Top 3 Mistakes Business Owners Make- Is This You?

First-time entrepreneurs don’t always get everything right and make mistakes. Matt goes into some detail about these mistakes and helps you not make them if you are just starting out as an entrepreneur.

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video: 

3 mistakes almost every first-time entrepreneur will make. No. 1 is not seeking out advice because you don’t have to do it alone, the world has changed. No. 2 poor financial planning. You have to have accurate estimates of startup costs and investments before you get started. And No. 3 is not having the right team or not asking for help in building a team.

Matt’s Review:

Okay, so 3 mistakes entrepreneurs make. One is not asking for advice. I would agree. I think there are some things you have to figure out on your own but there’s definitely a lot of things you can ask for advice and help on. And that will prevent you from making expensive mistakes. The second thing that she talked about was financial planning. And again I think it – you don’t have to go super detailed, you know, multi-column multi-row spreadsheet to really dive into your startup expenses, depends on the complexity of the business you’re launching, but you should have a general idea how much is it gonna cost to run each month. How long is it gonna take you to break even? How long is it gonna take you to be able to be making enough of a profit to pay yourself and maybe replace the salary that you quit your job to do to launch the business? Those kinds of things you should have a pretty good idea of the numbers, otherwise, it may turn out that the business is gonna take $100,000 to get going and you only have 25,000. And so you’re gonna spend 25,000 and find out you don’t have nearly enough to keep it going, $25,000 investment is lost and you didn’t get the business you wanted. Whereas maybe there’s a different business you could have started that only would have taken $5,000 to start and with your $25,000 you have plenty of cushion. So definitely financial planning, doing those projections is super important. And then working with a good team. That sounds a lot like tip No. 1 which is get good advice and work with people who know what they’re doing. So I agree with it the first time. I agree with it the third time she brought it up. I definitely think working with people who can help you avoid mistakes and make good decisions and get to where you wanna go faster is going to pay off in the long run.