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8 Startup Myths Holding You Back From Growth
Experts say that about 90% of startups fail. You need to separate yourself from that club, but only if you avoid these eight startup myths keeping you from growing.
Nine out of ten startups fail, could these startup myths be the cause of the failures?
Although it’s not easy to get a startup off the ground, you should stay realistic and be able to separate facts from fictions so that you can be able to overcome the challenges of starting a new venture.
These eight startup myths can hurt your chance for success and hold you back from growing your business.
Read them, understand them, and stay away from them and see your startup soaring tremendously.
Myth #1 – Don’t Start a Business Similar to Big Companies
This myth states that when you are just starting out in business, you cannot compete with big and established businesses in your niche. The myth goes that the chances of succeeding are minimal because established businesses have a huge clientele and have a huge budget for marketing campaigns than you do.
Nevertheless, this is untrue. Well, of course, there are challenges you will encounter, but it doesn’t mean you cannot overcome them.
If you want to stand out from big companies, never imitate them but ensure to make your services in a unique way.
Offer something valuable that they don’t. You could decide to focus on an important area of your service and perfect it. Regardless of whether your competitors have been providing a service for a long period of time, you can start offering it in a much better way and still beat them.
Myth #2 – Follow Your Passion and You Will Succeed
Ann Morrow, from uk writers and essay writing service, argues that following your passion can be great. Could that be true?
Well, the reality is that while you may follow your passion and achieve success in your startup, solving a problem can offer bigger rewards. Although passion can motivate you, it’s a self-driven thing.
For that reason, instead of following your passion when starting your business, try to discover a real problem you can solve and then use your passion to find solutions to it.
Myth #3 – Uniqueness and Innovativeness is King
This myth is commonly prevalent in the tech world, but it can apply to any industry. The startup myth goes that, to prosper in business you must be innovative and original in your ideas. You need to come up with something that has never been there before; something that can change the lives of people.
The truth is that you do not need to come up with original and innovative ideas to prosper. Customers need something that offers them value for their money. You can take something (a product or service) that has been offered by others before and improve it.
As Garrison Andrew a consultant in various essay paper in the UK says, myths and ideas could hold you back from growing your startup and worse enough, lead to startup failure.
The main idea here is to identify a problem that is giving people sleepless nights and how to solve it. So, you can identify a problem within an existing solution.
Whether there are solutions to existing problems, you can still find a better way to solve them and succeed.
Myth #4 – Start it and They Will Come
This myth goes that if you start the business they will definitely come to buy from you- regardless of conducting market research or sales promotion.
Remember, you could be starting something that customers don’t want. …and if they don’t want it, they won’t come. A study has shown that 42% of startups fail due to lack of market.
Regardless of how good and valuable your product is, customers won’t come if they don’t know it exists.
That’s why it’s important to conduct market research and sales promotion. Making a product is one thing and promoting it is another.
Therefore, before you start making a product or offering a service, you should investigate the marketplace you want to venture in.
Research it first before you build it, and then market it, to increase the chances of customers coming to buy.
Myth #5 – You Must Commit Most of Your Time to Your Startup to Succeed.
This startup myth goes that the more time you commit to your startup the higher the chances of success you get.
Startup burnout is something inevitable, and not only is it bad for your health as a person but it can also inhibit the chances of coming up with new ideas.
There has been a notion that startups are the busiest stages in life but that’s not true. A startup gets busy when it turns into business. In fact, when running a startup, you will need to be patient.
You need to discover the time that you are more productive. This way, you will be able to take advantage of your strengths while at the same time valuing your health and well-being.
You need to recognize and prevent burnout. For that reason, you should give yourself a break so that you can re-energize yourself before you go back to work.
There are plenty of ways you can avoid burnout. For instance, you can run, go for bike riding or yoga, and etc.
Myth #6 – Having a Huge Following on Social Media is Crucial
You’d better have fewer followers who buy your products than have thousands of them that do not.
Some people get tempted to drive all their energy to search for a huge following on social media to the extent of overstretching their budget.
You should dedicate your energy to producing quality products or services and then search for customers that are interested in what you are offering.
Well, while you will want to engage with interested customers on social media, a good rule of thumb is to use micro-influencers and not celebrity influencers.
Celebrity influencers have a huge following on social media but micro influencers can be more advantageous to your startup.
Myth #7 – Customers’ Needs And Wants Are The Same.
Most new business owners think that customers have similar wants and needs but that’s not the truth.
While it’s important to identify your customers before you start a business, you also need to find out the likely hood of the buying your products or services.
A mistake most startups make is assuming that when you start it they will come to buy from you.
To succeed in your startup you need to identify an existing problem and the people it has affected. That way, you can find ways to address the problem in the best possible way.
Nevertheless, you should not go out to start asking customers want because you may end up coming up with a product that many are not interested in.
Find ways to know what your customers want and make sure you classify them into groups.
Myth #8 – It’s Possible to Succeed Overnight
Well, this is a dream.
Those businesses you look up to took time to reach the level they are today. That means they have failed, they have encountered challenges, they have stood up and kept going and that’s why they still exist. Some have even had a slow growth you could have given up if you were the founder.
Big companies like Starbucks took 16 years before it could expend outside of Seattle. Building and growing a successful business takes time.
The mantra “the process is more important than the outcome” applies here.
Bonus Myth
Myth #9 – You Need a Detailed Business Plan to Grow Your Startup
This is perhaps the last myth startup myth in our list.
It is essential to have a business plan but it’s not a must that you make it more detailed.
While a business plan is meant to help you understand where you are going and how you will reach there, making it too detailed could end up forcing you to concentrate on things that could slow your startup growth.
Having a plan is important.
It’s not easy to know how customers will respond to your startup. For that reason, it would be good to focus on making your products or services better instead of spending too much time perfecting your business plan.
Just ensure you don’t start without a business plan, but it should not be too detailed.
Wrapping up Startup Myths Holding You Back from Growth
Getting a business from grass to grace is not a walk in the park. You will come across plenty of startup myths and misconceptions that you should not get tempted to lend them your ear.
What you need to understand before you get your feet wet is that it takes time to create and establish a business. There is no magic to it.
You will fail, get up, fail, get up, and fail again, but what matters is the ability to get up on your feet after failing.
To ensure you don’t get held back from growth, you should get prepared, be passionate, and ready to endure whatever circumstance comes your way.
We have shared these startup myths with the hope that you will be held back from growth when launching yours.
This post has been shared by a company that offers the best essays with the hope that it will help you to understand what is right and what is a myth is so that you can get your startup off the ground successfully.
About the author:
Sharon is a Manchester, UK based marketing specialist and a resume writer. Currently, she is working as a marketer at paper writing service. She’s also working in Dissertation Today who provides dissertation help for online writing services. When she’s not at work, she loves to share her ideas on marketing through her blog and podcasts.
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