I won’t go into specifics but I think these may have general application:

1)Neglecting tax planning- if all goes well and you make heaps of money, you don’t want to be handing back more than necessary to the tax man. I would say money spent on a GOOD accountant has a positive ROI of at least 1:20 (assuming you’re already conversant with tax - if not, ROI would be higher) With tax, you need to be prepared for the best.

2)underestimating regulatory compliance - just about every business requires dealing with government bureaucrats in some form. If there is a way they can delay your project or impose additional cost, they will find it. Don’t succumb to optimism bias. Be prepared to ride out long delays financially.

3)not cutting your losses with bad contractors- this can be hard, especially when you’ve sunk a lot of time and money at the planning stage. Sometimes no matter how good their references are, no matter how much you paid, they suck. Man up and don’t indulge your sunk cost fallacy. If the contractors aren’t up to the task, ditch them and start over. Take the loss on the chin, don’t chase your losses.

Made heaps more mistakes but these are my top 3. What are yours?

in business and investing i am really great at one thing, and that is buy high sell low

Thanks, Google.

Anyone else make any mistakes we can learn from?

Hiring too many women in child bearing age.

You lose them for 4 months on maternity leave and when they come back they're 75% less productive and always late / need to leave early because the baby.

Now I just hire them for easily replaceable positions like assistant and secretary. They aren't fit for important company roles.

One of my previous employers has 9 females and 1 male in his staff. My bet is that he believes women will stick around longer and less inclined to job hop.

Things I've learned:

Everyone is responsive until money is owed.
Don't let it get to the point of someone owing you money for work done.
Don't send the final to client until final payment is received.
Charge for everything you do, as most other professionals do.

^^^interesting points.

I would add to these:

Recognise that everyone has to get paid. Don’t nickel and dime the contractors to the point where they regret working with you. Basing decisions on the lowest cost provider can bite you as those people who can charge more, can do so for a reason.

Thankful to say I learned this one through observation rather than experience.

Don’t be the cheapest, these guys don’t last long and ruin it for everyone else.

Don’t know what OPie does but this does pertain to my field.

I run a service based business, so mistakes I see others doing that have helped me be successful:

1) The name of the game is SERVICE. Be prepared to eat things occasionally in order to please a customer unless it's clear abuse of your policy. It's way easier to keep an existing customer than find a new one.
2) Don't overcomplicate systems. Make things easy for yourself as much as possible and lower stress levels, even if it means paying slightly more overhead. For example, I use a payment provider that might lose me .5% in revenue but is seamless and effective for me and my customers. Your web site doesn't need to be super elaborate, it's basically a virtual business card unless you're booking/selling things online.
3) Keep your overhead as low as possible. COVID was the best thing for me because it forced me to move my business into my home and has been saving me over a thousand dollars a month in overhead. I lost some regular customers due to travel time but have since replaced them and now I'm much more profitable.

Choosing the wrong industry and not having a proper business plan would be 2 big ones that I’ve seen a few times.

That's a valid point but doesn't work in the end.

There's one mother who had 3 kids (4 months maternity leave each) I keep around

-Work starts at 7:30am but she comes in at 8:15am because she has to drop the kids off at school.

-Always on the phone with kid drama

-Has to leave early minimum once a week because kid drama

-Only get maybe 30% productivity from her

The reason she won't job hop and will be loyal is no other company will cut her the slack we do to take care of her kids. And the reason we keep her is because even at 30% productivity she's better than others at 100% productivity. Very creative and brilliant at what she does (design).

But she's a diamond in the rough. I laid off the rest of the new mothers because they became completely useless.

I thought you worked at a tire store?

Got out of a business recently

I severely underestimated the amount of risk I was taking

I also underestimated the amount of lifestyle/sacrifice needed.


Realised that the reward wasn’t worth it (to me), and also found a way to reap 90% of the reward with none of the risk (albiet less take home profit)




All about what you want out of life, it’s not all about total profit

Sad how 2/3 is just dealing with the fuking government. Imagine how good it must have been to be even a small-time merchant or craftsman a few hundred years ago?