What Was Your Biggest Mistake In Starting Your Own Business?

[Small to Feds]

For me it was in not realizing that we all must deal with our personal value systems in business ownership.

I spent 36 years in the Military Industrial Complex and learned a great deal from the large and small companies for whom I worked. This permitted me to be quite successful in my own consulting firm for 10 years at the end of my career.

But I found that I did not have the gut desire to become rich and I always paid everyone else before I paid myself - not necessarily a recipe for success. My value system was not suited for small business ownership.

The most fulfillment I have had in my professional career has been in forming my own non-profit organization in retirement to assist veterans and small businesses free of charge and supporting two other organizations in doing so.

 

[Julia Sta Romana]

Worrying about everything that could go wrong. It made me indecisive and afraid to make meaningful decisions.

 

[Chiedo]

My biggest mistake was starting and growing entirely focused on the service I was providing with the primary focus as opposed to the people I was providing the service for as the primary focus.

We used to do work for EVERYONE.

I'm your typical story of geek gone entrepreneur. It took me years before I realized I needed to focus on defining a target audience instead just doing work for anyone who would pay.

 

[Bolton]

Not taking enough action at first.

 

[abdulkaddir]

Well in my opinion my mistake was to handover extra rights to employees and then getting played by them.

 

[Brad Young]

To lease ownership over key business responsibilities to my first hires...

 

[Peyton White]

I agree with you Brad Young. It will be a bit risky to lease. This will add only to a burden in managing a business.

 

[Mike Branton]

I'm with Bolton. I did not start taking meaningful action quickly enough. Too much analysis, and not enough direct action.

 

[Daniel Jameson]

Everybody makes mistakes, especially when someone starting a new business. When you are starting a new business, there are so many things you need to consider before moving further.
Some of the big mistakes happen while you are starting a new business like hiring in a hurry, Taking On Projects I Didn’t Love, Making Important Decisions Too Quickly and so on.

 

[Jessica Bruce]

With a tight budget, it was hard to proceed my business further. Though we took great decisions. We didn't' have much luck though.

 

[fulfillment]

My first mistake was not moving out of the basement and buying a real building.
My second mistake was not buying the top of the line machines the first time.

Both items slowed the speed of our growth.

 

[tess dvow]

Not realizing that time and budget are my two biggest enemies!
I wish I could go back in time to give myself this advice....never start a product from scratch if you're a startup, believe me there are so many options available now just make sure you utilize them wisely.
you could save both time and budget by hiring a team of experts or freelancers to make your product or best option you could acquire a white label dispatch software to do the work. if interested you can check out Cab Startup to get to know about white label solution.

 

[Naresh Kumar]

I had made a lot of mistakes. Did business without planning, research and without sufficient capital, lack of patience even without skill and research, and failed every time drastically, Now online I am putting effort, knowledge and have patience because this is my passion. In the past businesses, the failing reason was an absence of passion.