Welcome to the world of business! Well, I thought someone should give you a proper greeting before everyone else starts telling you how and why you’re going to fail. It’s true that roughly 97 percent of startups fail in year one and that might seem like a large proportion. Actually, that IS a large proportion, but we need to give it some context. First, you should understand that plenty of these startup owners had no chance of making their business a success. Perhaps there was no demand for the product or maybe it just wasn’t a good business model. Either way, it was definitely DOA. Then, there are people who don’t take the idea of running a company seriously. Instead, they see it as a hobby and hey if you have the money to burn why not? But again, these guys don’t get very far on the market either. They’re not willing to put the time in.
So you see the odds aren’t quite as stacked up against you as you think. Or, indeed as you’ve been told. There are some easy ways to avoid failing in your first year and guaranteeing that your startup business is a real winner.
Avoid The Obvious Mistakes
We’ve already mentioned a few of these, but basically, it’s important to take your business seriously. You need to avoid business risk like it’s the plague and make sure that you’re not running your company like you’re in a Vegas casino. That’s a recipe for disaster, and this means that you should be making calculated decisions. It’s crucial that you treat the process of running the company with the respect it deserves. Otherwise, you certainly will fail on the market.
Another obvious mistake is automatically assuming that your business is a hit. I see this a lot on the market with company owners assuming that their market is totally commercially viable. Oh really? So the teenager obsessed with video games is going to love your new walling system, is he? Of course not because he doesn’t have any property that needs it! So, don’t ever assume that your product is universally marketable. There are very few products on the market that actually are.
Keep Costs Low
Since you’re not assuming your business idea is the next Facebook, you won’t be injecting massive amounts of cash into it. If we’re thinking about Facebook, you should consider the fact that Zuckerberg spent very little money on it at all. You should learn a valuable lesson here, and that’s the danger of overspending. The more money you spend, the higher the price of your product needs to be for you to make a profit.
Fly Solo
You might think that hiring more people for your business is a brilliant idea. But be careful because you’re just, figuratively speaking, give yourself more mouths to feed. It’s best, if you can to run your business as a solopreneur. You should do this until it starts to generate some interest on the market. Once that happens, by all means, hire as many people as you like.
If you follow this simple yet essential advice, your business will not crash and burn in the first year. It could, with a little luck and a lot of work, be a grand success.
