Category: Entrepreneurship

Business success demands that owners and managers hone their skills to promote the growth and health of their organization. Unfortunately, this challenge can be a difficult one. Given the competitive nature of the business landscape, leaders with a few bad habits can destroy a company’s probability of success.

1. Lack of Flexibility and Vision, Related to Business Model Changes

A technology-driven economy changes at breakneck speed. What many many business owners are failing at, which can dramatically impact a company’s ability to thrive in the future, is their ability to adapt. To the extent that leaders are not flexible or open-minded to making drastic business model changes necessary to adapt, an organization can cease to exist. A good example of this type of nearsightedness might be a reluctance by business owners to acknowledge and embrace the need for new software solutions that would benefit employees and customers alike.

Merely modifying a business model is not always enough to meet the future’s demands. Business management teams must be capable of serving both today’s customers while developing future customers. Since one of the most difficult challenges any management team faces is to address current needs while also serving as a visionary for the future, many businesses lose their competitive advantage when they fail to juggle the present and future needs of a business.

2. Micromanaging Employees

Employees resent being micromanaged because it feels like the manager or owner does not trust them to competently do the job they were hired to perform. An effective leader must learn how to delegate tasks and trust they will be done.

Any company that expects to grow has to hire competent employees and then have confidence they can do the job, not look over their shoulder and double check everything they do.

3. Lack of Interest in Team Members’ Well-Being or Personal Growth

As the contributors of an organization, employees are the heartbeat of any company. Leadership must show genuine interest in the welfare of their employees if they expect to attract and retain a loyal and committed workforce. Whether it means investing in ergonomic chairs, state-of-the-art training or safe Bluetooth earphones, these types of investments prove the management staff’s interest in investing in their staff members need to be part of strategic human resource policy.

4. Poor Market Analysis

Data drives the market and must be considered carefully by entrepreneurs and managers if they want to remain competitive. They must create systems that can capture accurate information in a timely manner. Without timely report analysis, it is impossible to adjust policies and procedures to overcome challenges.

Keap reports that it is especially critical that entrepreneurs analyze the marketplace as they launch a new business. Many businesses fail due to insufficient oversight and an inability to accurately “see the writing on the wall,” about serious operational problems.

5. A Lack of Respect for Other People’s Time

A pet peeve for many people is timeliness. As busy as the management staff may be, they need to always honor their commitments and meeting times with staff members. In case they are always late, they risk sending the message that the subordinate workers’ time is less valuable than their own. This rule is simple: To earn respect, you have to respect others too.

There are always exceptions to any rule, but a pattern of not being punctual sends a clear, and a very negative message – that you are either not interested, or the meeting is just not important to you. In a tight labor market, such actions can significantly impact your bottom line. Bosses who neglect their team members run the risk of losing team them.

6. Unwilling to Take Necessary Risks

Industry leaders take risks. The status quo will only take you so far. An unwillingness to take risks can limit a business’s ability to make important breakthroughs that lead to growth. The business landscape is unpredictable and demands that entrepreneurs adapt policies, procedures, and even business models at times if they want to continue to compete.

With careful analysis, managers and business owners can limit the amount of risk they take. But at some point, after careful consideration, you have to take a leap of faith and make some bold moves.

Wrap Up

Owning and managing a business is a risky and challenging proposition that guarantees failure for entrepreneurs who sport bad habits. Such habits lessen their ability to lead and change when necessary.

The good news is that smart leaders can identify problem areas and make a commitment to improving. While self-evaluation can be painful, it is necessary for any person who wants to grow in order to fuel their company and give it what it needs.

Understanding the predictable bad habits above that can harm a business is a good first step towards avoiding these issues. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. Everything possible should be done to identify and eliminate bad habits that can ruin your business.

Jasmine Williams covers the good and the bad of today’s business and marketing. When she’s not being all serious and busy, she’s usually hunched over a book or dancing in the kitchen, trying hard to maintain rhythm, and delivering some fine cooking (her family says so). Contact her @JazzyWilliams88

Entrepreneurship is about creating and growing a business, but don’t let that concept consume you. If you want to be an effective entrepreneur, boss, leader, teammate, and visionary, you can’t be content to only make changes and spark growth in your business—you have to make changes and spark growth in yourself as well.

