Saturday, June 11, 2005

17 MORE Deadly Small Business Mistakes!

Harry Joiner has written a popular blog post entitled "17 Deadly Small Business Mistakes". I think it's a nice piece of work. But here's something funny: the kids at nearby Hopewell High, in their business classes, are being given handouts written by one David C. Carter, which includes another list of frequent causes of business failure. You'll see these two lists are not precisely the same, too, though there's some overlap.
  1. Moving forward without testing ideas first
  2. Pricing too low
  3. Underestimating time to market
  4. Underestimating competition
  5. Starting with insufficient funding
  6. Carelessness with generous funding
  7. Starting without "book smarts" or "street smarts"
  8. Borrowing without a repayment plan and budget
  9. Working with too many/too many large customers
  10. Working without a contingency plan
  11. Buying too much on credit
  12. Giving customers excessive credit
  13. Growing too fast
  14. Lacking complete and accurate records
  15. Spending on extravagances
  16. Hiring too many relatives and friends
  17. Working on an irregular/unprofessional schedule
(I've rewritten Carter's list, and shortened most of its entries, for simplicity's sake.) What are the chances that two sources could come up with lists for the same purpose, with different entries, yet exactly 17 entries in each? Is that a sign that there really are exactly 17 things to watch out for?

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posted by Ron @ 4:33 PM

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