---

With more people wanting to start businesses every year, it’s so easy to get caught up in the idea of starting your own.

With millions of new businesses being set up every single year, the statistic that 20% of businesses fail within their first year means that there’s clearly a lot of mistakes being made. The best approach is to ensure that you are aware of these big mistakes when you are a coltish entrepreneur that has their future ahead of them. Here are some of the biggies.

Ignoring Compliance

Compliance is one of those components that everybody needs to pay attention to but they do not want to pay attention to it! If you do not diligently examine the rules and regulations of conducting business in a certain manner, you may find yourself hit with sanctions, fines, or both. But luckily there are many resources that can help. For example, many data protection services can help with compliance in the IT sector. Compliance is not just something that you need to get out of the way, it’s about practising due diligence and making it a part of your company ethos.

Putting Marketing Ahead of the Customers and the Service

Because there are so many ways to promote a company these days, from search engine optimisation to word-of-mouth marketing, the reality is that you can easily find yourself sidetracked into thinking that marketing is the most important thing your business needs. In fact, the most important thing you can do is focus on customer service. This means that in order to elicit the right customer response, you’ve got to have a solid product or service that actually delivers.

Thinking That “Cheap” Is the Best Approach

Everybody needs to cut corners during those first difficult few months, but there’s a difference between working hard and working smart. You have to ensure that a business is doing right by its assets, whether this is employees, technology, or both. If you are constantly looking for ways to shave a few pennies off your outgoings, this becomes a very dangerous mindset that is hard to get out of. It’s certainly beneficial to learn how to operate cheaply, such as hiring cheaper talent but when you hire the cheaper talent you still need to look after them. Talent is an investment and if you pay peanuts you will get monkeys!

Not Keeping Things Simple

Whether you are creating your products or you are trying to start your business on the right foot, you don’t need to complicate things unnecessarily. You may have a million ideas but you’ve got to ask yourself if every idea solves the main customer problem. When it comes to products, don’t forget, the product doesn’t need to come with every single bell and whistle. As long as it solves the challenges, this is more than enough. Of course, many entrepreneurs are prone to mistakes and everybody will make mistakes, which is the best way to learn, but there are so many that can be chalked down to experience, such as these.

---