Your personal growth is what’s going to equip you to carve a path to success:

• You’ll gain knowledge to make better decisions.
• You’ll develop skills to expand to new areas.
• You’ll earn experience to apply different perspectives and engage your creativity.
• You’ll transcend your business, so that when your business is sold (or when you depart some other way), you’ll be able to do even more in your next venture.

That being said, you can’t just say you’re going to grow—you have to work to achieve that growth, and it isn’t always easy or straightforward. When you’re ready, you’ll need to adhere to the following five principles—at a minimum—to be successful:

1. Meet as many people as possible. As people, we are fundamentally limited in how much we can learn and how much we can develop by the people around us. If you spend time, personally or professionally, with the same three people over the course of a decade, eventually your personalities, beliefs, thought patterns, and abilities will all meld together and become indistinguishable. You’ll teach each other everything you have to teach, and you’ll reach a plateau where you’re unable to draw any new information or experiences from one another. By contrast, every new person you meet—whether it’s a new hire or a stranger on the street—is going to be better than you at something, and is going to have different ideas than you do. I guarantee it. The more people you meet, the more you’ll stand to learn, and the more you’ll grow as a person.

2. Listen to advice and feedback. Listening is an oft-neglected, but fundamental skill. Too many people focus on what they’re saying rather than what everyone around them is saying—but you can turn this around. Go out of your way to earn advice and feedback from the people around you, including people above you (like investors and mentors) and people below you (like employees and people outside the industry). You don’t have to necessarily take or incorporate all this advice, or any of it, but you have to hear it, understand it, and consider it. It’ll open you to new perspectives.

3. Always have a book. Yes, book-reading is a bit old fashioned in this advanced digital age, but it’s still one of the best ways to gain—and more importantly, retain—information. Depending on what you read, you’ll learn new skills, gain new insights, learn new strategies, and sharpen your linguistic skills and vocabulary, all of which are positive steps. You should always have a book you’re currently reading, so whenever you finish one, you’re onto the next. The minute you stop reading, you stop learning, so keep a full queue of books to read and delve into them whenever you have spare time.

4. Question everything, including yourself. It’s dangerous to become a slave to your assumptions, and many people do without ever realizing it. If you want to grow, you’ll need to challenge those assumptions. Try not to treat anything as sacred—even if there’s a news source you like, don’t trust everything it publishes. Just because you’ve held a belief for years doesn’t mean it’s absolutely and objectively true. When you operate under the assumption that everything is flawed and there’s no such thing as perfect or objective reasoning, you’ll open the doors to more information, and the ability to learn and adapt.

5. Never be satisfied. If you want to achieve positive personal growth, you have to want to grow. This seems obvious, but there’s an important principle you have to accept before you can truly desire that growth; you have to avoid the temptation of satisfaction. When you become content with yourself, or satisfied with the level of growth you’ve achieved, you’ll have no reason to continue moving forward, and you’ll become stagnant. Resist that eventuality by refusing to be too satisfied with yourself. Continually work on improving yourself, improving the content you publish, and improving the way you promote yourself (and your content, such as through a strategic link building campaign).

With these five principles in the back of your mind at all times, you’ll be well-equipped to advance yourself as much as you advance your business. When you’re the best entrepreneur, and the best professional you can be, you’ll make better decisions, open your mind to more ideas, and achieve a broader and more developed set of skills and experience to harness. Encourage all your partners and teammates to adopt the same mentality, and you’ll have an entire team of self-advancers who remain on an upward trajectory.

We all know that entrepreneurs are really busy individuals and they always have to do something or other, and most of the time it’s really something very urgent. The plight of an entrepreneur is constantly like moving pieces – leading initiatives, organizing activities,implementing the planned stuff in the right order, etc.

Entrepreneurs always spend their time on important things which are really understandable, but some more critical tasks should be done. They do not come under the ‘urgent’ category still; they are something vital.

