Self-Employed Pitfalls to Avoid No:2

• Over-caution: learn to take risks and when to stick your neck out. The faint-hearted won’t progress. Can you accept that by starting your own business you are a risk-taker? Are you comfortable with risk-taking?

• Easy target-setting: while you need to be sensible, fear of failure may make you set your sights too low.

• Financial motivations: sounds bizarre, but if you think self-employment is a quick road to riches, you could be in for a rude awakening. Try the lottery or Pop Idol instead. Keep cash in sight, but let other reasons for self-employment be your prime motivators, at least to start with!

• Procrastination: or, put simply, over-indulging in thinking and planning and never getting on with it. Oh yes – time management for the self-employed is an important skill to master.

• Butterfly mind: in other words, one that flits from task to task. Self-employment can offer variety, just avoid all 57 of them!

• Cul-de-sacs: a polite way of saying keeping on course and not chasing too many other opportunities. Yes, keep an open mind to new ideas, but without losing focus.

• Poor delegation: seeing your business too much as ‘yours’ and precious to you. Others – and it could be your employees – can help you achieve your goals, so work with them.

• Not watching the opposition: it exists and it wants to take your customers away. Keep an eye out; remember that your customers always have a choice. Never, ever fall into the trap of believing that you have no competition. You are too sensible for that surely? Your competition may not be direct. Just remember that customers always have a choice how and where to spend their cash.