Startups are quite fragile creations and if you don’t believe this, just have a look at a rather worrying statistic. Around 97 percent of startups fail within their first year and are almost immediately wiped off the market. Why is this? Well, it’s anyone’s guess, but some experts have suggested it’s due to how easy it is to start a new business these days. You don’t have much experience, knowledge or even any sort of background in running a company. All you really need is an idea and the money to bring it to fruition. With so little control over who can start a company, it makes sense that most are going to fail. If you don’t have the knowledge and experience, you’re not going to prepare for some of the key issues. Or, if you do, you may still not be able to handle them effectively. Let’s look at some of the problems that the average new startup owner might encounter and consider how to deal with them.
Issues With Employees
It’s true to say that a strong workforce can be one of the greatest assets for a business owner. It can help them take their company to new heights on the market and ensure that the standard of service is excellent. At the same time, though, your employees can also be a huge curse for your company. They can cause problems that you never even knew existed. Let’s jump right into this by thinking about the emotional wellbeing of your employees.
There are plenty of different issues that can impact the emotional wellbeing of your employees. It is entirely possible that severe levels of stress mean that they find work difficult and that they might struggle to complete their goals or assignments. However, this stress could also affect their level of customer service and support. As such, it could damage the reputation and the opinion of your company on the market. The good news is that there’s an easy fix for problems like this. You just need to make sure that there is a support system in place for your employees. If you have a service such as Health Assured’s CISM services or a similar business, you can make sure there are people who deal with problems when things go wrong. Your employees won’t feel alone and will be able to get the support that they need.
This isn’t the only issue that you might encounter with your workforce. You can also face problems with legality is you have people working for you who don’t feel as though they have been treated fairly. For instance, thousands of PI claims flood the courts every year from employees who feel they have been injured at work due to lack of care by employers. Worse still, you may deal with emotional distress claims that could put a permanent black mark over your business.
Trouble With Outsourcing
Once you open your business on the market, you will need to work to get a head start and make sure your business is firing on all cylinders. You need to make sure you can compete with the top competition and not lose out on customers that can take your business to the next level. To do this, businesses often turn to the possibility of outsourcing. Outsourcing is a way of playing on a larger field even when your resources are limiting. Instead of handling all the areas of business yourself, you pass it out of house onto other companies and freelancers. This is beneficial as it allows you to keep your costs under control, but let’s not kid ourselves here. Outsourcing can be dangerous because it gives you less control over quality. If you want the easiest way to damage your business reputation, deliver an inferior quality product. News like this will spread like wildfire. Eventually, everyone will know not to use your business because the service or the product is not worth the price.
That’s why you have to be very careful when you are selecting outsourcing companies. You need to make sure that you are using a business or individual you can trust to hold up the goals of your company. In this case, delivering a service that customers will love.
Overspending
Another reason why a lot of businesses fail early on in their life is that overspending becomes an issue. If you are overspending in your business, it is going to hit your company hard. Eventually, you’re going to struggle to manage your budget effectively and this could impact on quality. As such you need to be thinking about spending and costs from day one. It’s important that you keep everything under control. For instance, you may want to look into the possibility of setting up a business that is eco-friendly. By doing this, you can make sure energy costs don’t weight your business down.
You may want to look into renewable energy options. It has become quite popular for business owners to invest in solar panels for their business buildings. Through the summer months, it’s possible, with this tech, to take electric costs right down to zero which would be great news for any company. Just think about how much you’ll save. This is something you want to think about during the planning stages of your new business.
Another way to cut costs out of your business model would be to hire a small team of highly skilled workers. You should do this rather than paying for a large team of workers to deliver a high output but a low level of quality. The message here is that you shouldn’t get greedy because too much desire for profit will come back to bite you in the end.
Before you start a new business, it is worth thinking about these issues. Are you prepared for problems like this and have you built in solutions for your own business model. If the answer to either of these questions is no, don’t start a company. We promise it will be dead in just a few months.
