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David Boo

I do keep in touch in web design, digital marketing, inbound marketing & i love to write about all these industries.

7 Regrets Most Entrepreneurs Have and How You Can Avoid Them

 

Congratulations! You have just graduated from college and instead of taking the traditional route of securing a mundane 9-to-5 job, you opted for starting your own business. You step into the world of entrepreneurship with big dreams and even bigger aspirations. Even if you manage to overcome all the odds, break through the glass ceiling, and achieve success, there are certain things that you tend to regret at the end of the day. In this article, you will learn about seven common regrets that entrepreneurs are wracked with every now and then, and how you can avoid falling prey to them:

 

1. Expanding Too Quickly Too Fast

 

If you are a young entrepreneur like Mark Zuckerberg and believe in the same philosophy of moving fast and breaking things, you might feel the compulsion to expand your business quickly. Unfortunately, this could lead to your downfall, as you might end up exhausting your cash reserves. Once your tank rankles empty, your startup will have a hard time surviving amongst the bigger fish. Unfortunately, this is why most new startups fail to survive the initial five years. It is better to start small and take it from there instead of going full throttle up front. Remember, “Slow and steady wins the race.”

 

2. Staying On the Safe Side

 

On the other end of the spectrum are entrepreneurs who tend to play it too safe. As they say, “The higher the risk, the greater will be the reward.” Entrepreneurship is not for light-hearted, as venturing in to the unknown is the only way to go where others haven’t dared to tap before. If you are afraid of taking risks or live in a constant trepidation of failure, you will never be able to succeed as an entrepreneur. However, instead of playing with fire, make sure that the risks you take are calculated ones so that the probability of your move not paying off might be lower.

 

3. Products over Customers

 

Many new entrepreneurs focus all their attention towards improving their products, neglecting customers in the process. Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, believes in a customer first approach, which has helped him become the richest person in the world. He says, “The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.” According to him, his secret of success lies in his obsession with improving the customer experience, which has taken Amazon from where it was to where it is today.

 

4. Holding On To the Wrong Idea for Too Long

 

It’s how creativity works, especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out and discarded. A mind that is afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.”—David Brin

 

Even though you should trust your instincts, you have to put a full stop somewhere. Clinging on to a wrong idea for too long can leave you well behind the competition, making it extremely tricky to catch up later. In fact, it can prove to be the difference between the success and failure of your newly established business. Instead of trusting your gut all the time, you should do your diligent research and dive into crunch numbers, to come up with a lucrative business idea that actually solves a real-world need. I am not saying that you should not give enough time to your ideas to cultivate, but putting the inevitable off indeterminately is suicide.

 

5. Ignoring Feedback

 

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.”Elon Musk

 

When you make a few decisions pertaining to your business and they all prove to be right, you see yourself as the jack of all trades. In your new-found confidence, you feel it unnecessary to heed others, be it your employees, customers or stakeholders. This is where things start to take a turn for the worst. The first thing that happens when you ignore feedback is that you miss out on opportunities to improve your products and services, which slowly starts to hamper your startup progress. No matter how good your products are, there is always room for some improvement.

 

6. Doing Everything Yourself

 

Entrepreneurs have a natural inclination to go at it alone. While this do-it-yourself spirit can help you move forward, adding an element of collaboration into the mix can make you unstoppable.”—Leah Busque

 

Most budding entrepreneurs try to wear many hats simultaneously, which leads to a burn out and subject them to stress and anxiety. They should understand that business success comes through teamwork and you cannot achieve everything on your own, even if you are great at what you do. Instead of biting off more than you can chew, hire a team with a diverse skill set that gels in together well because the better the team cohesion, the more chances you have of succeeding. Instead of performing every task yourself, you should either automate or delegate tasks to your team members. That is where a free task management software comes into play.

 

7. Sidelining Company Culture and Values

 

Your mobile app development company values and culture are of utmost Importance, and successful entrepreneurs never compromise on it. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for entrepreneurs who have just entered the foray recently. Budding entrepreneurs do not put much emphasis on company culture and core values, which negatively affects the overall workplace environment and the employee behavior with their co-workers or customers. Successful organizations live by their core values and any breach of code of conduct can get you fired. Set the tone early by highlighting the importance of company culture and core values.

 

Conclusion

 

To sum it all up, you should strike a perfect balance between everything you do as an entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs should neither go too slow nor too fast with the expansion plans. They should even decide on what tasks they should do and which ones they should delegate to others. Similarly, you should know which ideas to pursue and which ones to pass by. In the end, never put products and competitors over customers or ignore feedback, as it is critical for any future improvements.

 

Do you have any regrets as an entrepreneur? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below.