As 2023 came to an end, I took a step back not just to reflect on the year, but on my past 9 years of building businesses. I have made countless mistakes. But I’m deeply grateful they led me to sharpen my SEO expertise and eventually start SEO With Senthil.

Still, reflection matters: as awareness helps us grow and avoid repeating the same missteps. So I carved out some quiet time to answer a few tough questions:

• What were the biggest and most costly business mistakes I have made?
• Learning from my past experiences, how am I doing business differently today?

Let’s dive in!

My 5 Biggest Business Mistakes In Life 

• Big Mistake #1: Chasing After Success
• Big Mistake #2: Choosing Wrong Business Ideas 
• Big Mistake #3: Mismanaging Finances
• Big Mistake #4: Poor Time Management
• Big Mistake #5: Overworking at the Cost of My Health

Big Mistake #1: Chasing After Success

While this may sound silly, I remember how in my 20s, me and my other co-founders were chasing after success and money without pausing to reflect, think or connect. During our early days in business, not only were we new to the world of business and lacked experience, we also rushed into critical decisions without thinking about them thoroughly. Despite 2 of my co-founders having first class honours degrees in Singapore’s top ranking universities and me doing a business degree, we made poor business decisions such as: 

• Choosing wrong business ideas (See Big Mistake #2)
• Moving from one business idea to another (See Big Mistake #2)
• Serving our interests over our customers interests
• Mismanaging finances (See Big Mistake #3)
• Poor time management (See Big Mistake #4)
• Overworking at the cost of our health (See Big Mistake #5)

Many of these poor decisions were not made due to lack of intellectual capability but haste and impatience to make more money and achieve success faster (which ironically pulled us back further and further). If we took things slowly, we could even have spoken to entrepreneurs and founders with more experience than us to get their insights, before moving into many of these costly decisions hastily. 

Big Mistake #2: Choosing Wrong Business Ideas 

As cliche as it may sound, working on business ideas for the sake of abundance of “profit and money” (and without real interest in the industry) is a recipe for business disaster. What you need is passion, a clear vision, and clarity on where you are headed – without these, you may likely end up doing 10 things at one time with mediocrity or you will give up during challenging times. 

Here are ALL the businesses ideas I chose wrongly and worked on, and why they were wrong

• 2 Plus Group Pte Ltd (Started in December 2014):
  • Me and 6 other adults started 2 Plus Group Pte Ltd right after a 3 day WordPress Website Creation & SEO course we had attended.
  • Without any knowledge or interest in the cleaning industry, we created and built SEO optimized content on a website offering cleaning services, which started ranking on Google Page 1 for less competitive keyword search terms in the cleaning niche.
  • Despite early traction and finding a cleaning partner to fulfill our customers’ needs, we decided to sell the business for a small fee and gave up within barely 5 months (for reasons unknown)
• The Noteway Design & Print (Started in December 2014):
  • We started The Noteway in our university campus with 6 of us sitting around a canteen table, throwing out random business ideas and voting for our favourite ones.
  • The idea which won the majority vote: customising paper notebooks for individuals. This idea failed because not only did it have low demand, it also was logistics heavy and something we were all not passionate about.
  • We pivoted the idea to try and make more money by doing bulk notebook printing and t-shirt printing. Eventually, The Noteway shut down due to 2 key reasons I talk about in this article here. 

• Streaks & Strokes Pte Ltd (Started in January 2019):
  • One of my co-founders of The Noteway Design & Print came back after his corporate team bonding activity and said “A lot of companies are doing team bonding to paint on canvases. But that is so boring. Why don’t we make use of our t-shirt printing expertise and create our own fabric paints usings our printing ink? This way, we can introduce painting on t-shirts and tote bags instead and make lots of money!”
  • That was the beginning of Streaks & Strokes art studio. Even though it was a great business idea, we were not interested or skilled in art ourselves.
  • So when the first major storm hit our business in the form of covid-19, we crumbled. Here is the full story of our closure of Streaks n Strokes during Covid-19.
  • Thankfully in July this year, I found a partner with interest in art to handle the operations and logistics of the business while I handle the marketing and sales.
  • As of March 2024, I have sold Streaks n Strokes art studio and you can read more about it here.

