I can’t speak for all of you, but I know I have made plenty of mistakes. The important thing, of course, is to learn from those mistakes, to make sure those mistakes are not made again. When I went into business (tea room cafe and gift shop) I had never worked outside the home-yeah, I was that green-but had spent 29 years being a wife and mother (of 8). Needless to say I made my fair share of mistakes. Also, I went from not having a business to opening a business in four weeks!Here are just a few:1. no clear, workable business plan (just a vision)2. no exit strategy3. afraid to focus on a specific “customer” because I didn’t want to leave anyone out4. poor staff management, well, I felt like they each had something to teach me and I wasn’t a real BOSS5. spent money I didn’t have6. no definite plan for marketing, when a salesperson approached and I thought it sounded good, I’d do it. (see point #5)Well, enough about my “sins.”And, I was in business for 7 years! Now, the cafe is closed and the teas and gifts are in a consignment booth. I’ve written a cookbook with all the recipes people loved and stories of my town and customers. (going to second printing soon) 

@joanmuschampfagnani thanks, Joan, for chiming in. I’m curious to see how many people will. You can do it, girl. People are missing out on the pleasure of knowing you and learning from you. Sorry to be trite but remember, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger!

 @joanmuschampfagnani And stretch you will. This will be the year! You are going to be a social bug. And you will find the right church community.

The biggest mistake i have made in business was believeing a jerk who just kept telling me “dont worry, i got this, ill get it done, two more weeks, two more weeks, two more weeks, end of the week, end of the week, end of the week” Six months of working on my project and I had not seen ANY results. No preview of the work or anything, so I fired them without pay. I warned many times they were under contract to do the work and show me or they were not entitled to a penny. Sure enough I was clearly not being taken seriously so I fired him. He refused to be fired which of course made me laugh. Dont feel too bad for him, it took 6 months for me to fire him but I spoke to the coowner of that company and I still hold a working relationship with him because he has done work pesonally for my business and he has never let me down. He informed me that while I was being told 2 weeks, end of the week, its 90% done and whatever. The project was bearly half complete and he appologized for not being involved in my project, when as an owner he should have payed more atention to it. I felt he was being very genuine and again, the fact he has personally done very good work and helped me out before, I decided to continuing to work with him, as long as I was dealing with him. My moral is, don’t believe a wolf in a sheep costume. if someone uses the “dont worry about it” line when you ask for details, assurance, or a progess report, then something is fishy and look into it an get to the bottom of it MUCH quicker than I did.

@sgsrecording I second that one! I dissolved a partnership due to poor communication and “trust me, it will get done” statements with no evidence. Be careful with partnerships and be sure to get all the proper legal paperwork in order with the partnership agreement that states who brings what to the table along with specific duties so that fiduciary responsibility can be forced onto partners that are not holding up their end. Full transparency and good communication is essential to a good core team before your biz grows too big to squash major problems later on when there is a lot of $$ on the line. Trust me, protect yourself and in the end, it will be you that benefits from it not someone else!