These habits could kill your business

Frustrated workmates in office [Courtesy]

Being a successful entrepreneur doesn’t mean you’ve it all figured out. You may still be having some bad habits in your business that hold you back from even more success.

Bear in mind that changing your personal and business habits isn’t something you can do overnight.

You’ll have to consistently work on dropping bad habits and adopting good ones, which takes effort.

But with each bad habit you shed and good habit you adopt, your life gets a little easier. Your business prospects grow brighter.

Let’s explore some common business habits that hold back entrepreneurial success. If you have more than one of these bad habits in your business practices, pick one and work on breaking it before moving to the next one.

Building your business around you

If you’re a solopreneur, you will probably have to wear many hats in your business. You’ll be the CEO, the marketing manager, the social media manager, the accountant, and the cleaner.

While you should be able to do nearly everything, be careful not to hold on too tightly to these roles as your business grows and expands.

Don’t slip into the mindset that only you can do things the right way. You should be able to hire and train the right people.

Design every aspect of your business with the expectation that someone else will eventually take over.

Even if an employee only does the job 80 per cent as good as you’d have done, they’ll have saved you plenty of your valuable time.

You can step in to provide the missing 20 per cent or hire either a more skilled employee or someone to provide quality control.

If you centre yourself in the business, rather than you owning the business, it will own you. You won’t be able to take some time off without everything coming to a standstill.

Having Too Many Strategic Priorities

Entrepreneurs are naturally ambitious. This trait pushes them to work harder and propel  business towards success.

However, many entrepreneurs have the bad habit of setting too many strategic priorities in a limited period.

For instance, you may set a priority to open an additional physical location, set up your online shop, and start exporting your products…all in three months.

Having too many priorities may start working against you. You and your team will be caught up chasing too many goals, which can make you lose sight of your overarching vision.

There’s no magic number of priorities to set for your business. The right number of priorities will largely depend on the size of your business, the sector, and other external factors affecting the business landscape.

That said, the sweet spot for many successful businesses is three to five priorities for any given year. For a smoother ride, be mindful of how your strategic priorities will work together.

Firing employees who disagree

You want to try a new marketing strategy but there’s an employee who expresses strong opinion against it. Should you fire them?

Well, while managing employees who say “yes” to every idea is definitely easier, those who disagree can be an asset to your business growth.

As long as they’re not ego-driven contrarians, employees with opposing views can come in handy for reviewing the pros and cons of your strategy.

They might even suggest a different strategy that is more suitable for your goals.

As an employer, you want employees who are competent and confident enough to speak up even when their perspective isn’t popular.

Nurturing diversity of thought in your team is a catalyst for growth that most businesses lack.

Keeping Bad Employees

A bad employee can be costly to your business. Not only will you be paying them for poor-quality work but they can also bring down the team’s morale.

Many entrepreneurs have the habit of being too loyal to bad employees, not realising that doing so causes harm to both their business and the employee…who might probably thrive elsewhere.

While letting go of employees is never easy, you should get better at making tough decisions and having difficult conversations.

Discuss with the employees where they could improve to meet the firm’s expectations.

If there’s no satisfactory improvement after a set period, it is best to let them go.

Having unoptimised meetings

Meetings are an unavoidable part of work-life. However, your team spending their valuable time in meetings won’t lead to success. Let meetings have measurable outcomes.

Before you set a meeting, make sure it’s necessary. Can you accomplish the same outcome with a group email? Can you use a tool such as Slack or a WhatsApp group for a quick discussion?

If you decide that a meeting is necessary, ensure you have a clear agenda, minimise the team members to attend and record the outcomes.