It doesn’t matter whether you’re a sole trader, self-employed, a small partnership or a small limited company, we’ve all fallen into these or similar traps:
the spaces have been left so that you can enter your own notes when you print it out
- Being so busy delivering one job that we forget to spend the time getting the next job
- Being so pleased to get the order at a price we can live with that we forget to arrange terms of payment that we can also live with
- Having a client so important that when they change their requirements, probably implying we should have noticed, we accept the extra work without negotiating a ‘Change Order’
- Being so busy that we don’t prepare or send our invoices at the earliest moment
- Being so busy that we don’t chase payment of our invoices, because ‘we don’t want to appear to be grasping’ (If you think about it, getting the cash is the real result we want from being in business)
- Thinking that all that there is to running a business is delivering a perfect job and that’s it
- Omitting to rigorously set aside the cash to pay the VAT, Sales Tax, Corporation Tax, etc etc etc
- ‘Promising’ a delivery or completion date which really isn’t actually possible
- Being so fixated on doing a job ‘to the best of our ability’ (on reviewing the final draft we say ‘I’ll just do this bit again’) because we think ‘this is the way to get more business’
- Being arrogantly confident even though all our business comes from only one or two major customers
- Being above the risks of disaster planning or business continuity planning because ‘It won’t happen to me’ or ‘I’ll deal with it next year as I can’t afford it this year.’
- I’ll do it this way because everyone else does it this way, (Only dead things go down the river with the current, only living things can swim against the current.)
- Employing staff, there must be a better way so work it out
- Renting an office, there must be a better way so work it out
- Listening to the advice of people who have never created or run their own business and using their own money
- Listening to the advice of ‘professionals’ who’s real profession is to take money off you rather than to address you’re real needs
- Thinking that advisers from big organisations know the right answer
- Dealing with ‘Bullies’, you’re much better off if they’re looked after by your competitors
- Taking a decision by accident, without really noticing it and then you’re lumbered with the ongoing consequences
- Realising that you’ve built yourself a treadmill and you haven’t had time to work out what you need to do to get off it
- Being continuously told off for bringing work home or doing work whilst on holiday
- Forgetting to check that one of your team had done what you’d asked, only to be forced into taking emergency action to rescue the situation
- Failing to communicate effectively with the people in your team
- Omitting to keep an effective rapport with your most important customer
- Organising your business in the standard way, because it’s always been done that way, rather than looking at how it might be better organised to achieve your personal aims and objectives
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