Challenges of starting a business

Starting your own business comes with its own set of challenges. Sure the challenges also bring with them great and satisfying rewards, but they are still challenges. Entrepreneurs have to learn to deal with challenges whether they are just starting out of have been at it for a number of years.

Finding a way to establish a brand and meet customer expectations while at the same time ensuring that your business makes some profits is a challenge for both new and older entrepreneurs.

New entrepreneurs are also faced with some specific problems that can prove tough to overcome. So if you have a vision of becoming an entrepreneur, you need to be prepared for these following hurdles’

Abandoning Your Career

If you are going to put yourself wholeheartedly into starting a new business, you might find it rather overwhelming to deal with a professional career at the same time.

Sure, it might be possible for you to work on your business on the side, mostly during the weekends and week nights, but if you are hoping to grow significantly, you will have to let go of your job.

It is not easy to leave the comfort of a promising, steady, long-term job for the harsh and uncertain path of entrepreneurship.  The bad news is, there is no one way of addressing this except to think carefully about your decision and give credit to your instincts.

Financing

Entrepreneurs who have a few years of experience still find it tough to find funding for a new business. They however cannot compare to the newbie. They can take advantage of the pool of capital from selling an older business or decide to use revenue from their current ventures to fund a new one.

And even if their first venture didn’t do as well as they had hoped for, more experienced entrepreneurs have already built client connections that can give them an upper hand in a new enterprise.

In contrast, a new entrepreneur is just starting out. So everything they do, from coming up with funding methods to developing client connections, they have to do it from scratch.

Team Building

This can be especially tough if you have never had to manage a team before. Even if you have, it can still be stressful and difficult to pick up the right team for your startup.

In addition to picking team members wisely, you will have to take other aspects such as their culture fit and how much they will cost your new business.

It very challenging to carefully consider all these qualities when you are in a rush to fill these positions.

Being The Visionary

As the owner of your business, the role of coming up with ideas Is fully yours. Let’s say a new competitor emerges. It up to you to device ways in which you are going to beat them.

Whenever your team faces a challenge they consider too huge to handle, it will be your job to device a new plan to help your business move forward.

This require you to be able to think creatively and on your toes. The lesser your entrepreneurship experience, the more pressure you will feel from this challenge and the longer the time you will take to make a decision.

Dealing with The Unknown

How much profit will my business make? Is it possible to replace my previous paycheck and hopefully increase on it? how long will my business last? How will customers react to my product?

These are some of the questions that run through an entrepreneur’s mind. There are so many uncertainties and very few solid and reliable answers.  This is the case even for those startups that are based on great ideas and have all the resources you need(on theory).

This factor of the unknown means that your job security is not exactly secure and your long term plans will have to keep changing as new developments emerge.

Dealing with this uncertainty is one of the most challenging parts of being a new entrepreneur.

Loneliness

You won’t hear about this challenge very often. This however doesn’t mean that you won’t experience it.

 You will face some lonely days as an entrepreneur.

It won’t be like in your old job where you can rely on your team mates. You will have to put in hours of hard work, and in the beginning, you might not see your loved ones as often as you would like. Your employees too will be forced to remain at a bit of a distance.

Rule Making

Being the boss can be fun, but wait till you have to reinforce something.

Somewhere along the way, you will have to set up some rules for your business.

You will have to decide such things as how many days a worker should go for vacation and how complaints about fellow workers should be filed.

Although they don’t sound fun, and trust me, they are not fun to make either, these rules are necessary to ensure that there is order in your business.

 Decision Making

Here comes the most stressful challenge on the list.

As a new entrepreneur, you will have to make hundreds of decisions every single day. These will range from big decisions that directly impact your companies to smaller less consequential decisions.

It’s not uncommon for new entrepreneurs to suffer from decision fatigue. Especially if they we not prepared for the new level of stress.

Final Word

If you can find your way through these major challenges you will have made a significant step in your journey at an entrepreneur. Am not saying that you won’t stubble upon these obstacles later on, or that you won’t face other new challenges of a wide variety: but you will be more prepared to handle yourself in the uncertain startup period and that already puts you a step ahead of the competition.

Stay Awesome Stay Tuned

Your Personal Branding Coach

Hannah Muchuki Githuki