I am just starting my own projects but have been in the space for a while . However I would like to know what more experienced entrepreneurs struggle with that most people are not aware of?
Also how do you manage said difficulty or is there any solution?
What do you feel is the hardest part of entrepreneurship that most people don’t know about?
byu/digitalcapitalist41 inEntrepreneur
Posted by digitalcapitalist41
13 Comments
The lack of community. At work, you have coworkers. When you’re doing your own thing, often times you have no one.
Self funding all your pursuits. Incubators give advice on things you already know.
Private/Public seed capital partnerships want control and Board seats.
I have to leverage LOC’s to self fund.
Loneliness, feeling misunderstood, having a vision of the end but the sheer struggle to get to that vision and to get other people to see it, handling every aspect of the business from finance to marketing to product development to customer service (if you’re a bootstrapper), dealing with failure that can completely obliterate your life both financially and emotionally and having nothing to show for it after years of work, explaining what the hell you’ve been doing to employers when you need to get a job again, traction, traction, traction, traction, sales, sales, sales, sales, not knowing when to keep going and when to give up.
Imposter syndrome and self-doubt are hidden struggles many entrepreneurs face, but rarely talk about.
Ensuring you have adequate capital, managing cash flow, finding good bookkeeping/tax help
You will never get truly great advice. You’ll get smart people giving you high level advice, and some of that advice may actually help you improve something in your business. But nobody will know your company as well as you do, and nobody will take the time to learn your exact nuanced problem to try to help you solve it.
I thought when I got advisors I’d start getting actual focused considered advice. I thought when I went through an accelerator I’d finally learn go to market strategies that were better than my own. When I had investors I thought they’d be able to help me tweak my product for the perfect exit strategy. The reality is you likely won’t get genuinely good advice until your company is successful enough that you can pay for it via coaching, or through hiring incredibly talented executive level people.
Marketing, advertising, exposure. You can have the best product or service in the world but if no one knows about it, they will never do business with you. Properly marketing as a new business will take a chunk of your budget when you may not have a big budget.
Keeping all of the wheels spinning at the proper speed at the same time.
You’ve got to know your product, your industry, and your customers. I was in construction, so understanding billing cycles, when to buy materials to get the product fabricated and delivered to site by a certain date. Forecasting sales needs 12 months in advance. Staffing up based on work that you won’t get paid for, for 90 days. Understanding accounting, certified payroll/prevailing wage jobs. Insurance. Employee dynamics. Family issues.
A small business entrepreneur wears every hat in the business at one time or another. Others fail to realize that – they had to be good enough to sell their product when they did it too. That is a huge detail that is often overlooked. It builds a rounded picture that, unless you’ve been there, you won’t understand.
Real business, 2-3 years deep, is way, WAY different than it looks on Day 1 😉
The hardest part for many is CHANGING THEIR MINDSET
Many are stuck with an EMPLOYEE and SCARCITY MINDSET
That’s why they struggle
The truth? If you have TIME, you can turn that TIME Into assets. You can invest time into anything and it will grow.
Invest time into your body – you get fit
Invest time into your mind – you become smarter / you can even become an expert in something
Invest your time in a business – you fail and fail and then scale up and eventually succeed
Invest time into your relationships – they become more fulfilling
the list is endless
Treat time as your most precious asset – this requires a MINDSET SHIFT
The rejection that will always be a part of it because it’s just the nature of sales especially. Clients, investors, etc. lots of rejection but you gotta wake up the next day and go at it as best you can
Doing the things you aren’t good at or know nothing about. You started a company making widgets because you did that at you job.
But how do you pay taxes or balance the books? Who is buying your widgets?
Most people don’t realize that doing it yourself now has a huge range of other things that need to be handled. Not just the thing you know how to do.
Knowing when to take a break. When the urge is there to keep going and nobody is stopping me, I used to feel guilty about taking a break to avoid burnout.
The more I got into the habit of doing it, the more I realized that these breaks can be a great opportunity for a fresh perspective, to realize I unknowingly skipped a step before I have to fix it with great difficulty and cost later, etc.
Knowing if you fail, bouncing back is gonna be a long road