What you should avoid as a small business owner

The attrition rate in the business world is high. For every 10 startups, nine will fail. The statistics should not prove a deterrent for you joining the business world. Apart from having no cap on the amount of money you can make, there are no fixed office hours. In a nutshell, be ready for marketing and strategy meetings every day for the foreseeable future.

Which leads us to the next question, how do you make it? For starters, your business needs to have an online presence. This is because almost three hours of an average adult are spent online. You should join social media networks and have a website with high-quality images and graphics to boost your online presence. Fairly priced products and a user-friendly website will give you a good review on credible sites.

Here are a few more tips to put you on the road to success:

Product

It doesn’t matter how good your advertising for your website is. What ultimately counts is your product. Your product should be able to solve a problem experienced by consumers. Don’t be part of the 42% of startups that fail because of making products consumers don’t need. Its quality shouldn’t be inferior to other products on the market.

To further endear your product to the market, it shouldn’t be too expensive. On the other hand, you shouldn’t eat into your profit margins heavily to please consumers.

If your product matches this criterion, you aren’t far off from success.

Trends

To increase longevity in the entrepreneurial world, you should keenly study market trends. Market trends will indicate when you should increase prices of your products. When to expand your company and when to reduce production?

Keeping yourself up to date with ongoing market trends gives you an idea on when to increase your products’ prices. (Source)

It doesn’t matter how good your product is, failure to look at this trends will kill your company. Despite being the leader don’t overlook items you may classify as “boring stuff”. This may prove to be the difference between you surviving or going bust.

Improvements

You should be keen on consumer reviews of your product. The information will give you an opportunity to improve on your products. Constant improvements will keep you ahead of the competition.

For example, consumers may ask for you to create a website for your business. A web designer may be too expensive for you. Look for a review of website builders and choose the most appropriate. Costs for this won’t leave a gaping hole in your pocket. How rapid you make the improvements is vital to your business’ survival.

Team

Any startup needs to have a team ready to run through a brick wall for it. Why should yours be any different? When choosing employees to join your team is careful in your selection. Don’t look at the academic qualifications only. Look at the person’s character and background.

A look into these qualities will give you an insight into how they would fit in your startup. Candidates that don’t match the ambition of the company shouldn’t be selected.

To be the 10% success in the entrepreneurial world you should carefully consider these factors.

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DISCLAIMER: This article expresses my own ideas and opinions. Any information I have shared are from sources that I believe to be reliable and accurate. I did not receive any financial compensation in writing this post, nor do I own any shares in any company I’ve mentioned. I encourage any reader to do their own diligent research first before making any investment decisions.