12 Bad Habits that Could Kill Your Business

What you do repeatedly and what becomes your behavioral routine that tends to occur unconsciously is considered a habit. Good habits are helpful to life, while bad habits could be destructive.

When it comes to doing business, whether it is small or big, it is important that we do our best to break our bad habits that could be deadly to our business. However, we cannot overcome something we don’t know. Hence, the first step to breaking those negative habits is to actually realize that we are having them.

So let’s have a personal reality check if we have any of the following 12 bad habits that could kill or ruin our business.


1. Lying

Do you tell the truth to your customers? Do you deliver what you promise to them when you promote or advertise your business? How about your employees? Are you showing honesty and giving them the benefits you’ve promised when you are convincing them to work in your company?

Lying can be a habit. And if you are used to lie, it could be deadly to your business. If you always lie to your customers and employees, you cannot earn their trust, loyalty and confidence, which are very important to make your business healthy. This bad habit can give your business a bad word-of-mouth from disappointed and dissatisfied customers. It can also make your employees unmotivated and unproductive.

To get rid of lying, you have to practice honesty with all sincerity. It must start within you. Don’t lie to yourself. Realize what you’ve promised to yourself. Report yourself faithfully – declare the right taxes. If you can cheat yourself, then how much more other people?


2. Fearfulness

Doubts and worries kill a business because they hinder opportunities that our business needs to grow. They stop us from investing money, time and effort in a fear that they might only go wasted. They prevent us from getting out from our comfort zone and reach our maximum potential.

Being worried can be a habit if you will not do something to overcome it. But how can we get rid of our worries? How can we overcome the habit of fearfulness? The answer is to develop another habit – the habit of boldness and acquiring knowledge. Remember that fear is the result of uncertainty or the lack of knowledge. Hence, to overcome that darkness, you have to light your mind with wisdom and knowledge.


3. Lack of respect

Respect is an important element of a good and lasting relationship. In business where good relationships should be maintained with our customers and employees, the habit of not showing respect will certainly destroy those relationships, and eventually our business.

Everyone deserves his or her due respect: a customer, an employee or even yourself. Hence, respect your consumers’ feedback, your workers’ right to welfare, and give yourself self-respect. Here are two of our articles that will give you ideas on how to show respect to your customers and how to earn your employees’ respect.


4. Not paying attention

You might be paying and investing money on your business and expecting high return. But business is not all about paying cash or its equivalent. Business is also about paying attention – detailed attention.
Being busy is not an excuse to spend your precious time for ensuring that your decision and actions are heading the right way. You have to pay attention to what your customers and workers are telling.

You don’t just start producing a product because you think it will give you more profit. But you have to listen to and analyze your customers to know what kind of product they really need.

You don’t just assign your employees to a certain task because it is what will save you from labor cost. But you have to evaluate them to know how to assign them to tasks that will optimize their talents and skills.

Most business owners also have a bad habit of not paying attention to what their body is telling them. Like for example when needing some rest or sleep to give our body the time to recover from the stressful work and business activities. Here, we also have to pay attention to our health. This is because not paying attention to a good health isn’t only deadly to our business, but also to our precious life.


5. Arrogance

Pride and arrogance could kill your business because they drive away friends and followers. Arrogant business owners irritate customers. Proud and conceited managers demoralize their subordinates. That is why if you don’t what to ruin your business, you have to learn how to humble yourself in front of people. Remember that good leadership and human resource management are vital to business success. And if you wish to be a good leader and a manager, you have to be humble to inspire and motivate people.


6. Laziness

How this bad habit would kill your business seems to be self-explanatory. But to ring a bell, here are some specific inauspicious things you would do that will destroy your business if indolence is one your habits:

• You are lazy to wakeup early in the morning to start your work.
• You are lazy to read business books, magazines, blogs and other resources that will help you improve your knowledge in business.
• You are lazy to read and understand your financial and accounting reports.
• You are lazy to organize your stuff inside and out of your computer to make your daily activities run efficiently.
• You are lazy to make a business and marketing plan.
• You are lazy to check if your plans are running well.
• You are lazy to monitor and evaluate your employees performance
• You are lazy to analyze your customers and market

Those things above are only some of the things that can ruin your business courtesy of laziness. In order to stop this habit, you have to change your lifestyle, which may involve developing your physical, mental, and emotional strength… and endurance. Laziness is a hard habit to break. But if you will start breaking it earlier, the faster you can break it. So just do it!


