Common mistakes can kill your small business, but most of them can be easily corrected or avoided.
Today’s bad example: Expecting a new business to support you
I read the interview with a new business owner in my town. When asked why she started the business, she said she lost her job, so she started the business to pay her bills. I cringed, just reading it. Her business was starting with a big disadvantage. It closed in just a few months.
A new business will have to attract and retain enough paying customers to cover its own startup costs, pay the overhead, replenish inventory or raw materials if it’s a product-based business, and probably also make a loan payment. Don’t saddle it with paying your living expenses at first, too. Your best bet is to give a new business at least a year, and possibly two, before you draw a salary out.
Some new businesses are exceptions, generating profits right from the first. Others draw a big enough loan or financing to pay the founders. Most businesses can’t stretch revenue that far, especially new businesses and especially rural businesses.
Solutions
If you want to maximize the chances of success, either have enough money saved to live on for at least a year, or start and build your business while you are still drawing a paycheck.
Our Friend Tatsuya Nakagawa wrote a great article on How to build your business before quitting your day job at Life Hack.
Your Assignment
Together, we are going to try to help each other out of these most common, deadly mistakes. You can use real world examples, real small businesses. Write it up, take a picture, or shoot a short video. Take care not to embarrass the offenders! Key point: include suggestions on how to do it right!
New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates. Want more stories? Read our shared stories from all over.
- 3 Major factors in rural remote work: incentives, flexible workspaces, and a sense of community - June 6, 2022
- How to recruit new residents, remote workers, or remote entrepreneurs - June 2, 2022
- How cooperatives improve small town economies - May 8, 2022
- Metaverse business idea: virtual world tour guide - April 15, 2022
- Make extra money from extra workspace: co-working and 3rd workplaces in small towns - March 28, 2022
- Trade show booth design trend: hand drawn visuals - March 21, 2022
- New business sign design? Don’t use cursive script - February 14, 2022
- Way more people prefer rural than urban, new Pew Research study finds - February 1, 2022
- Top 5 Rural and small town trends 2022 - January 3, 2022
- How to start a real small small business - December 17, 2021