4 Common Mistakes to Avoid in Business Most young entrepreneurs make the same mistakes, and usually with the same consequences.
By Timothy Sykes Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
One of my main ventures is in penny stock trading. But, I've been running various businesses for years. When I wrote an article on the >greatest stock mistake people can make, I realized you can apply those same rules to the world of business.
I see young entrepreneurs making these four mistakes all the time. But, what are those four mistakes you should avoid?
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Getting cocky.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "Pride always comes before the fall"?
This is what getting cocky is. There are 27 million working-age Americans starting their own businesses according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Many of them dropped out or were laid off by Fortune 500 companies.
When people get cocky, they fail to look at the little things that make a business work. They get sloppy.
Take Jeffrey Hayzlett as an example. He always talked about how even as Chief Marketing Officer of Kodak he still cleaned the carpets himself. That's just one way to avoid becoming hypnotized by your own awesomeness.
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Celebrating before victory
In business, it's easy to get carried away when things are moving so quickly. But, for me it's like celebrating an increase in your stocks before you've taken your money out of the market.
One example I read about recently was Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi. In 2015, it sold 72 million smartphones at its peak in China and celebrated. But, that celebrating didn't last long. It lost 20 percent of its global share of the smartphone market the next year because they had no contingency for expanding out of their home market of China.
Whenever you succeed, you should always be anticipating the challenges ahead. New ground always delivers new challenges. Look forward not back.
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Never quit
Most of the big names you know about today were not overnight success stories. It's vital that you never quit even if you feel like doing so.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is one example of this. Jeff actually never turned a profit with Amazon for nine years. Now imagine if he'd quit. He would never become one of the >richest people in the world. Just because your business isn't making money now doesn't mean it won't later.
Never quit.
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Underestimating the length of the journey
This is the lesson I believe is the most important one. We've looked at so many examples of companies that weren't successful immediately. Take FedEx, Amazon, and Microsoft. All big companies that didn't become the behemoths they are within a few months.
ESPN is another example. They started in 1978. They endured a turbulent time until they were finally able to start turning a profit in the middle of the 1980s. Today they're one of the biggest sports channels in the world.
You must be in this for the long haul.
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These are the four mistakes I believe most young entrepreneurs make. Know them, understand them, and get them out of your system so that you can be well on your way to the path to success as a business owner.
