The Top 3 Worst Things You Can Do as a Startup

bad practices, startup, entrepreneur, time management

There are things no startup or entrepreneur should ever do. Avoiding these 3 will help you survive and flourish. Getting your foot in the door of the global business or even local one can be hard but the fewer mistakes you make, the higher are your chances. Here are the 3 Worst Things You Can Do as a Startup :

Hire Friends and Relatives

Friends are friends, but once it comes to business you should deeply rethink your idea of hiring some. Among the main reasons you must avoid making your friends/ family members are the facts that it is all personal all the time.

They often tend to picture themselves as privileged individuals, insiders, and overly qualified, just because they are part of your inner circle. It is all fun and amazing, as long as you respond to their demands.

Once you realize a friend or family member is in fact slacking, all your feedback and comments can and will be met with hostility and/or excuses. Not only there are boundary issues and conflicts of interest, but hiring a relative can, in fact, affect the rest of the team of nonrelatives.

This will right away mean you do not consider your employees equal, will separate the employees in groups and overall influence the communication and performance. Not to mention there will be no team spirit. Of course, there are chances this will not happen with you. Anyhow, before you consider hiring a relative, make sure you clear all out.

Improve On Your Management

Sell Cheaper

One more worst advice is you need to sell cheaper. An important attitude you must adopt is positivity. Do not think of your product or idea as cheaper or of lesser quality. Respect your own business if you wish the others to respect it.

Research the market for similar products/services, create an improved advertising strategy and show to the rest why they should choose you. It is not that much a contest of prices as much as it is a race for who offers the best deal in terms of quality and bonuses.

Further reading: Your Small Business’ Global Expansion Awaits! Are You Prepared?

All Management is Micromanagement

You need to trust your team. Okay, yes you do need to trust your team, but your team needs to trust you as well. When it comes to wages, work hours, workloads, your best friend is the perfect organization and management.

Without those, any team will feel betrayed, unsatisfied, and they will not be engaged in their work. Keeping your employees engaged and the work environment just as much profession as friendly is utterly important.

If you do not know how to lead, inspire, and control your team at the same time, you will face issues beyond your comprehension. Leading even the smallest team will require you to create an employee friendly policy and rules, that will not rob them of their sanity.

Further reading: Did You Know This Are the 5 Best Ways to Reduce the Stress for Your Employees?

You must not play favorites, but treat everyone equally and demand the same performance. Rewarding inappropriate attitude towards work is not what you want to show to your employees. If you allow Johnny P. to keep playing Angry Birds on company time and force others to pick up his slack, it will come back and bite you.

You will lose the productive people of your team and lower the performance of everyone. Improve on your management and leadership technique if you wish your business to run smoothly. You could use numerous way to both control the work process and in the mean time lead your team.

A great way to improve your management and organization is using time tracking software. Not only you will have no administrative and accounting problems, but you will monitor the work process without hovering over everyone’s shoulders.

Further reading: Improve On Your Management

You don’t need SEO and SMM

The truth is the internet is flooded with unattended Social Media pages, websites and similar. Which makes them useless. Today the internet is all about chances. Getting listed, mentioned, known, social, and vocal is important for your more than you could imagine.

You can be a small souvenir shop downtown, but with a page of your own, a social media profile, and the magic of building your online brand, you can grow bigger. Investments, growth, reputation, and visibility all depend on your branding strategy.

Further reading: Which Are the 7 Most Successful Online Advertising Strategies ?
The Top 5 SEO Tricks To Help You Grow Your Small Business
The Key Features Investors Will Look For In Every Startup