MBA1006 5 Common Mistakes When Starting Your First Business

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Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show Business lessons. You can't afford to miss every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the hundred dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and in today's lesson you will learn the five common mistakes made when starting your first business. You're going to learn these common mistakes so you can completely avoid them. If you're in the middle of starting your first business right now, you might recognize some of these mistakes. I'm going to show you how to course correct, how to make sure you don't keep doing this mistake, how how to do the alternate, how to do the opposite of this mistake. Let me flat out say that every single one of these mistakes I made, that's how common they are. I hit five for five. And the problem with these mistakes is that every single one of them is business ending. It will end your business if you continue to make this mistake. So you simply can't afford to just ignore these or hope that you can just kind of hustle your way through it. No, you cannot continue to make these mistakes and I'm gonna show you how. In today's lesson so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I wanna start off by saying that every single one of these common mistakes, all five of them, are so common because education, having a job in the workforce, even being a high flying manager, just does not prepare you for these challenges. They just get looked over because we simply are not aware of them. Every single one of these mistakes are tied into entrepreneurial skills a lot of us don't think we need. When we get started, we don't even know that they exist. Unless of course, you listen to this episode. Right? So let's get started with common mistake number one when starting your first business, and that's self management. Let me explain. When you start a business, let's say, for example, you quit your job on Friday and you're starting your own business. You're gonna start building your own business on Monday. Come Monday morning, your life is completely different. On Friday, when you walked into the office, you knew exactly what you had to do. Because at some point in your career, at that job, somebody told you you were prescribed a job description. They told you what your responsibilities are, they told you what your outcomes are. And if you were lucky, your boss gave you the freedom to kind of figure your way out and make those outcomes happen. Come Monday morning, you are the boss. No one is gonna tell you to do anything. In fact, no one's gonna tell you get out of bed. You could stay in bed all day Monday and there would be no immediate consequence. Unlike when you're in a job where they would call you up and be like, hey, where are you at, man? What happened? Or where are you at, sister? You get it? The point is, you need to learn a lot of self management. You have to be your own boss. You have to tell yourself what you need to do every single day. This was the biggest challenge I kind of had when I first got started, my first couple months. Especially because I came from education, I was a teacher. And as a teacher, everything was really spelled out for me. I knew exactly what I was teaching to, what students, in what room, which book I'll be using, what exam they'll be taking. All that stuff was just given to me. And in some way, if you came from a job, this is exactly what you were given as well, in some form. You were given an office, you were given business cards, you were given a timetable, when to come to work, when to leave work, you were given a whole infrastructure around your job, and then you were told what to do in your job and you just implemented. Now I'm not trying to downplay your old career, but I want to emphasize the fact that now that you're building your own business and working for your business, you also now have to build the infrastructure around the business that you were given before. You have to figure out where you're going to work your actual office, you have to figure out your business cards, you have to figure out what, what time you're gonna start work and end work, what days are gonna be off. And you're gonna have to hold yourself accountable. So the most common mistake, and this is why it's number one, is self management. You have to be on top of yourself, you have to be your own boss, you have to prescribe yourself your own work hours, what you're gonna work on that day, your two do's for the day, who's gonna come up with that? You are. What your goals are for that week, that month, that quarter, not only do you have to meet deadlines, you have to create the deadline, right? So, so all that is under the umbrella of self management. My advice to you to overcome this challenge, to overcome this mistake is you sort of have to have a split personality. You have to be a CEO at times and then you have to be an employee at times. You have to spend time planning what you're going to do for the week, when you're going to do it, the deadlines, all that kind of stuff. And then you have to spend time actually doing that stuff. I learned this concept from a friend of mine, Chase Reeves. You can google him, great guy, great teacher. And he had this concept that he shared with me called worker bee mode and CEO mode. And basically you have to prescribe to your worker be self what to do that coming week, that coming month. You have to do all the planning, all the deadlines, all the rules, all the regulations, all that kind of stuff. And then when it's time to implement, you have to go into worker bee mode and you have to just get to work and implement and no question what you planned before, you can't go back and forth because that's a lot of time wasted. So get serious about your self management. All right? Common mistake number two, not creating a minimal viable product. Many of us, when we think about starting a business or being an entrepreneur or whatever, we think of business in terms of the big businesses that we know in our head. We think of Walmart, we think of Pizza Hut, we think of Amazon or Apple, but that's where those companies are now, that's not where they started. You need to get started with what's called a minimal viable product, what's the absolute minimum you can offer the world where you can actually get money in exchange for value? This is a very hard exercise for a lot of beginners to do because it's not sexy, it's not, you know, very shiny. Whatever it is, whether we're creating a course or a software, we want it to be amazing from day one. So the fact of the matter is, that's not smart. You need to start with the absolute minimum version of whatever you want to build. Version beta, not even version one. When you see the businesses that you admire today, those are like version 89, right? It's nowhere near version one. So if you're a piano lover and you want to become the number one online piano school, what you shouldn't do, and this is the biggest mistake, is if you. They think they have to launch with a website that competes with something like Udemy. Instead of actually having a course on Udemy that's a minimal viable product, you need to make sure that people actually want to learn the piano at a certain price point and want to learn from you. So instead of trying to build a whole infrastructure and a big website and all that kind of stuff, just record the lessons with your iPhone or whatever you have and put them up on a platform that already exists. Once you start making some money and you have a proof of concept, and now you're like, okay, people actually want to learn the piano from me, or they like my style of teaching, you can take it to the next level. What other courses could I teach? Can I start a blog? You get the point. Start minimum. Because there's a good chance that what you launch is not what people want. And you don't want to invest too much money. You don't want to spend a lot of money in the beginning. You want to spend the least amount of money while you're trying to figure out what's the perfect offering for my customers. So avoid not having an MVP like the plague. You got to make sure you have a minimal viable product when you get started. Don't worry about looking amazing. You'll get there. Have some patience. All right, mistake number three. And this kind of ties into mistake number two. But it's kind of separate challenge, separate mistake, and that's delaying launch or delaying opening for business. Many of us just take forever to. To actually say, yes, I have something for sale. Now, some people delay their launch by months, even years. And there's a good reason, because many of us don't believe that we failed. If we don't launch, it's safe. If I don't launch, then there's no.

