There’s a lot of mythology in the world of entrepreneurs. You’ll hear heroic stories of young entrepreneurs who bootstrapped their business into stellar heights. You’ll hear about terrible gambles that paid off, of small gambles that ruined businesses and lives, and of people being knocked to their knees only to stand up again, taller than they were before.
It’s a part of human nature to mythologize important events and pass them on as stories retold over and over again. That was the original form of learning, and it gave us what we call culture today. But for all the good they’ve done, myths sure can lead you astray sometimes. Especially if they are heavy on the buzz-worthy concepts. If you’re preparing to launch a new business, here are some of the more damaging myths that shouldn’t guide your decision-making.
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If It Doesn’t Scale, Don’t Even Think About Starting It
You’ve probably had an earful of talk about scalability well before you even considered starting your own business. The business world is interested in scalability. The tech startup world puts it on a pedestal and worships it. And in some cases, they’ll have you believe that scalability is something you should guide yourself towards right from the get-go.
Scalability is undoubtedly important. But when you’re starting your business, it’s not the thing you should concern yourself with. And you certainly shouldn’t use scalability strategies while you’re still creating a business. You’ll have plenty of time for that later, and plenty of solutions that will help you scale. You’ll be able to outsource your tech support to deal with the increased demand for support. You’ll be able to rethink your website hosting options to deal with increased traffic. You’ll be able to do many more things when the time for it comes.
You Have To Take Serious Risks
The high risk, high reward paradigm applies to plenty of business situations. It’s also applicable to sports betting. But it falls short as the guiding light for your decision making and business model development. Simply put, you shouldn’t be influenced by the need to take high risks.
If you’d take a list of the most common reasons why startups fail, you wouldn’t find risk-taking on it. But that doesn’t mean risk-taking wouldn’t run your startup into the ground. A lot of the reasons for startup failure could be prevented with an approach that seeks to minimize risk and assert control over as many things as possible. You don’t need risks. You need predictability.
Build It And They Will Come
It doesn’t matter how much you like Field of Dreams, this saying will never do you any good. You can’t build a website and hope for people to stumble upon it. You can’t build a product and hope that people will rush to you to buy it. You can’t develop a service and have people line up to use it if they have no way of hearing about it.
You build things you know people will like. You develop a business with a market in mind. And when the building part is done, you do whatever you can to spread the word about it and convince people they should pay money for it. And even then, there’s no guarantee of success. You build it, you do a lot of work to promote it, and you hope for the best.
High-Quality Talent Is Out Of Your Reach
Your business will rely on high-quality talent a lot. People you work with are your biggest investment, and they are the engine that will propel your business into a success story. You need good, talented people.
And you’ll be able to find them. You’ll find incredibly talented people who want to be a part of the newest, hottest startup. You’ll find people who share your vision. If that fails, you’ll find top-quality freelance talent that will fit your price range. There’s no lack of talent in the world, and the talent market is global.
You’ll Find Venture Capital For Financing
One of the most damaging myths is that of the venture capitalist who is waiting to finance your business venture. They are out there. But they’re not waiting in line to invest into your startup.
The biggest source of financing for startups is personal savings and credit. Friends and family are next in line. Venture capital is the third. So before you start your own business, you better think long and hard whether you’ll be able to finance it on your own.
Growing a successful business is hard work. You’ll have to put in long hours, do any kind of work your business needs, and have little but a hope for success in the future to sustain you. The last thing you need in a situation like that are some myths that are leading you down the wrong path.
If you are interested in even more business-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels then we have a lot to choose from.
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