Avoid These 3 Mistakes If You Want To Be A Successful Entrepreneur

Making mistakes is an inevitable part of every entrepreneur’s journey.  That’s how we learn and grow. 

But while some mistakes may feel like an easy lesson to learn, other mistakes, as Vishen discovered early entrepreneur’s endeavors, could literally cost you millions of dollars and put you in debt.

The good news is that even the biggest mistakes are fixable, and if you discover you’ve made any of these entrepreneurial mistakes, just know that you’re not alone.

Whether you’re working for someone or dreaming of being an entrepreneur, or even if you’re already established, these ideas could make a massive shift in how you run your job or your business.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

— Albert Einstein

Mistake #1: Not Hiring To Save Money

This was the first mistake Vishen made during his first year of running Mindvalley.

He didn’t hire anyone because he thought that if he hired employees, they’re going to suck him dry. And he’d be losing profit margins.

As a result, he was wasting time doing things that it would have been so much cheaper to pay someone else to do for the first years.

Are you making the same mistake? Is there a job that you have to do right now because you don’t have somebody else to help you with it?

It can be accounting, marketing, sales, or all of them.

Many entrepreneurs often try to do those jobs themselves to save money but end up spending a fortune.

Look at it from your hourly rate perspective. There are people who could do these things for you for a lot less than what your time as an entrepreneur is worth on an hourly basis.

Whatsmore, it’s going to cost you even more because if you do what you don’t like doing, you are likely to put it off.

So this job is going to suffer in terms of quality and you’re going to suffer every time you’re doing that.

And this is the quality of your life.

Effort-To-Earning Deficit

Jack Delosa, the founder of Australia’s largest training institution for entrepreneurs, The Entourage, talks about the effort-to-earning deficit as an important metric that any business owner should look at.

This metric shows the correlation between the growth curve and the level of exertion of the business. In other words, it’s the amount of effort relative to the earnings that the business is generating.

Naturally, you’re going to overwork for the first years, and your efforts will be disproportionate.

But ideally, if you’re doing your job right, you will create a situation where you reach a point of the effort-to-earning positive ROI, regardless of the size of your business.

So it’s a matter of optimizing and automating your processes.

Mistake #2: Not Using Automation

In today’s high-tech world, automation isn’t a futuristic whim anymore. It’s a prerequisite for the success of any business.

Have You Heard Of The ‘No Code’ Movement?

These are the automation tools that can help build anything you desire: from complex applications to workflow automation without learning to code or even hiring developers.

This became possible with the “drag-and-drop” user experience that makes it easy to use and see instant results.

They call it the No Code revolution – this is how fast it is booming with many new applications coming out as we speak.

In the past, you needed developers to build things for you and people to run different operations.

With the automation tools, you can create a business or automate multiple sections of the existing one.

These tools save you human resources and, most importantly, time.

Airtable would be a good example of this. As a low-code platform for building collaborative apps,  multiple companies across all industries are utilizing it to build applications and evolve their businesses.

Here Are A Few Of Their Case Studies:

• Insomniac Events is the production team behind some of the most innovative, immersive music festivals and events in the world. They slashed lost & found wait times by over 50%.

• HubSpot Academy is a global platform for marketing and sales professionals to gain certifications in their industries. They save 30 hours of work a week.

• Atlantic Records, Netflix, and TIME stay ahead of an evolving industry using Airtable.

• The Mingei International Museum moved 26,000 pieces of art (without a hitch).

Recommended reading: 3 Pro Tips to Make Millions as a Business Consultant or Coach

Mistake #3: Not Knowing How To Make Proper Agreements

Not knowing how to prepare proper agreements and how to negotiate those agreements was Vishen’s third mistake. 

He believes it was the dumbest because it cost him millions and millions of dollars and even put him in debt.

In fact, it was a 2-in-1 mistake: he doubted himself as an entrepreneur and had no idea how to create solid agreements.

I doubted myself because I was a computer programmer. I’ve never taken a business class. I’d never gone to business school. So I brought in a partner who did have a business degree, and he asked for a large chunk of the business. And rather than create a pay-for-performance plan or pay him a salary, I gave away a massive amount of my business.

– Vishen, founder and CEO of Mindvalley

It goes without saying that contracts and agreements are inevitable for running a business regardless of its size. 

This knowledge is fundamental for your business and personal assets to be protected, and you’re going to make great use of it in the entire course of your entrepreneurial endeavor.

At the end of the day, you want to sleep better at night knowing that your agreements are rock-solid and that you’ve minimized your risks and protected yourself.  

Why Become An Entrepreneur?

Most people aspire to be entrepreneurs to gain more freedom, or at least render themselves less busy.

But the reality is that most business owners eventually get trapped in the same hamster wheel from which they once broke free.

Or thought they did.

Statistics show that 80% of all businesses will be out of business before their 5th anniversary. In other words, entrepreneurship has an 80% failure rate.

But that 20% who make it to their 5th anniversary sacrifice their health, family, and quality of life.

It doesn’t sound like your dream life, does it?

Eric Edmeades, an award-winning international entrepreneur, who created extraordinary success in a diversity of fields, defines entrepreneurship as the opportunity to work a little bit harder, a little bit smarter for a short period to create a life you dream about.

But when most people start a business, they have everything but business freedom because they don’t have clarity on their personal level of business freedom.

It leads to unproductive work, constant stress, and as a result, most entrepreneurs are entirely burned out.

Yet, there is a way to create a successful business that rewards you with personal and financial freedom and practically runs itself.

It means that when you want to have an extended vacation, your business will be just fine without you.

Whether you aspire to create lifestyle freedom or get your business off the ground, make your way over to Mindvalley for free masterclasses, like How To Build A Business That Sets You Free with Eric Edmeades. He’ll give you a whole new perspective on entrepreneurship and the practical tools you need to create a successful business.