Startup Diaries: Entrepreneurs Share Their Biggest Mistakes in Managing Their Company

Photo by Annie Spratt

Mistakes are part of everyone's journey. You wouldn't be successful in what you do if you didn't have the opportunity to commit a few errors along the way. The same goes for managing a company. It's essential for an entrepreneur to go left or steer toward the wrong decision. Whether the business is on a lease term, in their creators' backyard, an abandoned warehouse or an office space for rent BGC, it doesn't matter. An enterprise's journey always shoots up and down.

If you're a budding entrepreneur or someone who dreams of having a business, you can learn a thing or two from the mistakes and misfortunes of others. You'll find that the experiences and struggles of those ahead of you can provide wisdom useful in managing your business and your life. In this first edition of Startup Diaries, you'll find a few successful and not-so-successful entrepreneurs share their encounters on starting a business and the mistakes they committed that led them to change their business strategy.

Jeff Wiener - Having no plans on how to sell and market products

Jeff is the author of The Kickass Entrepreneur's Guide to Investor. He is also a real estate investor and an entrepreneur. In 1991, he was selling voicemail boxes then in 2017 he sold his company. His experience in selling various items and building his business from the ground up led him to become a consultant other entrepreneurs who wish to grow their business.

For him, one mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs are guilty of is neglecting to figure out how to sell and market their product before beginning the business. Some businesspeople think that once they set up a company and a shop, customers will come. But in reality, people won't. You must have a sound marketing strategy to attract the right people, or else it'll "take a lot of effort to get things going" as Jeff puts it. The presence of social media platforms and the Internet doesn't make things easy instead they make it more difficult to break through the noise. If you're an entrepreneur, you should think things through before anything else.

Then Zhi Wei - Spending resources on brand awareness without adding value

Then and his friend Tan Qing Yu founded Partie, a platform that helps people plan their events. Partie provides product and vendor recommendations based on the requirements given by the user. If you're working on party preparations with a budget, you don't have to worry too much. Partie has it covered.

Then shares that wasting a lot of resources to create brand awareness in social media is a waste. If you're not creating value for your target audience, then you are wasting our hours on ineffective brand awareness. He points out the importance of coming up with cohesive marketing content for product and services. Once you have it, you can now use resources to market your content. Still, you won't have to spend hundreds of bucks on marketing. You can use free tools that can help you research and analyze the details and the type of content that will boost your marketing efforts.

Vishal Gupta - Avoiding experienced applicants

Vishal is one of the founders and acting SEO of Bizain. Bizain provides solutions to all aspects of the business. Its services aren't limited to start-ups or brick-and-mortar establishments. It also offers services related to eCommerce such as web development, web traffic generation and conversion.

As a startup mentor, Vishal understands the importance of minimizing the company's cash flow. The company should stick to their budget and keep the cash outflow as low as possible. But, that doesn't mean you should avoid hiring people with experience or specialize in a field. "Experienced people can add value to a startup's product development cycle," he shared. Experienced hires also ensure that the final product is what you expect and envision. Remember, it more costly to produce a product or service that doesn't meet your standards than having someone oversee production.

Vertika Nigam - Losing sight of your business goals

Vertika is all for empowering women entrepreneurs. Her business began by combining blogging and marketing to promote stories, views, and poems by different women. She along with her team came up with Openthrive, an inbound marketing company that helps businesses with website traffic, leads, and sales.

At the beginning of their business, Vertika and her team focused on providing marketing service to women entrepreneurs. They had activities, offers, and discount schemes to entice their target customers. She and her team were too engrossed with the mission of promoting women entrepreneurs that they forgot about their business goals. They gave their services for a low price making them lose more than they earn. "While supporting your customers, it's [also] your duty to see that the business should not get into such losses that [can be hard] to recover," Vertika declared. "Now we know that businesses don't run on just emotions and good thoughts," she added.

Paul Endress - Becoming impatient

Paul is a communication strategist and an expert in psychology and linguistics as well as the author of The Magic of Communication Styles and The Hiring Secrets of Google. Hee also founded a total of 9 companies wherein four became a success. He conducts seminars and gives inspiring speeches to help individuals and business executives accomplish their objectives.

His experience of coaching others showed that startups are guilty of committing several rookie mistakes. One of them is becoming impatient. A lot of novice entrepreneurs don't like to wait. They want to see progress and results in a short time. But, rushing things keep you from paying attention to details. When papers and products are flying in and out of the office, you don't have time to check the details. Things begin to fall through the cracks. When that happens, things might bite you back especially when it's about your expenses.

Thanks to these people, you can avoid these mistakes when managing your business. You can learn from their first-hand experiences and learnings from dealing with clients and individuals who took the risk of building a company. With this knowledge, you can now manage your company with confidence.