I will just say that i agree with Morten K , failure is an option ! Here are few resources you must see

Gambit Co-Founder Reveals His Biggest Entrepreneurial Mistakes And What He Learned – with Noah Kagan

A Decade’s Worth of Entrepreneurial Advice

Pursuing Your Passion in Business

Top 10 Ways to Fail at Your Startup

watch those videos , and your mind will be blown away

Not knowing how to cope with failure, and bring success from it. A bit abstract but that's the general concept.

Hi Jenny,

All excellent tips. Research, apply your creativity, don't let fear make mistakes for you, and manage cash.

To me, the key to avoiding failure starts before you do anything in your actual business. It's your personal resolve and committment that I feel is your most important assets.

To define your goals, make sure your business meets those goals, and support your personal belief in your business with facts.

Planning is key. In order to plan effectively, you must conduct some research.

What do you need to provide your services? Who will you provide them to? Who are you competing against? What makes you better; gives you an 'edge'? How are you going to reach your prospects/potential clients? Answering these kinds of questions gives you a basis to begin a business plan.

A solid business plan lets you SEE your ideas on paper, with some kind of evidence to support or refute your guesses. This is the only way to 'look before you leap'.

You can download my free research outline at www.abusinessmentor.com

It should certainly guide you in the right direction.

Good Luck!

Not standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before. Read, read, read, and read some more. If you can find someone in your specific industry, read them. Read books on business in general. Apply what you learn. Get a copy of one of the eMyth books and read it (if funds are tight use Inter Library Loan).

Chances are you will fail on the first attempt. But that's okay :) Most entrepreneurs start up several businesses and fail, before finally getting it right. The following things might seem obvious, but you wouldn't be the first entrepreneur to fall in to them:

Focus on cashflow and getting your money in from clients: It doesn't work if your clients owe you 20.000 USD but you have 0 USD on the bank account.

Get accounting / bookkeeping right from the beginning: This is a very common mistakes. You are too busy working with your clients, that you neglect keeping your books in order. The result is that 6 months down the line, you have an absolute mess in your records, which will take an accounting many costly hours to figure out. You need good records, to be able to see exactly how much money you are actually making (or loosing!).

Keep going as long as you possibly can. If you still fail, persist even longer next time :)

Pay your suppliers on time, and insist on prompt payment from clients.

Do not be picky with clients at first, take anything you can get.

If you are working 16 hours a day, it's time to hire someone. If you don't have the money to hire someone, your business model is not working. Then you'll have to revise!

There's lots and lots of other things to keep in mind. You might want to check out the forums at www.youngentrepreneur.com for more tips.

The most common one is

• Relying upon one side of picture

Will fill in with what´s not been said, but very important and that is:

• Trying to make it perfect before the launch - dont! Open the doors, take feedback, improve, and keep on improving. There is no such thing as perfect product or service. Once you think you have that, you loose the hunger and you got eaten up instead.

Plan ahead before you start have some rigid rules regarding payment. I disagree with previous posts regarding "take on all customers" the 80/20 rule is well worth observing FYI

20% of your clients A will give you 80% of your business AND 20% of your clients C will create 80% of your headaches. Categorize clients A, B make C's pay up front or overprice services so that they go elsewhere (somebody else gets the headache then!)

Get good terms and pay suppliers promptly that way you will always be their A client and they should therefore treat you as a VIP (We do with all of our suppliers and we can rely on them to pull out all stops when we have an urgent need or have to come into a project with tight margins)

Set highest of standards, keep them, and use continual improvement techniques, listen to and work for your clients and with any luck they will stay loyal to you (no guarantee but it goes a long way to achieve it!)

Personal BRANDING - do it well don't go down cheap appearance brand routes its an image and reputation you need to build and keep. remember " Cheap is always dear!"

Good luck with your venture