041Business columnist Gerald Pietersen talks about the blindspots in business and how avoiding some and embracing others can make you a better entrepreneur.
In life we are never exempted from experiencing hardships and unfortunate situations. In business, even more so.
The challenge in business is a bit more difficult to overcome as one would put not just your heart and soul, but also your finances into it.
It is against this background that it is important to be mindful of pitfalls that exist in starting and managing a business.
It is unfortunate that some pitfalls cannot be avoided, so, therefore, it is important to set your mind to learning from them.
Allow me to encourage you with some you can avoid, and the ones to learn from.
These are the pitfalls that you should avoid as far as possible
Partnership
A partnership is really good to start a business and to collectively grow if the mindset and objectives are clear from the start. Partnerships, however, require a level of compromise and negotiation, which may divert you from your original intent, leading you to reduce your engagement and commitment to the bigger picture.
Focusing on the involvement of your family
Family will always be there for you, in good and not-so-good times. The mistake we make at times is expecting too much from them. Limit your focus to what you want to achieve and how you aim to achieve this.
Spending money you don’t have
This is an interesting one, where you may find yourself paying the price years after the benefit has been forgotten. As best you can, work on doing what you can with the resources you have as you are busy building on your goals.
Then there are pitfalls to learn from:
Trusting others
Naturally, we trust people. That’s okay. With this, you will find that you trust the wrong people and have to bear the consequences of this. Instead of beating yourself up over the matter, learn and grow from it and work towards managing your emotions.
Expenses that are higher than anticipated
Planning and doing what was planned is an art. At times you will find that you have overspend and would not make the margins as anticipated. Through that process, learn to think differently and to encourage yourself to do better with other projects.
Not enough planning
You will experience some instances where you just did not have enough time and resources to plan sufficiently, or close to what was expected from you. This will come with some level of embarrassment. The best is to embrace it, apologise if you have to and work on doing better.
Be encouraged that consistency and reflection are part of the tools that you will use to get over yourself first, then others. Keep doing what you have to, in order to sustain impact.
Gerald Pietersen‘s background is in training, HR and manufacturing with a strong foundation in the automotive sector. He is passionate about training and development. He owns a training consultancy offering training and development services to clients to help them grow and develop their human capital. He is also involved in content development for training, public speaking and travel. (LinkedIn)
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