Micro-Entrepreneurship For Dummies

Chapter 22

Ten Beginning Micro-Entrepreneur Pitfalls (and How to Avoid ’em)

In This Chapter

Taking steps to reduce your risk

Balancing risk against return

When you’re starting a micro-entrepreneur enterprise, inexperience can be a stumbling block. It’s sort of like cooking — you can’t create a great meal until you cook, but if you don’t know how to cook, you have to try. Fortunately for beginners, you can draw from the deep well of experience from those individuals who have been there, done that. This chapter includes ten pitfalls that beginners often make that can diminish your success and ways to avoid them.

Failing to Understand Yourself

Before you spend time, money, effort, and energy on launching a business, you first need to spend some quality time on figuring out who you are. I have seen individuals start a business and then stop doing it — and then repeat the process. They tried one business idea after another and subsequently abandoned the same idea they were previously excited about. They may end up blaming “bad luck” or some other factor.

If they had just taken the time to discover the businessperson in them, before trying to figure out their business, they may have been more successful. Check out Chapter 3 for how you find out exactly who you are before you start ...