business mistakesThis is a continuation of our series on building a successful online business. To that end, I’m working on sharing some good idea regarding business, including this one: these are some business mistakes that other people tend to make and that you can avoid if you are really careful. While certainly not a comprehensive list, it’s a good start:

Insisting On “Experienced Workers.”

Check out the want ads and you’ll see one ad after another asking for experienced employees only. The thing is, by insisting that you’ll only hire those with experience, you run two risks. First and foremost, you run the risk of ending up with someone else’s rejects. These people may not be good employees if they were let go by the other company. It take a lot more effort then to look into your employees and make sure they really are good.
The second issues is that you lose out on the chance to hire people who are new to the business and really eager to please – these people often work much harder to help their employers and will often work for much less than an experienced employee. Yes, you may have to train them but really, you’ll have to train anyone you hire in how your company works.

Pretending That Your Business is a Democracy

You want to take advice and suggestions from your employees, however many you happen to have. However, one of the most common business mistakes you can make is to pretend that your business is a democracy. Ultimately, your employees are just that – employees. They work for a paycheck and if your company goes belly up, they’ll go find something else. However, you’ll be the one left holding the bag. So be sure to remember that the old saying, “the buck stops here” is really accurate when it comes to running your own business.

Not Paying Yourself a Salary

While it’s nice for your company to have some money on the balance sheets, ultimately, it’s your company and you need to make sure that you continue to pay yourself a decent salary. Otherwise, you could end up with the possibility of a hostile takeover (if you don’t own all the stock in your company) and you could run into problems later on if you do want to take cash out of your company.

Sweating the Details

If your company is big enough to have employees, then it’s big enough for you to give those employees a modicum of trust. So don’t sweat all the details – your job is to be like the captain, guiding the ship of your startup business overall rather than worrying about how the secretary does her typing jobs.

Being Inflexible

Finally, starting a successful business means not insisting on rigidity. Your customers will often help you decide what your products and or services need to be about and if you are too rigid to listen to them, you’ll find that your competitors will be happy to listen to them because they don’t make the same business mistakes that you do.