Small Business Entrepreneur Blog

Note: this is not a generic list of entrepreneurship mistakes – it’s my own list for 2007

If I remember well, I’ve made a New Year resolution post last year. Quite frankly, I don’t remember a thing from the “glorious things” I’ve promised myself a year ago. That’s a sure sign and didn’t get to accomplish these things or maybe they became less important over the year to be marked as an accomplishment.

So this year, I’m not going to make any New Year resolutions. Probably you could do these in your personal life, but in the life of a business or the entrepreneur behind, New Year resolutions are just…fake, Unless they take the form of a written business plan with goals, deadlines and so on. Instead, I’m going to make a list of mistakes I’ve did in the last year and that I’m going to try not to do them again in 2008 (still, isn’t that somehow a New Year resolution???).

Entrepreneurship mistakes I’m not willing to do again

The first and most important thing that went wrong in 2007 was losing the balance in life. And without balance between your professional and personal life, between free time and working hours, between expectations and results (and all the rest), entrepreneurship is just a mistake. In the end, balance is essential if you are going to go on the entrepreneurship path for longer period of time. Advice: if your friends, wife or family complain that you ignore them, they might just be right.

I’m still part time entrepreneur. That’s not necessarily bad, but sometimes it sounds like lost opportunities. When you have an opportunity, maybe you should risk a little. Advice: you should follow your dreams against all odds from time to time. You might get richer in the end.

I have no New Year resolution (errr, Business Plan). Somehow I missed having some straightforward plans for company growth (working on them now – hopefully February is going to be a decisive months as it has always been for me – maybe I will write about this later). Advice: always try to find out where are you going, it’s the surest path to find opportunities.

I did not pay attention to all the details an entrepreneur should pay attention to. We lost some customers, we failed to deliver in time on few occasions, or maybe our employees weren’t the happiest ones (and my partners as well) (I will write another post on this one – it’s probably one of those blogging bonanza when there are plenty of things to write again and again). Sure, nothing special in these, they happen to every single company and it will happen to us again. Still, I’m sure that thing could have been better with just a little more attention, so the advice is to pay attention to all the details you are supposed to deal with. To be happy, all things have to be great, but it takes only one to be unhappy!

OK. I think I will stop here. These sounded like a great article, but now it just sounds stupid or something. But if you are an entrepreneur and want to do a New Year resolution, well, it’s called “Business plan”.