• Hearty Spices (March 2020)
  • While we were not interested in art, we were interested in healthy eating.
  • My wife had came up with a spice mix recipe that could be mixed with milk to make a tasty, refreshing and healthy alternative to coffee.
  • While Streaks n Strokes was struggling with debt, we wanted to start a business to support our daily living expenses and people’s health (in the middle of the pandemic)
  • We believed that with the fundamentals we had learnt in Business Mastery by Tony Robbins and “extra optimistic projections” for our healthy spice mix business, good profits and a decent salary would be something we could achieve in as little as 6 months.
  • We achieved some small milestones like selling over 100 packets of our latte mix online using Paid Facebook Advertising Strategies and getting our product into 1 outlet of NTUC Fairprice, Singapore’s largest supermarket chain.
  • Paid Facebook advertising costs started increasing with time and eating up our profits, logistical and operational workload was high and we were far from our “over optimistic” targets to draw a salary and sustain a living while running the company full time.
  • So in barely 8 months, my wife had to call it quits and go back to a full time career in software engineering.
  • Her departure left a huge gap in the company in areas such as operations and product innovation. My strengths (such as SEO and copywriting) did not align with what the company needed at that time as well. Eventually, I sold off the company.

• The Noteway Gifts (Pivoted in March 2022):
  • Thanks to great SEO done for thenoteway.com back in 2015, we never shut down thenoteway.com despite closing our t-shirt printing business.
  • I turned The Noteway’s website into a gift blog which drives me affiliate revenue every month.
  • Though I worked on this gift blog for some time, again I lost interest in it to grow it further because I am neither a gift geek nor do I like fancy gifts myself. 
  • The business model was weak because the margins for being an affiliate for gifts are extremely low, often times not even worth the effort to grow the blog.

Big Mistake #3: Mismanaging Finances

This business mistake left the deepest and most painful impact on my life, because we spent money that we did not have carelessly . We took 3 business loans one after another which accumulated to $160,000.

• $50,000 DBS Business Loan for The Noteway in January 2018
• $40,000 Grab Business Loan for Streaks n Strokes in January 2019
• $70,000 DBS Business Loan for Streaks n Strokes in January 2020

Though banks make the interest rates appear small, you end up paying a lot more than you think considering the interest is compounded monthly. Worst still, we spent over 80% of the money we borrowed on non revenue generating activities like:

• Buying expensive equipment
  • We bought costly printing equipment to insource printing for The Noteway Design & Print.
  • For some equipment we bought, we were hoping to get a government subsidy that we never did.
  • Eventually, we closed down The Noteway due to 2 Key Reasons that you can read about here.
• Renovation & furniture
  • We spent over 50k for renovation and furniture for Streaks n Strokes art studio
  • It was all wasted considering we could not keep up with our rent and had to close down our studio during the Covid19 pandemic.
• Business Mastery by Tony Robbins
  • We spent about 30k for Business Mastery by Tony Robbins in 2020.
  • Even though we learnt 10 Powerful Lessons from Business Mastery which I wrote about here, we purchased it at a time we could not afford it
• Renting an office and studio
  • We rented out a large office space for The Noteway and a large art studio space for Streaks n Strokes
• Hiring more than we could afford
  • We hired full time staff in almost every department, even to insource t-shirt printing and run events
  • Many of these positions could have been filled up by part timers or freelancers
  • We also drew and paid higher salaries than we could afford considering the stage of our business

While we did not feel the pinch of recurring costs like renting and hiring during the good months (when t-shirt printing enquiries came pouring in and when our art studio was filled with customers), we ended up tapping into debt for these recurring costs during the bad months. We also focused on our profit and loss statement and neglected our cash flow statement which should have been as important or even more important. 

Big Mistake #4: Poor Time Management

During my early days of working on my businesses full time, I remember spending countless hours on the business often during weekdays, weekends and even burning the midnight oil. Unfortunately, work seemed to be never ending – supplier issues, HR problems, customer enquiries, founder disagreements. Despite doing so much of work to the point of overworking, we never achieved significant milestones that were sustainable long term. Because I was spending a lot of time on “non needle moving tasks”.

According to Brendon Burchard in his recent talk that I watched, “non needle moving tasks” for a business are tasks that will not bring the business significant traction in the short or long term. I further broke down non needles moving tasks for a business as follows:

Non Needle Moving Tasks For Founders

• Non essential meetings with staff
• Tasks that you hired staff for (if you have staff) – E.g. Payroll, Liaising with Suppliers & Customers, Inventory & Stock Keeping, Social Media, Emails, Designing, Supplier Payments…
• Non essential tasks for a startup – E.g. Business Name, Business Logo, Trying to be perfect in content you put out…

As for the needle moving tasks for a business, I break it down under rule #4 of how I approach business today below. While a lot of my time was spent on non needle moving tasks, not enough time was spent on needle moving tasks that would have helped to grow/systemise my business. 

Big Mistake #5: Overworking at the Cost of My Health

While allocating most of my time on the business and the remainder of my time in my relationship, the easiest thing to neglect was my health. I did not spend any time exercising. I did not rest and sleep enough. I ate without much thought. And finally I ended up visiting many doctors for numerous health problems including skin problems, gastrointestinal problems and severe upper back issues. My health problems were significant considering that I was in my 20s. 

