselves from getting in their own way.
Unwillingness to Admit Faults/Not Listening to Advice
Entrepreneurs are stubborn. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Travis Kalanick, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos etc., all of them are incredibly stubborn when it comes to decision making and they’ve made some incredibly bad decisions because of it, however, the reason they’ve succeeded so wildly is because they’ve learned to listen and to admit their own faults.
Most times when you have a vision, and someone points out a fault with it, you’re unwilling to admit to it because your vision can’t possibly be imperfect in your mind. And when the blame is on you, it’s even harder to admit that it’s your fault.
More Development, Less Marketing
This is a problem that has been at the center of a business failing or succeeding. One of the clearest examples of success in marketing is Apple. They spend billions in research and development, but they also spend a lot on their marketing team. This is why their ads are always incredible. Their commercial for the Macintosh is still considered the Holy Grail of advertisements.
If you’re running a company, it’s important that people know what your product or service is before you release it. If you’ve released your product and barely anyone knows what it is, that isn’t viable. And this marketing doesn’t have to be worth billions of dollars. Take the example of OnePlus. They started out as a small startup in 2014 and made mid-range flagships sold through and e-vite system. They eventually gathered enough interest to start mass production and are now worth over $1 billion.
Serdar Kabul