8 THINGS EVERY ENTREPRENEUR MUST KNOW ABOUT THEIR BUSINESS

There are many aspects that can affect a business, I wish I would have known all these when I have started my entrepreneurial journey, I have made many mistakes along the way. I hope this article will help many entrepreneurs to grow their businesses by avoiding these mistakes.

Here are the most common mistakes that I see business owners make that kicked them out of their business:

NOTE: I have included an infographic at the end feel free to download it if you are not interested to read the complete article.

1. Having online presence

If you started a business and struggling with sales or you want to grow your existing business and you don’t have an online presence that is a serious sign that you are not going on the right path in the 21st century.

As a business owner by now, you need to know that you must have at least these following :

• A Website with the domain name of your business
• SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (Search engine marketing)
• Social media pages – (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter Etc.. ) posting consistently
• Analytics for all your online marketing.

There are much more things you can do to have a strong online presence but these are the minimum necessities to sustain in the long run.

If you think you don’t have enough time to post regularly or maintain all these as a business owner hire a freelancer or if you have too much work to do and if you think long term, contacting a marketing agency likeThibstas Media can help.

2. Forming systems

You might have all the time in the world to run every part of your business as you start your business as a solopreneur, and when you have more clients at hand you must admit that you can’t be everywhere and manage everything as the business grows you need to learn to delegate to save your time and to do the tasks only you can do.

Forming systems not only save valuable time, it even helps you to focus on what is important for you to grow your business.

3. Knowing how to sell as an owner or founder

Sales is the only place where the money comes in business and being a founder you need to know how to sell to survive in this highly competitive environment, you might be thinking, I’m having a lot of experience in my field of expertise, but being a business owner you must learn how to wear different hats when it needs, to survive. Sales are the oxygen for business the main reason for any business to shut down is, not having enough sales, you better know it.

If you are already tied up with many things to do at hand its time for you to hire sales team or you can even hire an external agency to manage all your sales activities.

4. Reading people 

Ask any business owner what is the most difficult task in your business and most of them will say it is directly or indirectly related to people.

The people whom you take into your group are important, you may have amazing ideas but if you are not good at reading people through, you are really going to have a hard time doing business.

One of the major causes for a business to fail is not knowing how to deal with people and you should understand people who are coming to your business every day.

An entire book can be written on this subject, see people as they are and never judge them, even if you think you know them, trust me there are a million things we don’t know about people we are with, even for a long time.

“Listen what they say and see what they do, people can say anything but deeds don’t lie”.

5. Managing focus

Focusing on, what is really important and staying away from all the distractions that eat up our day is very vital, being busy is not productive in any business.

Where Focus Goes Energy Flows

“Focus is the strategic allocation of resources that is of most value, in a startup, resources are very low and your focus determines your success”.

Daniel Goldman, the author of Focus, said it best:

“A failure to focus inward leaves you rudder-less, a failure to focus on others renders you clueless, and a failure to focus outward may leave you blindsided.”

Focus management is the critical skill to survive in our day, the only difference between time management and focus management is :

Time management is like the vehicle that you drive, and yes you want to have an excellent, high performing car. Focus management is how well you drive that car, your ability to make good choices and get yourself to the destination that you want to reach.

6. Collaboration 

No matter how good you think you are you can’t do everything yourself even with your strong team sometimes, you might need a stronger or equal companion as a strategic alliance along the way so that you can merge both of your strengths and help each other, so that it will bring some greater results, for that you must constantly look for opportunities to work with people who are smarter and stronger than you. Networking in events and in other social media sites have helped me a lot, you can try it too just keep in your mind don’t spam people.

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, collaboration is defined as working with another person or group in order to achieve or do something.

Key Fundamentals for collaboration:

• Setting clear goals.
• communicating these goals effectively with all members of the group.
• Working together in order to accomplish the goals.Having groups spend some time up front to define, plan and outline a clear set of goals can be a critical step in creating a high-quality final product.
• It’s also important to be able to identify the strengths of the collaborators and to clearly define roles and expectations.

7. Innovating constantly as an entrepreneur

Innovation typically happens in a cycle of discovering, developing, and delivering. And most importantly it typically iterates through this cycle as the team learns and gets feedback on what they deliver.

One of my favorite quotes about innovation comes from Harold McAlindon, who said,

“The world leaders in innovation and creativity will also be the world leaders in everything else.”

Actions that lead to better innovation:

• Experimenting with options and learning what’s valuable from them.
• using highly collaborative techniques like visuals and brainstorming to get fierce conversations going on the team.
• challenging how the team thinks about the future, keeping the vision top of mind

8. Managing Finances 

The risk in business is measured in financial loss, people tend to get in a situation in which they are completely uncontrollable when it comes to issues related to money

One of the most common reasons startups fail is because they mismanaged the funds they had.

Being an entrepreneur I know it is extremely important to take risks that can help me grow when I say risk here, I don’t mean walking in heavy traffic blindfolded, taking risk is quite a lot used in business world now, risk doesnt have to be do it or die scenario you can always take caluculated risks by knowing what you may lose in the first place and that loss will be mostly measured in money, for this risk management, managing your finances so that you will be in a position to win the game of entrepreneurship and you can keep the cash coming in to yor business.

These are some of the things you can do to manage your finances :

• Know What You Have – 

You should be able to look to your finances and instantly pinpoint exactly how much money you have available.

• A Budget for Each Department –

How you allocate the budget for each department is up to you.The point is you should immediately know where your money is going and what it’s being spent on. Every so often, review the performance of each department and consider whether you need to start allocating your money elsewhere.

• Be Willing to Scale Up and Down

The art of managing your finances wisely is to be able to scale up and scale down according to your financial fortunes. Too many young entrepreneurs fall victim to either trying to spend everything they have or being overly conservative.

• Create a Savings Fund

You need to be able to save for a rainy day. Unlike established companies, startups and small businesses often find themselves unable to do this because they need to have all the money available right now. This leaves them vulnerable because if they experience a downturn in the market they are going to run into a situation where they have no reserves to work with.A savings fund is an example of good financial management because it will help you to get through the times where you have to run at a loss.

• Stay Fluid as an entrepreneur

The most important tip of all is to stay fluid. Your financial policy needs to change according to the times. There are no rigid rules you have to stick to. If the market warrants you have to spend more, so be it. If the market warrants you have to save more, so be it.

So, what are the other things if a business person doesn’t know can put him/her out of the business, Comment Below.

Download the infographic below for future reference :