7. Greediness

The true essence of doing business for me is to serve and help people. If one business person is always greedy, then his greed would destroy the essence and soul of his business. Greed can be one person’s habit, especially if he’s already practicing it regularly. A businessman, entrepreneur or marketer can be greedy if he will always think of his self-interest rather than the interest of others.

Greed has something to do with the love of money, which could really kill a business. When a business person only thinks of the profit he will earn without prioritizing the satisfaction of his customers, his business will not live long because customers will not come back to buy his products again.

A greedy boss would not also make the people in his company united, motivated and productive.

A greedy business partner is not also a reliable person to deal business with.

So make yourself selfless by starting to think what you can do for others.

Isn’t what you do to others is what they will also do to you?


8. Sadness

Always feeling sadness can be a silent killer of your business. It can knock you, the people you managed, and your business down. It can destroy your enthusiasm and will to succeed. Remember that you cannot motivate and uplift other people, especially your team, if you are always feeling down. Therefore, have the habit of being positive and being cheerful. Always find a reason to be happy and thankful. Be grateful that you are alive and you are helping the lives of other people.


9. Gluttony

Everything that is too much can hurt us. Squandering can hurt our finances. Too much eating and drinking can also hurt our health, as well as our cash savings. Gluttony also destroys our self-discipline – an important virtue we need to succeed in our every endeavor. Hence, don’t gorge yourself on meat, wine, and women (for men). Learn how to be frugal and how to have self-control. Overcome gluttony if you don’t want to be shocked how your hard-earned money disappear in an instant.


10. Unpreparedness

If you don’t like terrible accidents or tragedies, then don’t make recklessness your habit. We may need to compete in the business world and even need to win in a race. But it’s not all about racing against time. We race against failure. Thus, we have to be prudent. We need to be calm and always come up with a plan.


11. Procrastination

Who’s not guilty of procrastination? If you’re habitually a procrastinator, you probably have a lot of pending tasks at this moment. Delaying the execution of your to do list will only result to work overload. In that situation, you tend to experience cramming and eventually… total failure.

Procrastination has many causes, which include hesitation, exhaustion, distraction, intimidation, self-defense, too much imagination, and unfavorable emotion. On the other hand, it also has cures, which include education, passion, concentration, companion, obligation, actualization, and motion. To learn more about the causes and cures of procrastination, you may read this interesting short post about the friends and enemies of procrastination.


12. Impatience

Patience is a great virtue. If you’re naturally and habitually a patient person, you are more likely to attain your goals. But if you’re the opposite, you are like a time bomb that is ticking to explode.

Impatience can easily make you give up on your goals, especially your long-term goals where there are more challenges to overcome.

The lack of tolerance can also make you easily angry with your subordinates. It pushes you to being wrathful instead of being gentle and understanding. Hatred corrupts a person, as well as the organization he leads.

Achieving success and lasting growth in business is a journey that needs a lot of patience. Thus, if you are lacking it, your business will only die at the middle of your journey.

Therefore, be patient by making it a habit. Make it a habit by practicing and training patience. Practice it by pushing a little bit harder everyday. Train your body, mind and emotion to be stronger and more enduring. Actually, healthy and cheerful person are a lot more patient than person who are distressed and exhausted.


Final thoughts

Bad habits are ruining our business, career and whole life silently. We may not notice them because they already become a big part of our life because of doing them repeatedly over the years. To overcome these bad habits, we need to change our lifestyle. And when we say changing lifestyle, it doesn’t only means doing your best to change it for a day. To change a lifestyle is to strive everyday until you form a new you.

Finally, forming a new you is forming a complete person… with new eyes, ears, heart, mind and spirit. Therefore, if for example you want to break the habit of procrastination, do your best to break the causes of your procrastination that you see (like watching TV), hear (like listening to gibberish talks), want (like your unachievable dreams), think (like your doubts and worries) and do (like your comfort zone).

In other words, get yourself completely out of that bad habit!