The 10 most frequent mistakes when creating your own business

The first months of a venture are decisive for its future: it is time to make mistakes, sometimes generated even by enthusiasm or optimism in relation to the success of the project. But if it is inevitable to make mistakes, perhaps the key is to do it quickly and have good reflexes to correct.

For the psychologist Luciana Goldstein, director of Entre Emprendedores, an organization dedicated to generating exchange and alliances in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, there are at least ten mistakes that are repeated as patterns and that appear both in the global concept of the new project and in the plane of communication, marketing, administration and finance.

1. Overcome with enthusiasm

Developing extremely handmade products or with many steps in production prevents the medium-term sales volume from escalation. It is very good that you want your product to be special, but it is about finding a delicate balance between originality in the production processes and the possibility of producing in quantity to grow.

For Rodrigo Córdoba, a repeat entrepreneur and creator of the machines of
patisserie Tigoût, the mishandling of emotions is one of the weaknesses of those who start a business. "Sometimes anxiety is a good thing, which pushes you forward, but if you don't know how to manage it, it's a problem because you transfer it to the whole team and it takes you to make impulsive decisions," he said, adding: "While not you are a multinational that has to adjust to the processes, nor do you have to go to the other ends of launching without consulting. "

2. Neglect of
packaging

The encounter with the product is as important as the product itself. "Many entrepreneurs forget to devote time to this instance and choose at the last moment some container to solve, without conceptually integrating the presentation."

3. Be more of the same

Some projects are launched without sufficiently investigating the competition. Surely before someone is already doing what you want to do, and how are you going to justify the existence of your project in the world? The challenge is to understand in depth why someone who does not know me should buy me (and not my family and friends who love me very much).

4. Believing "you will never work again"

The false belief that loving what one does replaces the instance of effort and work can generate high levels of frustration. Entrepreneurship is hard, demanding, not for everyone and definitely not pink.

5. Be an online street vendor

Using social networks as a sales channel often involves the false idea that creating an Instagram account and then selling is very easy. Social networks are not to say "I sell, I sell." You have to know the tools of each platform and use them with an intelligent strategy that allows the business to grow.

6. Ignore the operation of SEO & SEM

Once the store develops
on-line, it works alone. Nobody enters a web "out of nowhere" and great efforts are required to drive visitors. In this sense, it is crucial to know the functioning of SEO & SEM technologies to achieve better search engine positioning.

7. Be fully guided by intuition

Many entrepreneurs do not measure results, wasting all the tools of digital marketing. Today we can know exactly who visits our networks and who is really interested in us and use that information to re-impact the business.

8. "I do it because I love what I do"

Love does not pay monotax. The mistake here is not to include the labor cost of the entrepreneur in the cost of products. If you had to refer someone to the tasks you do, would it still be profitable? It is key to ask that.

9. Expenditure versus investment

All growth steps require investing and even outsourcing processes and tasks. For example, many entrepreneurs believe that it is enough with the photos taken by themselves to show their product and they see the hiring of professional services as an expense that their structure "is not allowed". With that reasoning, they prevent the growth of the project.

10. Be an "todologist"

The classic of every newbie entrepreneur: not detecting in time the need to hire specialists to professionalize and deepen the processes and instances of your venture.
For Rodrigo Córdoba it is essential to learn to delegate, to trust and be open to modify the original idea. "Many times entrepreneurs fall in love with their product and lose sight of what they are solving, the user's look. And when they leave they realize that nobody is interested: they have no market," he said.

Bonus track national: low tolerance for frustration

"In this country, the ecosystem for entrepreneurs is not very friendly. We have a very pro-entrepreneurial government, but a State that is the machine to prevent, that delays," said Cordoba, who is wasting too much time filling out forms and trying to advance with bureaucratic procedures. Resilience is, in this sense, a necessary quality for those who want to advance a project.
In addition, Cródoba said it is difficult to find investors or local strategic partners with low risk aversion. "Everyone says' I love your idea, but first show me how it works on the street."