When a company grows quickly and everything is spinning, it is easy to be misled into believing that you know everything about what you are doing. My view of entrepreneurship is exactly that: sometimes you feel like a king, but sometimes you also feel completely worthless.
When you miss a major pitch, lose an important client, or something else goes wrong, it is easy to feel completely useless. In those situations, it can be worth reflecting on what you have actually succeeded with, because in most companies you get a bit of both. The same applies when you are feeling on top of the world. I find that many people who have succeeded with something in entrepreneurship suddenly believe they can do everything, and I can probably recognize that in myself as well. That is why we are going to look at mistakes we have made and what we have learned, if anything, from them.
Top 3 mistakes we made at Brath
1. Wrong partners
Getting into bed with the wrong person is stupid. Sometimes it happens anyway, and we are no exception to having made that mistake. A good example is when we invested in an interior design store. We were all happy and excited, but it turned out that we were a poor fit. After about six months, we terminated the agreement, and it was not without feeling deceived, which was probably true for everyone involved.
The lesson we have learned from this is that the right person is just as important as the right product. A business partner is someone you have to live with, and therefore it needs to be someone you get along with. As a result, we are now much more careful with our partners.
2. Bad hires
Hiring the wrong person, even if it is a trial employment or a short-term role, can seriously harm a company. We have made several such bad hires, and every time we have paid the price. Not only do you fail to get what you expected, but the effect can also be negative, sometimes significantly so.
Becoming good at recruiting is difficult, especially if you need to hire many people. Good routines, the right interview questions, and a strict process are what we believe to be the solution. At least, that is the lesson we have learned.
3. Half-hearted affiliate efforts
Since the beginning, we have made a number of half-hearted affiliate efforts. That was not the intention, but so many other things demanded our time. We have not had the energy to care about our brokerage sites or hotel sites at all since the company started; clients are what have taken the time. In the end, a site earns the revenue it deserves, and if you do not actively work with SEO, you cannot expect to rank either. That is probably how it has gone with all of those sites. Altogether, the revenue is perhaps around SEK 10,000 per month from something that could have become something really good. It did not.
What can you learn from that? Well, perhaps that if you are going to do something, you should do it properly. We have probably put those plans on ice entirely. Instead, we are prioritizing our core business.
As you can understand…
As you can surely understand, these have been costly mistakes for us. The company has suffered from the fact that we, perhaps especially I, have made poor decisions. An important detail is that this has not prevented us from growing, and that is probably the message I want to send with this post. Things move forward anyway, it is human to make mistakes, and it is not the end of the world.