In the midst of the busy schedule, creating time for these not urgent but essential tasks is really very difficult. But they can be managed with the little shift in mindset. However, for a better dream, create and thrive as an entrepreneur we need to shove the very urgent tasks a little bit and make room for the less urgent activities.

Brainstorming for your next business

It is essential that every entrepreneur should be loyal to the business. As an entrepreneur, you have lots of opportunities and chances for adventures. So, why not explore when you have the opportunities in your hand? If you always spend time in extinguishing the plans for your current business, you will never get a chance to plan for the next business. Don’t ever limit your potential or prevent things from taking place. Just keep on brainstorming about your next business moves and see what happens.

Planning for your next product

The main factor is introducing new products into the market. The better product you can develop the more sales you can expect.

Let’s take a small example – you are successfully running the business accompanied by a strong customer base. You are planning to serve your customers better by providing them with the new unique product. And this is the right thing that you should do as an entrepreneur because it will help you to grow your business.

So you have to plan cautiously and accurately to launch your next product. You have to keep on adding something new to your product line in order to hold the attention of your customers. You can never expect to keep a hold on the market share with your existing line of products.In fact, if you need any sort of extra fund for that, you can make plans and approach for the various fundraising methods. To know more about this you may visit fundraising sites.

 

Mentoring someone

If someone has ever mentored you, then you would definitely understand the power of entrepreneurial mentorship. There are lots of people who would like to learn from you. If you come across someone, then don’t hesitate to mentor him. He can be your co-founder, employee or a friend. Always try to spend some time with such people who want to learn from you. Remember, mentoring always serves a two-way purpose. You can get to learn a lot of things as well as you will have someone with whom you can actually think aloud.

Strategizing your business move

It is not possible to say that every entrepreneur has been a born market, but one can say that every entrepreneur has some exclusive marketing ideas up on the sleeves. As for the studies, it has been found that some of the eminent entrepreneurs in the world are not skilled at technology, business or products, but they are simply excellent in only one factor, i.e., marketing.

In reality, if you can innovate the process of your marketing and spend time in dreaming and brainstorming, you can also get to experience the same success level as Steve Jobs.

Studying the human behavior

Every entrepreneur should learn how to study the human behavior. The time which you will spend on studying the motivation psychology, development, behavior and cognition of people – will never be wasted. You will able to understand your customers better and serve them exactly in the way they expect from you.

You will able to understand what they want from your organization and how you are you going to provide them with it. You will able to understand how to make selections and take decisions in the right way. Last but not the least, you will learn how to face conflicts as well as the accurate procedure of mediating the same.

Networking

As a businessman, you cannot strive in the market without networking. Although the term seems to be little artificial and smarmy, still it is something which is really essential for establishing a strong business. You need to establish a strong connection with similar people in your field for striving in the market. You must have heard that no business can strive on an island, so you will have to make connections and be social. There are several ways of networking and today; social media plays one of the best networking channels for everyone, including entrepreneurs.

Taking off time

This activity is really not an activity and of course, does not fall under any specific business activity. But it is equally important like the above business activities, which I have already discussed. Take some time off in a week or month. On these days or specific hours, simply switch off your phone and stay away from any sort of business activities. You need some time to unwind and unplug yourself and do something different. When you actually take some time off for yourself, you can get time to think for some creative ideas that can ultimately help you in your business. You can even learn something from the experiences you can have on these days, which can add to your business insight for being a better entrepreneur.

Final thoughts

You have tons of things to execute but finding out time for the essential activities which are must for being a proper entrepreneur is really essential for thriving in the long run. When you can manage to take out 10 minutes from your busy schedule to read this post, I believe with a little shift in your mindset you can also get to manage some time in your hectic schedule for these little less urgent tasks. Always keep in mind, it’s all for your benefit. It is you who will be benefited and not someone else. So, ultimately you are doing everything for yourself!

Success shouldn’t be a problem; unfortunately, for some businesses, it is. That’s because many companies struggle to deal with rapid expansion and growth. Indeed, having too many customers, leads, and orders to fill can present as many issues as having too few. And while experiencing an excess of capital potential is certainly preferable to the alternative, it can still cause small business owners headaches, and –– in the worst scenarios –– actually set companies back. Fortunately, you can mitigate against growing pains and put you and your staff in the perfect position to handle more clients, customers, and orders by following these five simple steps.

