11 Mistakes Making You LOSE Your Business

According to Investopedia, 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first ten years. And the reasons for this can vary - from tough competition in business to making some widespread business mistakes.

Regardless of somewhat non-inspiring statistics, you shouldn't think your business will fail.

Articles like this will tell you more about what mistakes to avoid. That said, you can learn based on the pitfalls of your fellow entrepreneurs.

So, without further ado, let's move to the 11 mistakes making you lose your business.

Contents

• 1. No sell-testing
• 2. Expecting results quickly
• 3. Not tracking the results, not analyzing the effectiveness of what you do
• 4. Not listening to your customers
• 5. Working in the business, instead of working on the business
• 6. Investing too much without testing
• 7. Giving up too early
• 8. Not going deep into the business
• 9. Not paying attention when necessary
• 10. Stop learning
• 11. No focus. Doing too many things at once.
• Conclusion

1. No sell-testing

Most people are so sure about what they believe that they never test it before investing or developing anything. There is always a way to check whether people need your product/service - try to sell it by yourself to some random people online you don't know (but not to your friends).

You can do this on forums, social sites, or try to sell a new product to your past customers. Create a landing page (how you can), write any type of sales peach, and spend a few hundred bucks on ads to see what kind of conversion rate you're going to get from ads to visitors, from visitors to leads, from leads to customers.

Learn more about what percentage is average for most online businesses in this article. Make sure people are going to buy your product/service before investing in it.

2. Expecting results quickly

One of the biggest business mistakes, as well as real-life, is waiting for quick results. People don't realize their own expectations, their own thoughts in regards to anything they do. We always expect to get not only quick results, but we even know what kind of results we should get. We do this without understanding that only reality will show us what results we can get, in fact, and how quickly.

We are disappointed whenever we do not get what we've wanted to have, not realizing that our expectations are artificial; they are just thoughts. We blame reality, other people, or ourselves that things are not going the way we wanted them to. If our expectations are not coming true, we decide "this is not working" and end up.

Change the focus of your expectations. Don't expect quick results. Instead - focus on doing what you can to increase the six main indicators of your business and track the results after everything you do. Change your goal from results to learning. If you keep learning all the time, with time, you'll succeed - 100% guarantee.

3. Not tracking the results, not analyzing the effectiveness of what you do

Sometimes we are in such a rush that we even forget to check what results we really get from our activities. The more deeply you can dive into analytics, the more clear picture you will have, and so the more correct things you'll do.

4. Not listening to your customers

One of the most common mistakes new business owners make is just doing what they think should be done and what they think customers need and want. Instead, they should be listening to customers, collecting feedback from them all the time, and improving products or services.

5. Working in the business instead of working on the business

What do business owners do to be effective?

You, as an owner, should work not just like a usual worker in your business, for example, making sales or marketing or anything else. You should work on your business:

• Do what only you but no one else can do.
• Select the most important things that will have the greatest impact and implement them, even if they are the hardest and most challenging to do.
• Always keep delegating all the work that you can.
• Try not to do those things which other people can do.
• Always learn by yourself.
• Teach your employees.
• Build a team.
• Always keep the best workers, don't lose them.
• Keep hiring new people and make everyone pay off (track their results).
• Think globally, and focus on big plans, ideas, projects, and goals.
• Regularly find and remove bottlenecks that stop your company from growing further or faster.

6. Investing too much without continuous testing

Don't run too fast. Don't spend too much. Don't take loans (or too many loans). But better don't take them at all. Always keep enough money for your business to keep alive for a minimum of six months, even if it completely stops receiving new sales for half a year! (Sometimes crises come.)

7. Giving up too early

Never, never, never give up! As we've mentioned at the very beginning, 20% of businesses close in the first two years, and 45% - in the first five years. That's because entrepreneurs give up. Even if you lose a business or a project, make another one. Keep learning from your mistakes and improve all that you can.

8. Not going deep into the business

Don't delegate absolutely everything. Don't expect that your employees will do everything that is necessary. They're just doing their job. But this is your business; you are the most motivated person in your company. And you are the most responsible person in your business for everything, especially for the final results.

That's why you need to be a real expert in your own business. You need to know everything in your business (or almost everything, except too specific things such as programming, for example, or some other things that you don't need to do by yourself). But you need to be an expert in most important areas, such as:

• Marketing. Know your customers, their needs, and their problems. Be aware of why they came to you; what problems do they want to solve?
• People. Always keep building the best team, always keep hiring the best people, and always make the best people stay in your company for as long as possible - for years.
• Money. What activities in your business bring the most results to your business?

9. Not paying attention when it's necessary

There are situations in every business, from time to time, when you need to focus, really work hard, be very careful, invest all your time, efforts, and energy to achieve the results, or solve some problems!

Don't relax too much - especially in those situations when your business requires your attention, attitude, time, and efforts - when it needs you. If you don't do this, you can find yourself losing customers and business. Remember, it is much harder to build and keep everything running.

10. Stop learning

Never think you know enough, or you're smart enough. You're not, and neither are fellow business owners. Only those people are smart and wise, who keep learning all the time and do it from everything:

• From every situation.
• From every person.
• From new employees - even if they are younger than you.

Don't be arrogant. Don't keep yourself too far from your employees. Don't think you're smarter than they are. It is a mistake. For sure, you may have some advantages, but every person in your company may know something that you don't. Every person in your company may do something better than you do. Every person in your company sometimes might be more right than you are.

11. No focus. Doing too many things at once.

Sometimes we try to do too many things at a time. To invest in too many directions. To hire too many people in a short period of time. To run too many projects simultaneously.

Remember to always focus on just a few most important things during some time. Don't try to solve all of the problems at once or do too many projects at the same time. That may cause you to have weak results in all of them and to lose everything.

Keep focusing on the most important things until they are completed and bring you some results, so you can move on to another important thing.

And remember that there is always, absolutely always, something that can be improved in your company - no matter how big or small it is. If you keep improving something in your company, if you keep learning all the time, you will keep succeeding.

Conclusion

In this article, we did our best to describe the main mistakes entrepreneurs make. Sometimes those slip-ups are not too obvious that even experienced business owners can make them!

This way, we were happy to share some things you definitely shouldn't do when running a business! Yet, you should really be consistent, dedicated, ever-learning, and believe in your endeavor and team.

A few questions to you:

Did you like the article? Was it useful for you? If yes, please write in the comments what you liked and what would you like to know more about?