Entrepreneurship comes with as many rewards as it comes with challenges.
Regardless of whether you’re just beginning your career as an entrepreneur or you’re experienced, there are obstacles that will always resurface, such as establishing your company’s brand and authority, beating the competition, or making a profit.
However, if you’re a new entrepreneur, you’ll have a few unique obstacles that you must overcome.
Depending on your own strengths, your personality, and your business background, some of them will be easier to overcome than others.
In order to focus on these obstacles and not get distracted by administrative tasks, you may want to invest in a company formation agent. They’ll take care of the paperwork while you can focus on the big things.
Below I discuss six common obstacles faced by first time entrepreneurs, and how you can overcome them.
1. Abandoning your current career
For the vast majority of entrepreneurs, managing a steady job and your own entrepreneurial career is a difficult task. If you don’t have experience running a business, you should definitely consider abandoning your current career first. While this will give you more freedom to handle your new business, it will also remove your steady income, making it a hard trade off.
This is one of the biggest obstacles that you can face while trying to start your own business. It is especially important that you take your time and consider all the options before making such an important step. Many entrepreneurs fail the first time they try to start a business and chances are you could be one of them. If possible, take some precautionary measures. Perhaps you could try to hold on to your current job while your new business is still in its infancy.
Follow your instinct but don’t ignore the details.
2. Fatigue
While working your regular job, you have to stick to a schedule. In most cases, the job requires you to be present for 7-8 hours a day. You get sick days, paid holidays, and all the goodies. At the end of the week or at the end of the month, you get your pay check and the cycle starts again.
If you want to run your own business, everything you just read will change completely. There’s a vicious circle that you have to try to avoid as much as possible. Most young business owners tend to spend more hours working than their employees.
This happens because most young entrepreneurs believe that the business might immediately fail in their absence. Thus, they spend most of their weekdays and weekends at the office, trying to solve every problem and come up with every solution.
This might be effective at the beginning, but fatigue will eventually kick in and you might find yourself facing other problems.
In order to make the most of your business idea, you must find a balance between work and play. Otherwise you’ll end up exhausted and might even end up wanting to abandon everything.
3. Answering the big questions
There are no guarantees in entrepreneurship. From the biggest to the smallest, entrepreneurs have failed numerous times on their path to success. When starting a new business, you have to ask yourself a lot of questions.
These questions will help you create a better business plan and a recovery plan if necessary:
- Will the business survive in the long run?
- Will it be profitable?
- Will my customers be satisfied with the product?
- Will it bring a steady income?
Try to survey the market and your potential clients. Planning ahead as much as possible is a great way of knowing whether or not you can count on your new business for financial and social stability.
4. Financial issues
Getting the money required to start a new business is no easy task. Unless you’ve saved up enough money from working at your current or previous employer, chances are you are in need of finances. Your best option in this case is to find one or multiple investors. It won’t be easy but it will definitely help you achieve your business goals faster.
Having a great idea won’t be enough. You also need a well thought-out business plan and a rehearsed pitch to increase your chances of finding an investor. Just like the more experienced entrepreneurs, who already have an established network of potential investors, you’ll have to work hard and dedicate enough time and effort into creating a business that is attractive to investors.
5. Building your team
If you want to run your business solo, this might never be an obstacle for you. However, if you do want to have a few people helping you, you have to be able to choose the right ones and manage them accordingly.
When choosing the members of your new team, be sure to balance the costs and the benefits first. Secondly, be extra careful with their characters and personalities. A person could be absolutely fantastic at doing a certain task but if he or she lacks the interpersonal skills required to work in a small company, you won’t get much value from hiring them.
6. Making important decisions
Believe it or not, this is probably the most stressful challenge on this list. New entrepreneurs are forced to make hundreds of decisions a day, from big, company-impacting decisions, to tiny, hour-affecting ones. Decision fatigue is a real phenomenon, and most new entrepreneurs will experience it if they aren’t prepared for the new level of stress.
Final thoughts
There’s no hiding or avoiding some of these obstacles. You probably won’t face them all and even if you do, you probably won’t be facing them at the same time. However, you have to be aware of their existence and prepare for them as much as you can. There’s no easy road towards successful entrepreneurship.
If you have a great business idea, make sure you don’t let it go. The road may be bumpy and filled with obstacles, but the destination offers one of the most incredible views. To be fair, you’re taking your idea and you’re turning it into your job. Like Confucius said: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”.
Guest Author: Stefan Paulo is a young entrepreneur. He is passionate about digital technologies and trying to implement them in the sphere of education. He observes all the news connected with online tools and is always ready to discuss them.
Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. As always, all thoughts and opinions are the author’s and have been edited in accordance with our strict editorial guidelines.