Common mistake #1: Operating without a plan

Planning and having a business plan are your primary roles as an entrepreneur. In fact, business experts recommend you spend at least 25% of your time as a business owner planning. To begin a business without a plan, and to continue without analyzing and changing your plan as you grow, is a sure way to struggle to succeed. It’s like heading out for a drive and not knowing how to get where you’re going.

So what’s the cure? Plan! Start with a business plan that outlines your audience, competition, vision and mission, product or service and marketing strategy. Once you have a plan, schedule time into each and every week to plan your business. Analyze what’s working, what isn’t and where you’re going to go from here.

Common mistake #2: Managing your business instead of leading it

As asmall business owner just getting started, it makes sense that you may be the one person who does everything. However, as you grow that practice isn’t going to continue to make sense; you’re going to run out of hours or end up eliminating tasks that are necessary to grow your business.

You don’t, for example, spend all your time invoicing and bookkeeping if your time could be better spent coaching clients and bringing in profits. Leading your business means knowing that it’s better to focus on your specialized skills and hire or outsource to others for their specialized skills. Leading means building a team of people to help you grow your business rather than trying to do it all yourself.

Common mistake #3: Not having a system

The most successful entrepreneurs have a system that keeps them productive. It may be something as simple as using Outlook to prioritize your tasks and then not closing the door to your office until they’re all completed. It may be something more complicated. The point isn’t what system you use – that’s going to be personal to you – the point is to have a system that helps you stay organized and productive.

Common mistake #4: Overextending yourself

It’s so easy to have your fingers in too many cookie jars. When you start experiencing business success, you want more – it’s only natural. So you start other businesses, you launch new products or services and you partner with others. Unfortunately, all this activity pulls your focus in many directions. The result is that you’re only able to devote a small part of your attention to each project rather than your full attention to a single project, and that affects your success.

The cure? Make sure, before you take anything new on, that you can devote your full attention to the project and give it the focus it deserves.

Common mistake #5: Trusting the wrong people

Trusting the wrong people doesn’t mean you’re susceptible to scammers, it means that you’re putting your faith and commitment into people who are not going to help you grow your business. This includes partners, employees, contractors and even services.

Mistakes That Stifle Success

Before you take any steps to forge a relationship with anyone, assess whether it’s going to help you grow your business, set goals for the relationship and establish measures to track and evaluate your success.

If you’ve already made one of these mistakes, not to worry. They’re survivable and may even lead to bigger and better opportunities. Don’t be hard on yourself. Mistakes means you’re actually pushing yourself and striving to achieve your goals, and that in and of itself is a wonderful thing.

Write A Business Plan

Writing a business plan is the first step to developing a successful and profitable business however once you have it written putting it in a drawer to yellow with age is the last thing you want to do.

Your business plan is powerful!  It will help guide your every decision and strategy.

Your business plan isn’t a commandment set in stone, it’s a plan, which means it changes as your business changes.  Your business plan is an ever evolving business tool, and one of your best assets.

Once you’ve created your business plan, it will:

* Guide your decisions based on your company mission and vision
* Help you create marketing strategies to attain your financial and sales goals
* Help you create a budget
* Outline how you’ll track money, incoming and outgoing.
* Provide lenders a financial blueprint for your business
* Gives flow chart of all aspects of your business from marketing to accounting so that all your bases are covered.
* Defines your target market.
* Documents your goals and your plans to attain them.

So knowing your business plan can help you accomplish all this is great, but how is a more important question.

Developing A Business Plan

Step #1 25% of your time, at a minimum, will be spent planning your business.  Your business plan is the foundation for this planning.  If it’s comprehensive, it will guide your decisions, outline your goals and help you create strategies to achieve them.  So, schedule a planning day each week.  If you plan to work 10-12 hours a week then three hours of that time will be planning time, schedule it in and make it happen.

Step #2 When planning make sure to refer to your vision and mission statement to make sure you’re staying on course.  If your vision is to become the single biggest online source for chocolate chip cookie recipes then your strategies and decisions should reflect that.  If you’re offered an opportunity to partner with a baking website then you’ll need to see if that partnership supports your vision.

Step #3 Use your tracking tools to keep you on target.  Your business plan will have a budget in it as well as a financial analysis and cash flow forecast.  These are items that you’ll want to maintain and use on a monthly basis so you stay on top of your cash and create optimal cash flow management policies and procedures.   However, tracking tools don’t stop there.  You’ll also want to use the tracking tools to analyze traffic to your website and so on.

Step #4 When planning, don’t forget to use your business plan to stay on track with your target audience.  You’ve defined it in your plan however, as time goes by and as you track your sales, visits and so on, you may find your target audience changes.  Update your business plan to reflect your target audience and make decisions based on that information.

Planning is one of the most important tasks an entrepreneur faces and your business plan is your most effective planning tool.  Create a thorough business plan and use it regularly to grow your business.