Analyze Everything

A good rule of thumb for business owners: hope for the best, but plan for the worst. If you take time to consider every possibility, you’ll never be caught off guard –– regardless of the outcome. It’s never a bad thing to be optimistic about your business’s prospects. After all, if you plan accordingly you will achieve your goals!

Make Good Hires

Easier said than done admittedly, but recruiting hungry and resourceful professionals to your company will greatly aid you in your ability to grow and expand. Furthermore, promoting from within is a fantastic way to boost morale and reward exceptional employees for their good work. Plus, it’ll likely prove smoother than trying to hire outside managers and leaders in the midst of a significant transition.

Get Help

Whether you need extra capital to take on a bigger project than what you usually deal with, or you need to outsource some of your transportation services to a 3PL company, don’t be afraid to look outside your business for solutions. The best entrepreneurs recognize lucrative opportunities and will invest in their own potential. Some would call it “betting on yourself.” But it’s probably better to think of it as giving yourself every advantage you need to succeed.

Don’t Compromise

It may be tempting to start cutting corners in the face of heavy workloads, but resist the urge to water down your product in any way. Remember that quality service is vital to customer retention, so if you want to perpetuate your success, don’t dilute your process.

Plot Your Growth Carefully

The best way to deal with rapid expansion is to avoid it. Few companies skyrocket in popularity overnight and maintain their course for any length of time. Rather, nine times out of ten, the responsible model for growth revolves around sensible scalability. Biting off more than you can chew can leave you with impossible responsibilities and undo your good work. So adopt a more measured approach when it comes to business expansion if at all possible.

Entrepreneurs are always looking ahead toward the future. However, sometimes the road to success is neither smooth nor straight. On the contrary, it’s confusing and chaotic. If you’re currently struggling to survive, then here’s a look at some multi-millionaires — and a few billionaires — who are enjoying success today, but at one point in their history hit financial rock bottom and filed for bankruptcy:

• Francis Ford Coppola

Unlike the Godfather Don Corleone, Francis Ford Coppola made his creditors an offer that they could and did refuse — and as such, in 1992 the famous director was forced (for the second time) to file for bankruptcy. However, this setback didn’t end his career. After emerging from bankruptcy he returned to doing what he does best, and in 2003 produced the Oscar-winning movie “Lost in Translation.”

• Donald Trump

Love him or hate him — or maybe both — the fact remains that Donald Trump filed for bankruptcy not once, not twice, but six (yes six) times. The first time was back in 1991, in the aftermath of the ill-fated Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The most recent was in 2009 in the wake of the Great Recession.

• Kim Basinger

If you’re a fan of the original Batman movie or you think that L.A. Confidential was one of the best noir flicks that ever came out of Hollywood, then you may be surprised to learn that one of the stars of both movies — Kim Basinger — wasn’t seen as all that lovely by her creditors back in 1993. She pulled out of the film Boxing Helena — and was sued by the production company for breach of contract.

• Cyndi Lauper

Colorful Cyndi Lauper is best-known for her 1983 chart topper “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” However, two years earlier in 1981 she was known for being deep in debt and filing for bankruptcy. Fast forward about 37 years, and Ms. Lauper is worth an estimated $30 million. She can have a lot of fun with that kind of cash.

• Walt Disney

Walt Disney is the legendary creator behind some of the history’s most beloved animated films. However, decades before the Seven Dwarfs were whistling while they worked and Pinocchio was being advised to wish upon a star, Walt was waltzing into bankruptcy court. That was 1920. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The Bottom Line

If your entrepreneurial roadmap is forcing you to take an unexpected — and certainly unwelcome — detour through bankruptcy country, then don’t panic. Contact a qualified and experienced bankruptcy attorney (such as the Law Office of Charles Huber), and get the advice you need to move forward. Like the people above, you may look back on this event as a small setback on your road to big success!