Entrepreneurship is hard.
No matter if you are an entrepreneur by choice or by circumstance (ie. you are looking for a way to make money because the pandemic or some other situation has compromised your existing employment situation), a venture into entrepreneurship takes careful planning and consideration to ensure success.
In light of that fact, we wanted to use this blog to highlight the top three mistakes we believe any entrepreneur should avoid going into the journey they are about to embark on.
Here we go.
1. Forgetting the Competition
Never forget to think about, plan and react to what your competition does as an entrepreneur. You may think you have found your niche as a business, but we can promise you that there will always be some kind of competition in any space of business. Forgetting your competition can lead to significant pitfalls if a competitor happens to catch on to a trend before you and you are not paying enough attention to realize. Therefore, it is important to always analyze who and what you’re up against so that you can act accordingly. This way, you keep pace with those who you are competing with for sales, which will increase your ability to adapt over time and improve your business in the service of greater overall success as an entrepreneur.
2. Basing Hiring Decisions on Cost
Don’t short-change yourself on a better candidate for an opening based on cost if you are hiring an employee. The same goes for hiring a potential vendor, if your business needs one. The reason we say this is because upfront costs may look high, but making the better (even if it is more expensive) hiring choice can pay great dividends in the future. We know that it might hurt your pocket book in the short-term but we sincerely believe in the power of good help, and we apply this principle very much to entrepreneurship when we say that spending money on a good hire now can be very fruitful for your business in the long run.
3. Not Picking A Market/Target Audience
As an entrepreneur, if you’re selling something, you’re probably thinking… “I want to sell this to as many people as possible, no matter who it is, how old or young they are, what gender they are, etc.”. As much as we understand this broadened approach is helpful if you want to make money because, simply put, more sales equals more money, we would actually advise against this approach. If you try to appeal to everyone, there is a chance that your messaging will not resonate with anyone strongly enough to convince them to buy your offering. Therefore, picking a target audience can help hone your messaging and product in a way that appeals to said market and creates a loyal customer base (from which you may be able to broaden out later on).
Again, before we finish off this blog, we’d like to reiterate that this list is only three items long, so it’s not even close to being kind of exhaustive. This speaks to our point about research and planning, as we suggest that anyone reading this blog with an interest in entrepreneurship use our content as a simple springboard into the world of being an entrepreneur.
With that said, if you are reading this blog as a parent with a child in grades one through nine and you want them to get a jumpstart on learning about entrepreneurship as soon as possible, we encourage you to check out Explorer Hop’s entrepreneurship programs, where we take kids through our nationally and internationally-acclaimed lessons and courses on topics from operations and marketing to finance and sales. On top of that, our programs have actually helped launch 40+ real kid-businesses to date, which have raised over $45,000 for various charities.
Visit our website and sign up today!