Was doing more work and “hustling” worth the discomfort, time, money and lack of productivity that came as a result? 

Definitely not. 

While these 5 mistakes cost my business so much more than I would have expected, I decided to turn these regrets into learning points for myself and for others following similar entrepreneurial paths.

How am I doing business differently today?

• Rule #1: Choosing Business Ideas Aligned To My Passion & Strengths
• Rule #2a: Obsessing Over Offering Great Value For Free 
• Rule #2b: Obsessing Over Client Satisfaction
• Rule #3: Prioritizing Finances
• Rule #4: Spending More Time on Needle Moving Tasks
• Rule #5: Working on my Holistic Health

Today, I do business with the 5 new rules below. While these rules produce the most results for me, you got to find your own rules that work best for you and your business. Because every person is different and so is every business.

Rule #1: Choosing Business Ideas Aligned To My Passion & Strengths

I am so thankful for finding something to pursue that I am passionate about – that of helping other small business owners in their entrepreneurship journey with my skills and experience in SEO. It is the reason I started SEO with Senthil. It makes me get out of bed with excitement every day and it has helped me get through my toughest days. 

Rule #2a: Obsessing Over Offering Great Value For Free 

By choosing a business idea aligned to my passion, I also find myself willing to give away my best content and ideas for free. I have created and released so many SEO freebies for business owners who cannot afford working with me one on one yet.

• I spent weeks creating my 5 Step SEO Checklist that helped me rank for 100s of keywords on Google Page 1 and make over a million dollars in revenue for my own businesses.
• I ran a free community for founders looking to grow their business with SEO here. (I no longer run this community)

• I also released a free SEO Made So Shockingly Simple Mini Course on YouTube covering the foundational building blocks of SEO that can make or break your Google ranking.

Publishing free content and giving away free downloadables is also a great way to create awareness and interest around your product and service offerings and start building a relationship with your potential customers. I share more about the 8 stages of a customer journey in my LinkedIn post here. 

Rule #2b: Obsessing Over Client Satisfaction

While I was chasing monetary success in the past, I forgot that all I needed to do was push for client results and satisfaction. If I delight my customers, my business will grow. This has been my motto for Strategic SEO Academy and has helped me achieve great results for my clients and get many referrals as well.

Rule #3: Prioritizing Finances

Unlike any business I have ventured into in the past, one of the first things I did with SEO With Senthil was to register for a Xero account, the accounting software I am most familiar with. Even though it costs me 30 to 50 dollars each month, reconciling transactions each month is a breeze and it keeps me on top of my finances. Furthermore, I am very careful with where I spend my money, especially recurring ones that I do not use fully. 

For example, some time back, I noticed I was paying $29 USD a month for Paperform Quiz Maker. I had one SEO profitability potential quiz built on Paperform, but only a tiny percentage of my subscribers were using it. More importantly, though the quiz came up with 3 different profitability potential levels for quiz takers, it could not explain the results or provide any customised advice. 

As a result, I canceled my under-utilised monthly plan with PaperForm.

This year, I have also been allocating a learning budget each month for upgrading my business skills with courses and/or coaching. I will utilise every course or resource I get really well first before purchasing the next one.

Rule #4: Spending More Time on Needle Moving Tasks

Now that I have a little baby boy, I have less time for work than ever before. But that also means that the only way I can get more done is by putting most of my time and energy on the most critical tasks for SEO with Senthil.

I do this with a simple project management tool like Trello.

While in the past, I used to put every small task I had inside my Trello board, today I only record and track the needle moving tasks.

Needle Moving Tasks for Founders

• Doubling down on key revenue generating activities
• Replacing inefficient systems and processes with robust ones that are required for scaling (HR Systems, Client Management Systems, Inventory Management Systems, Financial Systems, Operational Systems) 
• Looking for and trying out new revenue growth opportunities and channels (until you find the next one that works)
• Improving and upgrading skills in areas such as Business Finance, Business Growth, Marketing and HR (especially if you have staff). This takes both learning the theory and practicing with implementation. Don’t forget that learning without implementation is useless!

Rule #5: Working on my Holistic Health

Being in business for over 10 years, I have realized that if you want to be productive in your business and perform at your highest levels, working on your physical health alone will not be enough. 

You will need to work on your holistic health – which includes physical, mental, emotional, social and even spiritual components of health. Today, I try to work on every aspect of my health by giving it my best in my diet, sleep, exercise and even spiritual growth.

While I have been far from perfect in implementing the above changes, I am starting to see significant improvements in my health, relationships and productivity in my business. If I continue to improve myself this way, I will be able to perform at my higher levels and impact the most people in a positive way.

If you enjoyed this article, please do share it with your friends and family!