Checklist: 5 Top Mistakes Every Small Business Owner Make When Starting a Business

If you start jotting down the reasons for starting a business, you would end up with a pretty big list. With so many success stories in and around you, it is not difficult to get carried away as well. But for every business that succeeds, there are lot more that fail. There is absolutely no harm in learning from those mistakes and ensure you don’t do the same. The following are the top mistakes that small business owners make.

• Right Partner

Selecting the right partner for your venture is extremely crucial for its success. There is nothing wrong in choosing friends and family as partners, it does come at cost. When it comes to taking tough decisions for the business, there might be lots of blurred lines. Thus, experts suggest to avoid doing business with friends and family members.

Decisions is not the only aspect of it though. It might lead to loss of income and also lower the morale levels in the work environment. These are some overheads you don’t want to be fighting off early in your business.

• Patents and stuffs

Most of us feel, getting patent is a far-off situation, but in reality, it is not. Getting patents give you and your idea much needed immunity from anyone else claiming it to be their idea. Patents and trademarks prevent you from long and lengthy court room battles that we witness so often these days. It is not an uncommon site to see giant corporations clashing over rights.

To keep you focus on better products and improving your business, it is essential to have your ideas patented.

• Be Careful with whom you give controls

If you are someone who owns business entity as sole proprietor or is planning to do so, be careful with your funds. Or if you are someone who deal with the money flowing in and out of the organization, it applies to you as well. Handing over the controls to the wrong person can lead to fraudulent activities. Which not only would impact you financially but also tarnish your image. No matter how good the decision of handing control to expert sounds, no one can take better care of your business than you.

• Expose yourself to minimal risk possible

For a business to grow, funding is an essential part. Without the involvement of investors and partners, chances of you stagnating are pretty high. It is not easy to start approaching people for investments and you will come across several roadblocks. But keep in mind not to expose any sorts of risk to your capital, structure of your business, its working culture or processes followed. One of the easiest way is to reach out to leaders in your space of business. This way you get the capital that you need along with contacts and skill sets as well.

• Waiting for the perfect product

It is quite common for people to wait it out till you get the perfect product that you had in mind before selling it. Though there is nothing wrong in that, but there are better ways to get past. The longer you wait to send the product out, the longer you will have to wait for money to start coming in. The more effective way is to get a basic version of your product ready and find buyers for the same. Finding them early will help you get feedback and thus enhance your product as well. It turns out to be quite cost effective as well.

Starting business has inherent risk along with it. But it does not make sense to continue with the mistakes others have made. Taking some time off and understanding the mistakes made by others will prove to be cost effective and brings learning along with it as well.