Chance of me flopping.

But guess what? You failed because you have no business. You haven't launched the business. It doesn't exist. No one can buy anything from you. That means you're not in business. That's the worst failure. Or rather you just launch six businesses in six months to make sure that you get the right business rather than not launch any businesses in six months. And mistake three can really be avoided if you think in minimal viable terms. If you think about, hey, I don't need to be this great thing and it's okay if it's not perfect, I'm going to, you know, iterate, I'm going to pivot, I'm going to change, I'm going to improve as I launch this business and get feedback from my customers. This will kind of subdue the fear of launching. A lot of us are scared of failing, scared of putting it out in the world and nothing happens. Scared of telling our family and friends, hey, my business is open, but it's not doing so well. That's not failure. That's just the process you have to learn. You have to figure out what works and what doesn't, and that's how you improve. So don't fall into this trap of delaying and delaying and what I call playing business instead of actually doing business. Get that business out there. All right? Common mistake number four, overspending. This is very, very common in the tech world where either they get a huge loan or some sort of funding or some venture capital, and you know what happens? They just spend it all on things that don't really matter, that don't really contribute to the business or, or the bottom line. It doesn't generate sales. It doesn't, you know, improve the product or the team. I'm talking about spending tons of money on fancy offices and free lunches and ping pong tables. And you get the point. Some of us want to live the lifestyle of an entrepreneur and we want to paint this picture as soon as possible. And that causes us to overspend. Do not overspend. You need to be super frugal when you start a business. Any spending that you do in your business needs to go through a question which I call a filter. Will this money help me get more sales? Whether you're improving the product, whether you're increasing marketing efforts, whether you're hiring talent that will generate more sales, a salesforce. In the beginning, you need to make more sales, you need to improve your product. You gotta make sure that you're catering to the right audience. This is where all your money should be spent, not on things that have no direct impact on your business. So be careful at the start of overspending.

Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter?

Right, and the best part, they accept Discover.

Accept Discover in a little place like this?

I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh, yeah, huh? Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on, baby, get with the times.

Right, so we shouldn't get the parachute pants.

These are making a comeback, I think.

Discover is accepted at 99% of places.

That take credit cards nationwide, based on.

The February 2025 Nielsen report.

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All right, let's jump into common mistake number five when starting your first business, and this one's a biggie, especially for creatives. And that mistake is not focusing on sales. When you start your business, your whole focus should be will this business be sustainable? And how will you know that? If you make enough money, you need to make enough money to obviously cover your expenses and make enough money for you to live right, so you can actually make this worth your while. And how is that going to happen? Not by magic, by sales. Right? You got to make sure that you're making enough sales. But often, many people, when they get started, especially the first business, they don't realize the importance of how they have to focus on sales. They got to make sure they make more and more sales every. Every day, every week, every month. Sales should be the first thing on their mind every morning because you got to get your business to a point where it's viable. Now, many people, especially, like I said, creatives, they love to create their work. And this doesn't necessarily mean a painter or a sculptor. It could be somebody who is a creative person that creates courses or writes books. And they think if they create great work, people will buy. That may be true, but they're missing one piece of that puzzle. If you create great work, people will buy. If they know about it, they need to know about it. You need to market to them. You just sell to them. They need to understand why they need your product or service. You need to find the right people. Nothing is going to happen automatically. You have to do this yourself. You have to find these people, you have to sell to them. You have to convince them that your product or service is great for them. It's not going to happen by itself. Here's a little homework. Go on Google and look up your favorite business and try to find out how much money they spend on marketing every year and compare that to how much money, how much revenue they make every year. You will be shocked. You'll be like, whoa, they spent about half the money they made on marketing. Yeah. And guess what? They have great products. That company that you admire probably has a great product or service. They wouldn't be in the game if they didn't. Those people that don't get weeded out quickly. But sales and marketing and advertising, all this stuff is necessary in business. You have to do it in order to generate enough sales. So, so don't lose sight of that, don't lose focus of that, especially at the start. All right, let's recap. What are the top five mistakes people make when they start their first business? Number one, a lack of self management. Not understanding that you have to be the boss and be the person that does the work, especially at the start. Number two, not having a minimal viable product. Not thinking in minimal viable terms. Number three, delaying launch of your business or the opening of your business. Procrastinating, worrying about failure. Number four, overspending. And number five, not focusing on sales. Alright, that wraps up today's lesson. I hope you found it useful, you enjoyed it. If you did, let me know in an itunes rating and review I would love to hear from you. We read every single review. And remember, everybody who leaves us an itunes rating and review enters our weekly random draw to win a lifetime membership to one of our courses. This month we're giving away easy course, our 30 day course on how to build an online course. It's a $500 course that you can check out for yourself over at easycourse co. But we're giving it away to somebody who's left us on itunes rating and review. Once you leave us a review, you enter the draw for every week until you win. It's our way to say thank you for leaving us an itunes rating and review. Alright, before I go, I want to leave you with this. I point out these mistakes because they're so easy to do. They're so easy to commit. And again, I did every single one of these. And basically, this lesson is exactly what I would say if I can go back in time and tell my former self, right? I would sit myself down and say the exact same thing that I just went over. So if you're starting your first business, take this seriously. It can not only save your business, but it may just save your entrepreneurial career. Many people quit being an entrepreneur because they have too many failures. They'll start one business and one of these mistakes will make them fail. And in the next business, another mistake will make them fail.

Get the point?

Take this seriously, take it a heart, and thank me later. All right, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode, which is Free Ride Friday. I'll check you then. Take care. Of.

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