The road of an entrepreneur is filled with challenges and obstacles that others don’t necessarily face. And it’s lonely sometimes, especially when you feel like you’re burning both ends. Others don’t understand your stresses, and it’s even harder to sift through the nuggets of advice to find clarity and insight.
But you don’t have to isolate yourself in a silo, all by yourself. As an entrepreneur, you are a rare breed of professional. However, you’re not alone in your day-to-day struggles. There are other business builders out there who, like you, faced incredible challenges. And in today’s marketplace, the rules have changed even more for those who strike out on their own ventures.
If you need peace of mind, keep reading. Today, we’ll share a few of those challenges that only today’s entrepreneurs are facing. Hopefully, you’ll resonate with these obstacles and recognize that you’re not on an island. And better yet, we’ll share methods and tips for overcoming those business obstacles so that you can enjoy the rewarding view from the very top of the entrepreneurial mountain.
Entrepreneur Challenges Broken Down into 4 Groups
Of course, everyone’s challenges will be unique, based on various personal and professional experiences. For example, your line of work and entrepreneurial niche might present specific obstacles from other business owners. But your personal experiences play a role in how you address issues and problem-solve, too.
When you’re trying to climb a mountain, standing at base camp looking up can be downright scary. But when you break your climb into manageable steps, with smaller goals that work your way up, it’s easier to tackle. Look to separate your entrepreneurial challenges into four categories. From there, you can divide and conquer based on manageable steps. Focus on one challenge at a time, allocating it into the appropriate category.
Mindset Challenges
Entrepreneurs can easily suffer from imposter syndrome. Second-guessing and constant unhealthy self-comparison can negatively impact your ability to lead your young business. Self-doubt can tank your motivation, too. Look to identify if your current challenges are rooted in mindset perspectives, and then seek to find mentorship to coach your mindset.
Business Challenges
Entrepreneurs feel those routine business challenges differently than employees. When your business is facing industry, operational, or sales-related obstacles, you will carry those stresses personally. Identify if your obstacles are business related and then find new partnerships, explore new software solutions, and augment your teams to help you overcome them from a business perspective.
Finance Challenges
If you’re struggling with finances and money, which is a common challenge entrepreneurs face, look to focus on finance-related solutions. Whether it’s company earnings or your personal household finances, explore the two ways to improve your money – cut unnecessary expenses or drive improved earnings.
Life Challenges
When you run your own business, your business is your life. So, when life throws you other lemons, like health concerns, family drama, or situational stress, it can be overwhelming to the entrepreneur. Recognize if your obstacles are life or business-related. And if you’re juggling life dynamics, focus on solutions to relieve those non-business-related stresses and keep them from seeping into your business world.
Obstacles An Entrepreneur Faces More Often
Remember those aforementioned categories as we dive into some of these obstacles. These challenges can represent all four but tend to be the most common for entrepreneurs.
1. Hiring Talent
You were inspired to start your business with a vision that it would grow and be wildly successful. But you can’t do it without bringing in more staff. And hiring, especially in today’s marketplace, can be downright maddening! When your success weighs heavily on your ability to find and attract phenomenal workers without breaking the bank, you can carry unbelievable stress.
Solution: Instead of trying to hire five salespeople, two admins, and an IT department, focus on hiring one phenomenal HR professional or powerhouse recruiter for your business. You find one and let that person use their expertise to build a hiring process and onboarding system that works.
2. Delegating Tasks
When you’re used to running the business by yourself, wearing all the hats required to make it happen, it can be challenging to learn how to loosen the reins and delegate. However, not delegating will only stifle your business growth, so it’s definitely an obstacle to overcome.
Solution: Start small by delegating time-consuming tasks and administrative duties to others on your team. Evaluate your strongest team members and prepare them for more responsibilities and build training materials so they know how to approach more managerial tasks the same way you would. Learn to trust key employees so that when you do relegate duties, you don’t micromanage. Once you give authority, step back and let them have it, evaluating only the results.
3. Entrepreneur Analysis Paralysis
When you’re an employee working for someone else, your decision-making boils down to doing what you’re told or trained to do. But when you’re running your own business, every decision can present entrepreneurial risks with heavy consequences. And you often take way longer to weigh options before officially pulling the trigger. This can be a smart approach, carefully thinking everything through before acting. But – if you stall too long, you can fall victim to analysis paralysis.
Solution: Save your big thinking for big decisions. Don’t sweat the small stuff, and make smaller decisions quickly. Don’t dwell too long on the “what ifs” and embrace risks and rewards as a natural characteristic of being in business for yourself. Embrace mistakes as learning curves. Spend time on contingency plans and be willing to take the leap.
4. Entrepreneur Work-Life Imbalance
Entrepreneurs who love their businesses will do whatever it takes, like anything, to bring their vision to life. And that usually calls for 60 or 80-hour workweeks, late nights, weekend calls, and pavement-pounding sales efforts. And in comes the work-life imbalance. If you’re losing sleep, not eating right, or stressing for extended weeks at a time, it’s not healthy. And how well you treat the “leader” of your company will determine the success of the company.
