3 Common mistakes we make when starting your own business and how to avoid them

I’ve been running my photography business for 8 years now, and it took me a while until I felt able to say “I own my own business” and it does feel good! I was reflecting recently on the beginning of my business, and thought of the mistakes that I made, and on talking to some friends who also have their own businesses it seems they’re really common mistakes. So, here are 3 of the most common mistakes made when starting a business and how to avoid them. Learn from my errors!

Try to sell to absolutely everyone

I’ve been there, when you just start and you want to get any business so bad you say yes to anyone, and you market your business to everyone. “Everyone needs headshots!” I said to myself. The thing is, when you market and say yes to everyone, you actually end up talking to no-one.

By niching down, it meant I got more business as my advertising got more personal, and I got to do more of the work that I love, working with creative and fun professionals, who I vibe with to capture their essence on camera.

You should spend some time thinking exactly who you want to work with, what type of person are they? And then you can build your business around this, it affects everything from your brand colours and your social media, to the language you use.

Trying to do everything yourself

When you first start out, you don’t usually have lots of cash to spend on all the things, so you do everything yourself, but you really shouldn’t do this. There are people out there specialised in every area of business, and they can save you so much time (and inevitably money) by investing in them.

I recently spoke about why hiring a VA is a great idea, and this is just one of the ways you can outsource. If you really hate web design, employ a web designer. If you just don’t get social media, either book a training session with someone or get a social media manager on board. Rather than spending hours and hours figuring out my tax return, I now got an accountant to do all that, which means I can spend that time working on the stuff that I enjoy and helps me grow my business further.

It takes a village to raise a child, and a business is just a different type of child!

Waiting too long for perfection

It’s too tempting to wait until you’ve completed all the courses, have a perfect website, have 10k followers on Instagram to do the thing, but you’re wasting time and probably money by doing that. Just go for it, if you tread carefully and move slowly, launching your business now instead of next month means you could have a month’s worth of real experience to lend to your business and hopefully some customers too!

There’s no substitute for experience, so just go for it I say!