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Posted by Sarah Brown on 03 Oct '14

The seven top mistakes that a business owner should avoid if they want to achieve success

The seven top mistakes that can be fatal to business success
  1. Burying your head in the sand – pretending like a small child under the blankets that it is not happening – whatever it is and hoping it will go away
  2. Running out of money – not having a handle on the numbers so you run out of cash even though you have a strong order book. Sadly many businesses go out of business as the economy comes out of recession and they overtrade
  3. Running out of customers – the opposite of 2) either you treat them badly so they don’t return, haven’t worked out a way to continue the relationship or rely on too few large customers and when they leave you die
  4. Internal disputes – generally this is in the board room or may be between senior managers. Generally it is because values and vision are not aligned so the corporate personality becomes confused; staff become confused – who do they support or please; and mostly importantly, generally in the midst of the fight the customer gets forgotten or downplayed and finds someone else
  5. Sweating the small stuff – worrying about things that don’t matter, not seeing the wood for the trees, focusing on the falling leaves!
  6. Poor delegation – or even no delegation. Particularly common in smaller businesses where the owner can’t let go and worries about delegating as people won’t do it as well as they can do. Staff look on as the manager/owner gets more and more overworked and the staff get more and more frustrated and opportunities are lost
  7. Lack of focus – particularly in the market. Being all things to all people in case you miss an opportunity

We calculate that during our business careers we have made at least 16,425 mistakes, we make them so you don’t have to. The ones above are the ones we see most frequently and often the most fatal.

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Tags: business business success

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