Business advice can really come by easy especially from friends and families. I’m sure most of you already know that.
Running a small business is one of the best decisions you can make for the benefit of your career. However, it’s not a stroll in the park. There are distinct setbacks you will face if you want your business to succeed.
Running a business is hard enough without being confused on how to separate bad business advice from good ones. If you aren’t careful and listen to what everyone is saying, this could potentially impact your business for the worse.
Here are some of the bad business advice you should avoid from as entrepreneurs.
Bad business advice #1: Follow your intuition
Any successful entrepreneur knows that you can’t base your decision-making on intuition alone. As much as your gut can be a reliable source, you need to be logical and rational especially when these decisions affect your business.
If your intuition leads to bad decisions, listening to your intuition can lead to the downfall of your business. Entirely.
Making significant decisions has several factors that should be put to practice and you shouldn’t depend on something as inconsistent and fragile as your intuition.
Otherwise, you might lose everything you worked for in your business.
Bad business advice #2: Fake it till you make it
This advice is something you hear in the self-improvement aspect and that includes entrepreneurship.
To be honest, I’ve been here before myself. I always thought faking it will be easier.
While this advice can be helpful, it’s not a recommended long-term mindset as faking something never turns out to be beneficial for anyone.
This might benefit you in terms of confidence and self-esteem, but not in managing and controlling a small business.
Putting up a business requires skill, strategy, and knowledge, which are all things you can’t fake unless you take your time to equip yourself with everything you need for a business to work.
When it comes down to it, you can’t ‘fake it till you make it’ in putting up a business.
#3: Failure isn’t an option
This is the kind of bad advice you hear everywhere that causes entrepreneurs to waste their time. You can’t avoid failure no matter how hard you try, and successful entrepreneurs will tell you this themselves.
As cliche as it sounds, failure is the stepping stone to success and without experiencing failure a few times, you can’t learn the specific lessons to become a better entrepreneur.
Don’t listen to those who tell you that you can’t fail on your way to success because most often than not, those who avoid failure are those that don’t end up succeeding in their careers.
Remember, waiting for things to be perfect before doing it might never happen. Done is better than perfection.
Fail early, fail fast, fail often.
#4: Turn your weaknesses into strengths
Everyone has flaws and imperfections even as entrepreneurs, but you can’t turn all your weaknesses into strengths. That doesn’t just put an unrealistic expectation of you, but it’s impossible to do.
Yes, you can always work on your weaknesses to improve on them, but you can’t make them your strengths.
This is why the best thing you can do is work on your strengths and use that to your advantage as an entrepreneur.
#5: The customer is always right
You hear this in several industries being mentored to employees – that as entrepreneurs or even regular employees, you should always follow the customer since they’re always right.
Not only is this a wrong notion, but it’s a toxic belief. Yes, toxic. It will lead your business in the wrong direction.
If the customer is always right, you’ll end up giving away discounts and promotions that they never deserved, and this will negatively impact your business as a whole.
While customers comprise a huge portion of the success of your business, they aren’t always right. The sooner you learn this, the better.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I hope this article was able to shed insights on the bad business advice you should avoid if you want your small business to succeed. Knowing the difference if legitimate advice from bad advice will save your business more than you realize.
You can’t always rely on every piece of advice you hear on entrepreneurship as not everything is logical and practical advice to follow. With these pieces of advice said above, hopefully, you’ll have a better understanding of which advice to follow in encouraging the success of your business.
This article was first written on Guided Hustle.