Avoiding Big Business Mistakes

This article revolves around some of the top business mistakes you need to look out for to avoid in your business. So let's get started.

Here was today's question that came from Chris.

What are some of the business mistakes that you wish you had avoided Adam and how would you pass on some guidance for avoiding that issue?

Mistake #1 - Trying to do everything on your own

Now this is the thing - it's a really good question. Thing is, I have been in business since I've been 25 - I've made more mistakes along the way that I can ever possibly mention in one article, to be quite honest but most likely the biggest mistake for me in the beginning was just the fact that I really did try to do everything on my own. I was a big believer in that I would just figure it out, as I had a lot of desire and drive - I just wanted to do everything myself.

I never really reached out for help from anybody, never tried to get any help, never reached out for any guidance or coaching and because of that I had to learn a lot of lessons the hard way. I truly know, had I been able to then meet some of the coaches and mentors I've had over the past 6 to 7 years, I would have achieved the goals and visions I had a lot, lot sooner because there was a lot of things I was doing wrong.

And that was one of the first things I would say that was really very, very important —being coaching and mentoring. I think you can always tell if someone has been coached or mentored as they have an edge over other people, especially if they have been coached in the right way.

So, that is the one thing that I believe is a very big mistake to make, is to believe that you can figure out everything by yourself — to try and do everything yourself when the information is out there, the help is out there. And if you get the help, you will get the gains.

Having said that, I have made many other mistakes as well.

Mistake #2 - Employing and working with friends

In the beginning I employed a lot of friends and that came back to bite me many, many times. For every one that worked out well I could probably say there were 5 that ended badly. This meant that I went through a lot of issues and pain in this respect - it's not always good to work with your friends.

If you listen to my 40 Rules you will understand why. When I wrote my 40 Rules Book, that was quite an interesting time where I had been through loads of different things and kind of wanted to get it out there. Quite genuinely the rules in there really relate to the things I think you should be doing if you want to gain more success in business and life. It was really shared from the heart. All the different things I had experienced to that point and it's well worth reading or listening to. It might not be as fluid - it's a few years old now - but it's definitely something that has a lot of the lessons in it.

Mistake #3 - Having the wrong people in your business and hanging onto them

One of the other mistakes I made is when I had the wrong people in my business and I hung onto them for too long. I was very soft and I think being soft in business doesn't serve you if you are not a great fit with the other person that you are working with and you need to bring that to a close sooner or later. This is another one of the mistakes that came back to bite me many, many times.

Mistake #4 - Not having those difficult conversations

The other mistake I made was the difficulty of not having the ability to have the difficult conversations, which then also came back to bite me many times as well.

This is one of the things that I try to do with this group and our events, is to be as genuine as possible. Everything I teach and everything I go over Is not something I've read in a book or that I have seen somewhere — it's quite genuinely my personal experiences, how I feel about business, things you should be doing and the mistakes that I have made that you should rather go around than go through. This will be a lot less painful that way.

This is the best way that I can pass on my experiences. When you are part of the Academy or Golden Circle, then you will get first hand exposure to this. I think what I have developed is a way of seeing things very fast and actually seeing angles very quickly. Once you develop that and make decisions quicker, you have full confidence in yourself and believe in yourself, you believe in what you are doing therefore everything gets to be much smoother. You also start to get results quicker.

Mistake #5 - Not getting things done

I'm a big, big believer in pulling the trigger and getting stuff done.

I was with Dan Bartle recently. Dan and I had a coaching session; he's a great guy and very successful. He is having a great month this month - actually he's smashing it out of the ballpark good and he told me that he is having trouble with implementation.

I think if you want to succeed, one of the things you have got to learn to do, is to implement, you have to learn to implement quickly and you have to accept that you going to make the odd mistake. Nobody gets it right 100% of the time, but the difference is, if you implement one thing per year you are going to get one new set of results, if you implement 12 , you will get 12 new sets of results. If you implement 100 - then you will get a 100 new results. The reality is, out of the 100, 80 may be wrong but 20 may be right, but the 20 you put in that may be right — they will smash your business out the ballpark like nothing you have ever seen and the 80 you will just move on through.

So I think pulling the trigger and getting stuff done quickly is very, very important. I don't mean be reckless, but what I have seen from running Big Business Events for 3 years now and training 1000's of business owners, is that the larger majority of business owners veer much more towards the side of caution and because they are so cautious, they don't take the actions that they would,  to take to take them to the level they need to go.

Its only when you start to put the caution aside and you start managing risk in the right way that you start to grow. You obviously need to take calculated risks.

Finally

 This is a mixed bag of advice here...

But you need to go with your gut,

you have to make decisions and

 you have to do things quickly.

You have to have the speed of implementation,

you need coaching,

you need mentoring and

when you get that help and get that information - you will see your results explode.

You will go further than even you could have ever imagined and I believe it's something that everybody needs really. Even if you are doing well, even if you are smashing it and doing great, you need it even more than ever before.

Cheers for now,

Adam