The New Year is here. For nearly everyone, the New Year brings hope and promise, regardless of how the previous year went for them. However, a lot of people fail to realise that this hope and promise is a jug that can only be pulled from after it has been filled. In other words, you need to put the water of rejuvenation into the jug of hope and promise if you wish to drink from it later. In business, this means working hard. It also means keeping the jug from leaking that water through tiny holes. What are these holes? Why they’re the business mistakes you make.
While you will try everything in your power to keep your resolutions in the fresh year, you need to realise that as a businessman, you need to work equally hard to avoid the most critical business mistakes. Unfortunately, many of these business mistakes are intangible, which means that they’re hard to spot and remove from your daily routine. We’re here to help you identify these business mistakes and hopefully deal with them as best as you can. Here is our list of intangible business mistakes that you must avoid in 2017.
2017 Business Mistakes #1: Hanging Everything on Your Business
Businessmen are distinct from normal people. Many of them have this tendency to live and die by their businesses. Such is the connection between their businesses and their emotional states that when something goes wrong with their business, their entire life follows suit. The problem with this kind of thinking actually manifests itself when the business grows.
It is highly likely that one of your resolutions this New Year is to make your business grow. When you start doing justice to that resolution, you better have this little problem scoped out because it will definitely start showing up. You don’t want professional victories and defeats to turn you into an emotional bipolar wreck.
Going through life on extreme highs and lows will not only take a toll on your health but also have a major impact on your relationships. You would never be able to cater to your business’s needs if you’re not a sorted and happy individual. This is why it is important to separate your business from your personal life in the New Year and failing to do so will be one of the worst business mistakes.
2017 Business Mistakes #2: Failing To Delegate and Manage
The reason why businessmen can’t separate their business lives from their personal lives is that they don’t know how to. An individual opens a business because he thinks he knows that product or that service the best. He wants to turn his knowledge into an independent income stream. It is because of the fact that he thinks he knows best that he ends up doing everything himself.
Even wiser businessmen have this tendency to say, “I’ll show you how it’s done”. The problem is that they never stop showing how it’s done. The direct result of this is that their time is taken up by mundane elements of the business that someone else could’ve done too.
Failing to delegate and manage individuals, thus, becomes one of the most critical business mistakes that need to be avoided in 2017. By delegating tasks and then managing their efforts, you would not only take the load off your shoulders but also free up time for broader components of your business such as networking, strategising, and even tactics.
2017 Business Mistakes #3: Overcomplicating Things
Most of us have this habit where we think something is good, cool, or better because it is more complicated. We think that someone who does “more difficult” tasks means that he is more intelligent or accomplished. This also causes most of us to think that more complicated or more difficult tasks will yield better results.
However, in business, this isn’t always the case. The reason for this is that more complicated means more investment of time, effort, and money. If you’re going to invest more, then you should be getting more returns too. More often than not, the extra results you get by investing more aren’t worth the extra investment you made.
Most businessmen realise this after trying something complicated in the hopes that it will yield better results. Don’t be another one of those businessmen who make such business mistakes. Instead, in the New Year, you can be the businessman who made the right decision, whether or not that meant avoiding overcomplicated things. In the majority of scenarios, you’ll find that keeping it simple is far more profitable for your business.
2017 Business Mistakes #4: Ignoring New Technologies
Businessmen can be contradictory individuals too. On the one hand, they try to overcomplicate things while, on the other, they avoid new technologies because they feel they’re too complicated. Newer technologies, in fact, make things easier for a business because every new technology is developed to solve some kind of problem.
Therefore, while adopting newer technologies may require some adaptation of operations and training for the staff, in the long run, they improve productivity and efficiency. Effectively, even if the initial tangible and intangible costs of adopting new technologies seem high, the savings garnered from the new technologies will more than make up for them by the end of the year.
As a result, in the New Year, you should ensure that when a new technology becomes available to your business, you don’t ignore it. In fact, you should try to adopt newer technologies as soon as possible.
2017 Business Mistakes #5: Not Paying Attention to Health
This is an age-old problem that has been plaguing the business community. Entrepreneurs the world over are unfit and uncaring of their health. They simply don’t value health and fitness, especially when it impinges on their desire to grow their businesses. Entrepreneurs focus so much on their business that they fail to pay attention to their health.
However, only a healthy entrepreneur would be able to truly realise the vision that he has for his business. Health problems will always interfere with the efforts of the businessman to take care of his business. After all, if the businessman is too sick to sit up, then how can he take care of his business? This is why not taking care of your health is considered to be one of the worst business mistakes you can make if you’re an entrepreneur.
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