Bad Business Ideas & Business Idea Mistakes

Different people have different strengths. The founder does not have to possess all the core skills that the business requires. But together the nucleus of the founding team does have to possess the core skills required by a business.

For example, Internet/tech businesses typically require the founding teams to have a tech background. Food-related businesses require culinary or hospitality industry background. Product-centric companies require ability to make great products and sell them. Some businesses need to raise a lot of money while others need to get a lot of publicity. The founding team must have the skills for whatever the business will require.

If that is not the case, that will make the business more of an uphill battle.

If the founding team does not have strong experience in the industry in which the business idea is in, that will necessitate a lot of learning on the job, which will in turn cause many errors and steps in unsure directions. Small errors are not difficult to recover from, but gross mistakes can be very costly in terms of time and money. Before having to pay for these mistakes out of the bank account of your own business, it may be better to do some work in this area as an employee, or maybe start with a smaller project just to learn the ropes cheaply.

A common mistake is that people try to quickly go big in a business area where they do not have enough experience, which can be very damaging to the business. The bigger you try to go, the bigger and more costly the mistakes will be as well.

Sometimes the business idea is just too dependent on market and other outside conditions. If those conditions are not favorable to the business, it can be time to reconsider the business. Of course, conversely, most business types are cyclical (that means their success correlates with timing of the overall economy which tends to go through good and bad multi-year cycles).

So think about how the global and local economies will affect your business. Not taking that into consideration can leave you with significant risk.

There is always quite a bit of discussion and debate over the topic of protecting business ideas. Some people argue that you should keep it a secret while others insist that you should be free and open about it. The correct approach is likely somewhere in between the two extremes. If you are curious about this topic, take a look at our article about protecting business ideas.

Another option business owners have to protect their businesses is something called the non compete agreement which prevents the employee from stealing clients or going to work for companies that are directly competing with your company. Here is the full article on the non compete agreement.

One mistake people make is that they wait around for a source of funding for the business idea. Unfortunately, almost all the time, funding never comes to people who wait for it. And that causes the business never to even exist. To combat this type of a phenomenon, we recommend that you do something called bootstrapping. Here is a video on bootstrapping.

Before you plan your business, one thing you should consider is which business niche to get into. Here is a tutorial on how to choose your business niche. Many people make the mistake of getting into the wrong business niche or industry, and pay for it later. Check out this tutorial, and make sure that the niche you choose is the right one.

I am working on a full list of businesses or services you can start: restaurant or diner, coffee shop, barbershop, nightclub, local event, most kinds of stores ranging from boutiques to grocery stores to jewlery shops, animal care or grooming, lawn care or landscaping businesses, moving businesses, gym, frozen yogurt, gelato or ice cream shop, a deli, corner store or a sandwich shop, a a beauty salon or a hair salon, a spa, a business selling t-shirts, a daycare, a hardware store, commercial cleaning or residential cleaning, car wash, general contractor business, dog walking or pet sitting, martial arts studio, or a dance studio.

Here is a list of potential online businesses you can start: blogging, affiliate marketing, elearning, create a channel on YouTube, become an author and sell books on Amazon and the Kindle, or become a freelancer or a local concierge. You can also create a mobile app or a website that provides some service or product or content that people can visit.

For more on evolving and perfecting business ideas, take a look at the work of Eric Ries and Steve Blank, and the learn startup movement. And take a look at our article for how to get business ideas. For other business resources, explore sba.gov.

If you are still wondering about which business ideas are bad or mistakes, here is a very full business idea tutorial I made that covers just about all aspects of business ideas. In this video tutorial I talk about the 40 most asked about business idea topics including how to protect your business ideas. Maybe having a full picture on this subject matter will help you see why in my opinion protecting business ideas isn't the right strategy.

Here are a few more popular business idea tutorials on this website. The first tutorial is one on how to get business ideas, and the second tutorial is helps you understand how to protect business ideas.

The next step after creating a great business idea is to create a business plan for it. You can use the business plan as a strategy for how you will actually execute your idea and bring it into the real world. Ironically, if you do not protect your business ideas, and are open about sharing it in the real world, some of the conversations that you will have with people about your business ideas will translate directly into parts of your business planning, and will make the planning part easier and better. And if you need help creating your business and starting a business, check our my services as a business coach.

Elearning has been a great industry over the past decade. It's growing rapidly and isn't showing any signs of slowing down. That is a first good sign of a space in which to have a business idea. It is also not a difficult business to start because it does not require a lot of money. All you need is to have expertise in some field which will be your Elearning niche, create courses and sell them.

Things can be even easier because you don't have to create courses on your own, but license pre-made courses instead. I offer over 100 white label courses to resell and even custom course creation so you don't have to do everything on your own.

Once you have your favorite business idea and make a business plan for it, the next thing left to do is to begin actually working on your idea, isn't it? Here is a video tutorial on how to start your business.

Article by Alex Genadinik