7 ways you're unknowingly sabotaging your business

As an entrepreneur and business owner, things won’t always go your way, especially when you’re just starting out.

Sabotaging beliefs and behaviours are usually entirely unconscious, and can follow throughout your personal finance and business life.

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Here, Bankable by Forbes has put together a list of the 7 most common sabotaging behaviours of entrepreneurs, and how you can learn to control them.

1. Procrasti-learning

Are you paying for personal development but not the practical things in your business? When you’re an entrepreneur, there can be a lot of pressure to spend big bucks on self-development, including courses and mentors. Many entrepreneurs balk at outsourcing tasks or paying for advertising, but happily spend thousands on an online marketing course they never even open.

Of course, you have to work on yourself to be successful in business, but you need to balance investing in coaching with the practical needs of your business too – especially the activities that will make you more money.

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2. Being bad at receiving

Do you feel guilty about charging for what you do because it’s your passion? Or maybe you under-charge because it’s easy for you, despite offering a lot of value for your customers. You might delay sending invoices to clients, waver at a request for a discount or feel bad about chasing up late payments. Another common symptom of this is bartering with other owners or doing freebies for family and friends at the expense of actual paying customers.

To start earning the money you deserve and stop destroying your income, you need to learn to receive, recognise the value in the service you provide and celebrate your self-worth.

3. Not investing (especially when you can afford it)

When businesses finally start to make profit, many entrepreneurs tend to be scared to invest in things like growing their team or systems to automate their business in case the revenue dries up. It doesn’t make sense to hoard money when you have it as it can affect the long-term growth.

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Make smart investments to expand your company. Outsource low-value work so you can focus on what you’re good at and bring in more customers. Invest in automated tools (like CRM systems) to streamline your work and grow your team (especially customer service), so you can handle more business.

4. Procrasti-branding

A cohesive social media presence is essential but aiming for the perfect branding is the biggest time drain. Are you wasting time chasing the perfect logo, testing out thousands of website colors or designing sexy business cards? Stop procrasti-branding!

This is an easy one to upgrade as you make more money, but until then, focus on pitching your value, getting clients and making money. Repeat that process until you have enough to invest in professional talent.

5. Avoiding talking about price

One of the hardest things about being an entrepreneur is that nobody can tell you what to charge! Once you set your prices, you actually have to tell your clients (and not waver or offer discounts).

Learning to talk about money is a major block to overcome when you’re starting in business. Your prices are a reflection of your worth – but it’s also the combination of the value you provide and what the market can bear.

Pricing is one of the hardest business areas to get right – especially for women. A common sabotaging course of action is keeping your prices too low, keeping clients on old prices and most common – never increasing your prices. Your prices should increase as you get more experienced, better, more in demand and as you want to attract higher-end customers (and make more money). You just have to learn to communicate it.

As money mentor Kendall Summerhawk says, talking about your prices should be as easy and trigger free as saying “pass the salt.”

6. Ignoring your important business numbers

Many entrepreneurs have no idea what it really costs them to be in business, like monthly expenses, payroll costs or basic cost of goods sold.

You don’t have to do your own bookkeeping (in fact, that’s one of the first things to outsource), but you do need to know the vital basic numbers of your business. If you’re paying for advertising, you need to know your basic cost per lead or your overall profit for each sale.

7. Comparing yourself with others

Every business is unique. Your strengths are different from your competitors’, and your customers want you – not a similar version of you. Don’t get distracted because you see someone else trying something new or “better” than yours. Compete against yourself and your own goals. Don’t rush or spend on new gimmicks just because others are – you know your business better than anyone.

Do you identify with any of these? Don’t be hard on yourself. The first step is to recognise them. You’ll then be quicker to stop the behaviour (i.e. if you find yourself obsessing over new business cards instead of sending out invoices to clients) as soon you default to it.