In this modern technology world, everything can happen with a click. You can simply start a business by reaching retail stores or personally contacting people to avail your service. Everyone can initiate a startup business or side hustle nowadays days. New Entrepreneurs always think but how to start? Well, here are five costly and time-consuming mistakes to avoid when starting a side hustle or small business.
Table of Contents
1. New Entrepreneurs Ditching a Budget:
When starting a business, you must have a plan for the budget. Common mistakes for starting businesses are that owners tend to spend all the necessary equipment, materials, and resources they need to establish the business neglecting that they are running up more costs than their capital. A budget can be referred to as capital. Firstly, you must have a minimum and maximum range of your budget so that you will know how little and how much you will spend on your business.
A budget can determine how much you are willing to spend and give your business a good establishment or foundation. Your budget helps you allocate the requirements for you to actually start without worrying about overspending because often when we are feeling good about our business ideas, we tend to forget the expenses of making it happen. So allocate more of your capital to gain control of your expenses and other expenditures for your business. Never spend what is beyond the budget because that is one practice of becoming a successful businessman. Dealing with a budget and minimizing costs are ways to prevent your business and you from going bankrupt or losing profit.
Did you know that successful businessmen struggle with finances in their beginning years? They too have budget plans and cost-minimizing strategies that will produce a profit maximization business in return. All it takes is to be frugal on your personal expenses and finances of your business because in that way you are helping yourself and your business grow.
2. Taking too much of the Personal Savings:
If you have started your business and then eventually ran out of money, what will you do? Go to your personal savings. But then, how much are you willing to give from your personal savings to your business? Is this cost-efficient? You may get a little help from your personal savings because it acts as a debt from you. Just like other startups, they can loan as much as they want from banks so that they can allocate funds for their business. But if you aren’t much of a fan of loaning, you can opt to get it from your personal savings.
Often when owners hustle and work hard to profit in their business, they forget that the funds used in operation were their personal savings and they have taken too much from it. If you want to help fund your business, there are actually multiple ways to get money. One is through investors gathering the opportunity to have investors for your business that will help you raise your capital or fund your business operations. This might sound like a target scale business idea, but remember that all businesses started from and later became big businesses due to people investing in their business. Always be part of the solution, not an additional problem to your business.
If the business goes bankrupt, so are you because you have taken your personal savings up too much for your business rather than the business only going down and not you. Be sure to create a boundary between your personal savings and expenses from your business expenses.
3. Not Asking for Advice on Mentorship:
It is really hard to start a business when you don’t actually have a background in it, but it doesn’t always take a business major to start a business. Suppose you have the passion and willingness to create your ideas into a business venture. In that case, you are most qualified to make it happen. But is it always the case if you don’t have someone to guide you or mentor you in establishing your business? A mentor or even advice from a business friend can give you the best business decisions in managing your business.
It is hard to learn things on your own, especially if it’s not your best field of interest and you will likely make mistakes that are pretty much hard to cope with. Find the best mentor or a friend or better yet, a business partner because two heads are better than one. It is never easy to go alone and deal with business, so make sure you are well educated about the process of growing a business, especially in managing and operating the business by yourself. Make sure to ask the pieces of advice in dealing with customers, stock, and organization so that you will better know the ways of handling the stress of managing your business daily.
4. Refusing to Hire a Virtual Assistant:
When you happen to start your business venture alone, all the workload will fall upon your shoulder. It may be a side hustle or a small business. A little help will not hurt you or your business. In this industry, you will really consume all your time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears, especially when you want to progress your business. In the world of modern technology, you need to utilize the social media platform as a medium to get to your customers. One of the efficient ways to get help is by hiring a virtual assistant.
This virtual assistant will be a tool for communication-related concerns in your business. A virtual assistant helps you organize your work schedule and plot your business deals with clients. Another is it assists you in creating your blogs, videos, or even ads for promotion to help better create space for you and your customers to interact with each other regarding business transactions. It is a matter of getting most of your energy without dealing with these small manageable tasks by hiring a virtual assistant because in that way you can exert your time on other ventures that benefit your business.
5. Setting the Prices Too Low:
This is the most noticeable mistake that every business startup would absolutely make. Knowing that you are still at the beginning of your business, you will definitely set the prices of your products or services at a very low price. Why is this a mistake? When your price is too low, especially against the competitive market? Sooner or later your business will fail. Most likely, you will certainly feel that your business is not gaining too much profit with the given set of prices.
Because of that, you should know how to market your products or services at a competitive price. Make sure that your prices are not too low and not too high because when your prices are too low, your customer or clients will begin to question the quality and integrity of your product. On the other hand, when your prices are too high, they will question the business and branding.
That is why a change of price from time to time is important because that will follow the trends in the market from customer’s interest to value. Know the value of your business so that you will know how competent your services are to the public and make sure it will always look presentable and affordable based on your target customers or clients.
Conclusion:
How was it? Have you experienced these kinds of mistakes when you were just starting your business? If you’re new to this now you know why these common mistakes arise. Because business is a learning venture, you will grow with it. Do not waste your time blaming yourself for the mistake. Rather make solutions and cope with them so that you will become better in the future.
