3 Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make When Starting A Small Business

If you were to ask any successful entrepreneur about what it takes when starting a small business, most would say it takes patience, dedication, an idea and money. But are you guaranteed to succeed if you have all of those?

When it comes to business, there are no guarantees.

The amount of “work/effort” you put towards starting a small business it the amount of results you can expect in return. And even then, there are no guarantees of success.

Every business owner has their own special features that makes their business unique and successful, and most small business startups learn from mistakes of others. So when deciding on starting a small business, learn from these 3 mistakes and do what you can to avoid them at all costs.

3 Mistakes To Avoid When Starting A Small Business

Don’t Launch To Quickly

Moving too fast is usually a problem when starting a small business. Sure you are excited about starting your own business, and that excitement drives you to launch as soon as possible and make a difference, to have your first customer, to be a success and to make money but launching too soon could be one mistake that drives your small business into the ground.

Remember to always have a business startup checklist, and to follow a guide of starting up. There are always steps that you need to do in order to ensure that you have everything covered. Even the little things matter.

Be sure that when you launch your business that everything is operational, from the way you deal with customers, to the way you deal with payments and the overall process.

One word of advice is to test everything before you get out there.

Not Having A Business Plan

We always talk about the importance of a business plan, but you’d be surprised how many business owners start a small business without one. Sure you can start a business without a plan, but do you really want to?

Remember that a business plan acts as a road map, a blueprint to the success of your business. It is a turn-to guide if something is of track, or if you need a reminder of how you wanted things to go. A business plan is a “functional business model” on paper. It is a way to test your business before you start it up.

Not Having Money

One mistake that many startups have it not having enough money but still startup.

There are a few problems with this, and a few different ways to look at it.

First you have those startups who have no money to start up at all. Financing is typically their biggest problem which means that they can’t get to the stage of starting up at all because they have nothing to go off of. Try and avoid not having any money but having the desire to start a business. This always ends in failure, so save your self some time.

If you are able to obtain funding from either the government of Canada in the form of grants or loans, or get financing from the banks, private investors or from family and friends – do so.

The second problem is already having spent all your money and not being able to move any further because you’ve overspent and didn’t plan well enough. Typically those who get into this problem are those small business owners who forgot to “create a business plan”. In a business plan all steps are pre-planned, and a contingency plan is in place to avoid problems like this.

The above 3 are the major mistakes small business owners make when starting a small business. Remember, try and avoid these mistakes in order to be successful in business. The best you can do is have a business plan ready, work on having enough financing to cover your startup, launching and operational stages of your business and prepare to launch on time when everything is tested and functional to your liking.