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Starting a business at a young age is exciting, but also extremely challenging. Entrepreneurs are more popular than ever, and as a result, many young and eager professionals skip the corporate world and dive headfirst into entrepreneurship — many doing so before they are ready. This flood of young entrepreneurs can lead to a lot of poor decision making. Their lack of experience, mixed with blind eagerness and know it all attitude, is a recipe for inefficiency and costly mistakes. While making a few mistakes along the way is inevitable, but there are still a dozen mistakes that young entrepreneurs keep making that can be avoided.
Below are the mistakes young entrepreneurs seem make when starting a new business:
1. Being too impatient.
Stories of “overnight success” make wannabe entrepreneurs think that their new venture will be a success immediately. What these young start-up creators don’t see are the years of hard work that go behind a big launch — which is usually successful only due to years of smart planning. Just because these steps aren’t publicized doesn’t mean they are not happening behind the scenes.
Young entrepreneurs need to acknowledge that their project is a long-term investment. Being too impatient will ultimately lead to failure, as many young entrepreneurs have learned. In fact, according to research, 70% of startups scale up before they are truly ready and don’t make it in the long term. The reality is that there are no shortcuts to accelerate past years of persistence, and young entrepreneurs need to learn to play the long game if they are to be successful.
2. Trying to do everything by yourself.
Many young founders might think that because they are the vision behind their company, they must do everything themselves. What many fail to realize is that starting a company is not a single-player effort. It requires a team of those you trust and that believe in the vision of the company to help you grow. Working with a team also means learning how to be an effective leader, which is an underdeveloped skill in many naive entrepreneurs. They simply lack the years of experience or confidence to successfully lead a team. They also tend to be micromanagers, who are used to projects being done a certain way. This can ruin a team’s chemistry and collaboration. Founders need a balance between paying attention to the big ideas while being able to lead teams of others to carry out the smaller, everyday tasks.
3. Not understanding your business plan.
While a formal business plan is not completely essential, a successful startup does need to spend time thinking of the nuts and bolts of their business model. There should be a road map in place that outlines key metrics and projections for all involved to see. Young entrepreneurs skipping this step might see more complications down the road. Taking advantage of a self-service knowledge base or free knowledge base software can be a good start to documenting company plans that you can share internally with those invested in your business goals.
4. Not understanding your market.
Understanding your market means more than doing market research; it means learning from those who have been working and selling in that industry for years. Frankly, young entrepreneurs don’t have the work experience and knowledge that seasoned sellers might. Actually knowing the nuances of your market takes time. Younger entrepreneurs can benefit from having a mentor or by spending years working for another company first before launching their product into a market dominated by pros. make sure your market will be receptive to you, even if your company remains a small player.
5. Hiring the wrong people.
Hiring is a unique talent that many young founders might not be ready for. It requires being able to read a variety of people and personalities and understanding which of those work well together in the workplace. More seasoned owners know that sometimes it’s more about chemistry than skills, and while an employee looks good on paper, he or she might clash terribly and stall growth. Additionally, a younger entrepreneur might be more prone to bring on a school friend or close buddy to start up a new project. While the familiarity and support system is a nice feature, it is a bad business strategy. When business relationships begin to get personal, criticism can be misconstrued and there can be a nasty falling out. Avoid this taboo by hiring professionals who are qualified and eager to grow your business and that share your same vision.
6. Thinking you have no direct competitors.
The excitement about a new product or business can often lead new entrepreneurs to think they really have no direct competition, or that their product is so head-and-shoulders above those of their rivals that they’re in a category of their own. In reality, it’s extremely rare to have no direct competitors. Unless you’ve invented a completely new product, there will be someone who already has market share in your niche. Do your due diligence to find out what these companies are and how you can differentiate your business.
7. Imagining that you know everything
Mentoring ensures that knowledge, experience, and hard-won insight transfers from one person to another through personal interaction over time. While your own great ideas are essential to your new business, with an experienced mentor at your side, you will have one of the most powerful assets any new businessperson can ever have: someone invested in you and your success. As an entrepreneur contrary to popular belief, we do not always have the answers to every possible challenge that is thrown our way in our day jobs. That is why we have mentors to help us and guide us through some of our challenging days at work. Mentors can help guide you through situations such as problems with our customers, products/ services, potential expansion opportunities that are presented to you, they can help you improve upon your soft-skills (communication, networking, decision making), offer up ideas around strategy .
A mentor is someone who will keep you grounded in your journey /pathway and provide direction that you may not be getting from your ecosystem. In an effort to improve upon certain skills in our lives, a mentor acts as a career coach and our career champion towards our success. A mentor essentially fills those gaps that are missing from your career and professional development growth.
