Business Mistakes

[Rover]

Most of us have made business mistakes. I would like to start a thread on business mistakes people have made and hopefully we can all learn from each other.

Nearly every entrepreneur has a story about some problem that they learned from.

I have personally made the mistake of not alway getting agreements in writing, especially when I felt the people involved were trustworthy. Other people I know have had subcontractors that steal their clients because the subcontractor agreement did not address this issue. In other words , what are some of the basic protocols, in business, to protect you and keep you from getting into trouble.

[LukeMoulton]

These aren't mistakes but things I've learnt from my mistakes as both business owner and employee:

Never go into business with family or friends.
Get everything in writing.
Trust but verify.
You can't do it all.
Action beats perfection.
Don't take things too personally.
Surround yourself with good people.

[Clinton]

Nice tips, Luke, couldn't have put it better myself.

I'd also add:
Cashflow is king.
Backup, backup, backup

As far as mistakes are concerned, I know this doesn't help, but I've made so many I can't narrow down the most memorable ones (actually, I try to forget I made them )

[Kay]

I agree about cash flow. Nothing gets me up on my soap box faster than people who don't understand cash flow.

As for mistakes. Hmm, perhaps letting my competitors take the lead by not being an early adopter of new technology. For example, not blogging until much later than everyone else, not using Twitter properly (and now one of my competitors is using my domain name as his Twitter name), and I still don't even have a FaceBook account. Is that enough mistakes for you?

[Andy]

Hi Rover,

This isn't exactly what you wanted but I never let that stop me before...

Rather than getting specific, I'll point out some of my tendencies that have lead to major mistakes.

Panic - often due to a sudden, stressful situation. Loss of income comes to mind. I've taken on projects, accepted jobs and even started a new career due to panic.

Laziness - I can't count the number of times I've opted for some shortcut to "save myself some work". Yeah. Right.

Neglecting to ask - be it from laziness or fear of what someone might think, I've too often acted on too little information. Asking one more question might have saved me countless hours and dollars.

Now back to the subject of mistakes, I remember two specific pearls of wisdom on this subject I'd like to pass along.

One was from an old man I'd never met before. I was working at a job I didn't like in a field I hated and not having one of my better days. Even worse I kept screwing up everything. I can handle making a mistake but I do not like repeating it.

Well, the old fellow took me aside and said, "Son, don't worry about making mistakes. If you haven't made any mistakes it's because you haven't done anything worthwhile."

The second pearl was from my uncle when I graduated from High School. He said, "Most people will tell you to learn from your mistakes, I say learn from your successes. Your mistakes will show you what you did wrong. Your successes will show you how to do something right."

Okay one more tendency... I tend to forget good stuff like that.

Andy

[Clinton]

"I sometimes lie awake at night thinking, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then I hear a little voice telling me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'"
- Charlie Brown

[BritishARMY]

Great posts. I'm a newbie so I haven't made lots of big mistakes yet, although I have made plenty of smaller ones. Biggest will be not taking action. I can spend ages going over things, writing them down, thinking when in reality I need to just DO that thing and get it done. And when I do it, it doesn't take long at. Other thing is jumping into too many things at once.

I sure I'll hit many potholes on my road to riches, I have certainly learnt quite a bit about SEO from trial and error.

[albotek]

Never go into business with family or friends.
Get everything in writing.

I entered into a business agreement, on the shake of the hand, with a friend and neighbor.

The biggest mistake of my life.

David

[JJMcClure]

The 'don't involve money with people you want to stay friendly with' is a rule I've observed from the very beginning and the few times I've broken it have only served to remind me why I thought that way in the first place. It's definitely a mistake to do it.

Allowing yourself to be anything less than professional with clients is another big mistake (not one I've ever made but I see people doing it and people have done it with me).

The 'short cut' one is one I've made about a billion times, there just isn't a quick way to do things, I almost always end up doing it the long way anyway, in fact the biggest mistakes I make are usually to do with how long I spend doing things. Too long usually.

I once heard a good quote about making mistakes which went along these lines - "make mistakes, making mistakes is a good thing if you learn from them but don't make the same mistake twice cos that's stupid'. Guess I'm stupid.