Solution: Give yourself permission to take breaks and step away from the business. Take the vacation. Make rules about making it home for dinner. Pack healthy snacks and bottles of water. And when your body says it’s tired, give yourself permission to sleep in once in a while. Keep the leader of your company healthy, and your company will, in turn, be healthy.
5. Entrepreneur Time Management
Along the same line of work-life balance is the challenge of improving time management. Every minute of your available time needs to be productive and business-advancing. And it’s challenging, especially when you get rabbit-holed into chasing problems, putting out fires, or exploring new ideas. Stop and critically think about how much of your workday is wasted on non-productive activities. (Reminder, those wellness efforts aren’t wasted – take the nap. It’s needed.)
Solution: Explore the menial tasks that suck the hours out of your day and look to delegate them to others. Outsource social media management, for example, so that you can focus on core competencies. Also, look for software solutions and automation to make light work of tedious tasks, including accounting, marketing, and project management.
6. Raising Capital and Finding Investors
Entrepreneurs will often seek startup capital and recurring investors to keep the big idea in motion. And even if you’ve managed to secure initial financing, raising capital, cash flow management, and finding investors continues to be a challenge. Finding resources and selling your genius business plan can be stressful, especially if your business model folds without them.
Solution: Develop and keep working on a strategic marketing plan that is dedicated to building support and awareness of your business. This is an investor-facing strategy, promoting ROI potential, niche market differentiators, and your credentials as a worthy leader. Build momentum with your efforts to stay top-of-mind with key investors, stakeholders, and financing options.
7. Sales Struggles
Depending on what business you started, you’re likely an expert in anything OTHER than sales. And it can be an overwhelming and constant struggle to force yourself into selling and driving sales. Equally challenging is knowing what sales skills and techniques work versus those that don’t work within your business model. You could be leaving business-boosting money on the table, failing to recognize a conversion opportunity, or selling yourself out of a sale and not even knowing it.
Solution: You don’t have to be a sales pro to be effective in sales. No one anywhere in the universe has the same passion and vision for your business like you do. So, start with your own elevator pitch and build that passion into sales training materials and collateral. Then hire or outsource your sales initiatives, from cold calling to online orders and beyond to those who are experts in selling similar products or services. You can’t be a racehorse if you’re a donkey. Don’t try to be a sales master when you can hire one and train them.
8. Impatience and Self-Doubt
As an entrepreneur, you’re your own worst critic. You’ll place overwhelming demands on yourself, unlike anyone else, and hold yourself to impossible standards. This impatient nature and recurring self-doubt can be detrimental to your business’s success. And not resolving these mindset obstacles will have you headed for certain burnout and failure.
Solution: Consider finding a business mentor or building a support system around you. Learn and understand that building any business is just going to take time. Be mindful that patience needs to be a natural aspect of leadership. Stop wasting energy on negative insights or demanding self-imposed standards. That energy will be better served elsewhere.
9. Marketing and Networking
Sales is one thing. But then, developing a robust marketing strategy that finds, attracts, and builds customers requires a completely different set of skills. Branding, marketing, and networking need step-by-step roadmaps, analytics, and ongoing changes. And as an entrepreneur, all those responsibilities fall squarely on your shoulders.
Solution: Just like you would with any other aspect of running a business that requires skills you don’t have – outsource it! Hire marketing or branding professionals, who are different from sales, to help create your roadmap and strategy. Seek the assistance of third-party pros to augment every execution step that you can’t facilitate yourself. Convey your business mission and vision to these key professionals and let them use their expertise to execute marketing, branding, and networking efforts brilliantly.
10. Limited Learning
Over the course of your traditional career, you’ve been able to educate yourself, learning the ins and outs of running a business from others. You’ve absorbed knowledge and expertise from other leaders. You’ve watched co-workers and managers make mistakes, recognizing what not to do within your own business model. And before you launched your business, you conducted all your own industry research into the market, preparing for success. But another challenge that entrepreneurs face is a limited ability to learn AFTER they’ve started their businesses. There just aren’t enough learning hours in the day when you’re wearing all the hats, handling all the things. And when you’re the leader, who’s left to teach you new insights?
Solution: As part of your business success plan, incorporate time and effort into improving your skills. Sign up for the course online about eCommerce. Go to the industry conferences and meet new people. Be mindful to always be in a capacity to learn from someone, and commit to continued learning as another strength in your leadership cap.
Entrepreneurship is a journey with loads of challenges and obstacles along the way. And much of what you’ll face is very different from what traditional employees face. Know you’re not alone, and keep this guide as a reference and motivation to keep going! And when your business needs help with content, you can always rely on the brilliantly dedicated team of wordsmiths at Ghost Blog Writers to take the reins. We can take your entrepreneurial vision and transform it into engaging and effective content. Let us handle your blogs, white papers, web content, newsletters, and social media content. You can focus on climbing that entrepreneurial mountain and on what you do best – being a successful entrepreneur of a successful business!