Entrepreneurial Failure – 22 Things You Can Do To Fail Miserably
photo credit: markwgallagher
Do you want to fail miserable as an entrepreneur? Well in this post I will share with you 22 things you can do if you want to fail miserable as an entrepreneur. Follow these steps I can almost guarantee you will be a big failure.
1.Neglect cash flow and cashflow management. Don’t even create an Excel spreadsheet to show your daily, weekly and monthy expected cash inflows and outflows. Who cares about cash and the timing of those flows anyway as long you have profits right?
2. Forget about marketing and personal selling. Don’t even bother to create a marketing plan. Who needs to do all of this work. If you build it they will just come right?
3.Don’t bother to setup and document systems for your business. Run it by the seat of your pants. Who needs all of these structures?
4. Listen to no one. Don’t seek advice from those who have gone before you. Just go it on your own. You are smarter than everyone else anyway. Or even better, pretend you are listening to them and then do your own thing.
5. Don’t build your financal intelligence. Don’t learn about financial ratios that affect your business. All that matters is that you are making some money.
6. Spend no time talking to your customers. Or if you do talk to them don’t ask them questions about the business. Just shoot the breeze all of the time.
7. For goodness sake don’t spend time analyzing the metrics of your business. Who needs to know how many new customers are coming in and where they are coming from anyway? You don’t need to know why they chose you instead of your competitor. Stuff like that is useless.
8. Don’t write the vision plan for your business. Just work it everyday like a job. A business is just a glorified job right?
9. Don’t focus on a particular niche. Try to do it all even if you don’t have the budget for it. Be all things to all people.
10. Make sure you think of the glass as half-empty all the time. Don’t be tricked by those who think optimistically and implement realistic plans. You want to be as negative as possible so if something positive does happen in your business then great. At least if you don’t expect great things you won’t be disappointed.
11. Neglect your customers and focus only on the mechanics of your business. Your customers are a nuisance anyway. They are always asking for something different. Can’t be just be satisfied with what you give them?
12. Work in the business but don’t spend time working on the business. It is the day to day that matters anyway, forget building the business for the long-term.
13. Do not waste your money on educating yourself and learning more about your industry and your business in general. Who needs the extra expenses? You already know everything you need to know about your business. What worked in the past will continue to work. All this talk about change is just that, talk.
14. Don’t bother to work on your leadership skill and your sales skills. Who needs the headache? You are good just like you are. Anyway, who wants to a bunch of people following you.
15. Don’t change with the times and please don’t anticipate change and try to get ahead of it. This takes too much time.
16.Don’t spend time growing your employees. If they want to grow they have to do it on their own. That is not your problem.
17.Don’t delegate. Try to do everything yourself. You are a one-person show anyway. Who needs other people?
18.Don’t take the 80/20 rule seriously in terms of your work. Don’t even spend time determining what the 20% activitives are in your business that brings you 80% of the results. What’s the use of that anyway?
19. Don’t take the 80/20 rule seriously in terms of your customers. Treat them all exactly the same even though about 20% of them provide about 80% of your profits. Don’t even identify these people.
20. Isolate yourself. Who needs to network with others who are in the same line of business or others who can provide critical services.
21. Don’t read. Spend all of your time working on your business and don’t bother learning new material. If you do read, only read about your industry, don’t bother expanding yourself to see if something in other industry can help you.
22. Forget being creative. That is for the artsy types. Don’t even learn anything about creative problem solving.
Ok. I know you know that I am being sarcastic. I don’t want you to think about failing as an entrepreneur but I do want you to take these things seriously. Obviously you want to do the opposite of what is suggested here. Take a good look at this list. If you are an entrepreneur, you may be doing some of these things. If you are, you may want to make a change. If you have not started on your entrepreneurial journey yet, please look at these items and avoid them like the plague. On Wednesday I will give you another batch of these items. Happy entrepreneuring.
Suggested Additional Resources
Although you were being sarcastic it forced me to think postively.
1. Keep up with your cash flow because you may need to adjust how you handle your money
2. Anyone in business for themselves must first consider the task at hand by making a plan, then go foward.
3. The better the the foundation the more secure/discipline and structure help you to stay organized.
4. Wisdom can be found in good counsel and advisement
5. Know what is going on in your area of business/ the latest trends/ keeping up helps you keep a competitive edge.
6.Finding out what your customers are thinking will tell what they need.
7.Monitoring customer preference and customer flow equals cash for your business.
8.Your business should always have a direction/ a vision plan can give direction / it is a part of who you are and you need direction.
9.You can not do it all well/ so focus in on the things you do best, for your business.
10. The way you think is the way things will go. Don’t think negatively
11. Customers drive your business without them there would be no one to service. They are an extreme necessity.
12. You must look at the bigger picture, be sure to plan for the future.
13. You can never know enough, things are always changing. Education is key
14. When you own a business you automatically become a leader and you need to constantly work on these skills.
15. You will be left behind if you do not keep up with the latest trends. Your business will suffer.
16. Strengthen the skills of those that work for you helps to grow your business.
17. Delegation will help you not to burn out. Please don’t do it all, you can not.
18. Overworking in the wrong area will also burn you out optimize your 20% activities.
19. Taking care of those who support you is appreciated and will better ensure that they will stay in business with you.
20.Alone time is good for review and reflection only,every other time you need to know what others are thinking and doing.
21. You always need to know what is going on in your field and reading about is one way to glean this information.
22. Creativity allows you to be different and unique so please think outside the box.