They say that most businesses fail in the first year of operation. As much as a commitment as having a child, getting married, or dealing with the death and debt of a loved one, a business – your business – can be destroyed 10 different ways if you only do a few of these dangerous business practices. by the way, this article was originally to be titled: Keeping your Eye on the Ball and Your Business
And don’t be surprised if you find yourself doing them. We all do it and it is our own self vigilance and a system of checks and balance that prevents it.
- Procrastination: This is a no brainer, procrastinating, putting things off, and being downright lazy will eat up resources and anger more people short of willful sabotage. In fact, as a business owner you should never let any customer, project, or service to be delayed by procrastination. When I want to put something off, I ask myself 2 questions. Failure to answer either one means I need to do it right away.
- a.) Will my inaction harm or delay another?
- b.) Why am I putting this off?
- Interference: Now this is directly related to procrastination and laziness. Interference is the act of not doing your own job, but passing off basic tasks from looking up customer records to getting the scissors to others in your business. Not only does this breed resentment as employees and outsiders will view you not as the all powerful business owner, but as the lazy do-nothing that is holding back work. Doing basic tasks yourself, without interfering with the work of other employees, will breed respect and the support of your employees. And most importantly, don’t interfere with people while they do the following tasks.
- Collecting payments / billing operations
- Sales, Customer Relations and new customer relations
- Account Processing
- Record Keeping
- Accounting
- Cleaning up the office (ever forget about the leaking garbage bag? I’ve seen it –on a white carpet too! )
- and finally,Service
- Miss-Assigning Tasks: A big issue in many businesses is taking qualified and specialized individuals and placing them on tasks that is beyond their abilities or beneath them. For example, don’t task the operation of your office to someone with no office experience. While that should never happen, more often it does. It’s a great insult to the employee you burn and you more often get a less than optimal end result. If you hire a graphic artist, make sure they are doing tasks related to that. If you hire a phone secretary, make sure she’s doing that. If you hire a field sales person, make sure they aren’t sitting in the office doing nothing.
- Money over Service: Once a business gets into a good rut, it’s easy to see greenbacks flying in and having money to spend. However, you can’t forget the customer. If you do, by delaying service, not processing the work fast enough, or even cutting corners to increase your profit margin, you run the risk of angering your customers. Angering your customers leads to bad reviews, bad reputation, demands for refunds, consumer complaints, and even lawsuits. At the end of the day, it is the Business owner who is ultimately responsible for each and every last action of their employees.
- Forgetting Personal Responsibility: I’ve been into businesses where the owner doesn’t foster any kind of personal responsibility among the employees. As a result, the employees resent the bosses and owners but also perform worse than they should. Instead of putting an effort into a job, they half-ass it and let piss-poor service dominate. In service businesses, I’ve seen disillusioned employees, not caring about their work because the owner didn’t take the time to care for them, blow off customers and send a bill. I’ve been to super markets where disillusioned employees allow unsanitary and dangerous conditions persist because they don’t care and because the owners stopped holding the employees responsible for their inaction or bad actions without rewarding the good actions they do.
- Assumptions: Never assume anything. Assumptions will always be more dangerous than rumors, lawyers, and sabotaging employees. Why? Because an assumption will make you prepare and do the wrong things. I rule myself with a motto, it may be pessimistic, but it’s real.
Prepare for the Worst, Hope for the Best, and Stand Ready.
There is nothing wrong with making an assumption so long as you are prepared for the worst case scenarios and you are ready to deal with it. Assumptions are only destructive if you take an unacceptable risk without first being ready. All to often, a business will jump into something without thinking.
- Paying the Business: New businesses don’t start making money off the bat. In fact, it takes time, sweat, blood, and tears. But all to often, homeowners will throw everything they have into a business only to loose control of the business and allow chaos to tear it to bits. They’ll keeping paying more and more into it, with no return. Suddenly, they can’t pay the owner can’t pay his own home bills, then the small office bills, and finally the big ticket business bills like payroll and rent.
This is a mistake made many owners. They reach a point where they can no longer take a paycheck from the business. Let me tell you this, Let me promise you this.
If you can’t take a paycheck for yourself, then you can’t run a business.
Immediately separate your finances from your business and cut costs to bare essentials only. Don’t buy something unless you absolutely need it. Don’t hire someone unless you can afford them. Drop services and bills you don’ use often. - Giving Up Control: Control and the assumption of power is important to any business. All too often I’ll see a hard nosed owner cave without second thought to their landlord – even if the landlord is in the wrong. Or I’ll catch an owner getting too close to an employee and giving that individual too much power. Or worse, a business owner growing lazy and allowing their controls over the company to slide.
- Beware of the Salesmen – Especially the Phone Company Ones: Salesmen will never leave your business alone. Every day I get calls from morons and idiots trying to sell me useless services. Often they won’t understand your business plan and model and goals, as a result they will try to sweet talk and flirt with business owners to get them to buy. They’ll also bring in additional sales reps to put extra pressure on the owner to cave. Phone company yellow book sales people are among the worst, I feel. They sell a service, with no promise of results, to you at a price that is outrageous. Not to mention they cut you out of your advertising designing and often will run your ad without consent and with their own assumptions of what you offer. If a salesmen shows up at your business and they don’t work for you, throw’em out on their ass.
- Immaturity
