Successful people in the business industry are amazing. It’s no secret that making one sale is already so hard, but what more is making thousand of them in a year? It’s easy to focus on the end goal, but really, what you should be preparing for is both enjoying and enduring the process. Here are some of the most challenging parts of starting your own business.
1. Starting It
Not many people realize the amount of courage there is in deciding to start a business. Before a businessman comes up with a name and rents an office or a shop, the thought process is long and tedious. You have so many questions, fears, and worries.
What if you fail? What if your idea is not really that great? What if you can’t do it? It’s normal to have these questions running in your mind all day. But, it’s the first step that is always the hardest. Well, it doesn’t really get better; that’s the thing. What happens is that you build enough fortitude. You keep jumping over so many hurdles that the next ones don’t seem to be difficult anymore.
It is extra stressful and challenging if there is so much at stake. Maybe you quit your job to pursue this. Or perhaps you are using the last of your hard-earned money to get this business started. Still, you have no other choice but to keep taking strides forward, do the necessary research, and trust that it will all work.
2. Being the Boss and Calling the Shots
Every successful business is a result of a series of good decisions. And the most challenging part here is that you are the one making these decisions. In the grind culture, the goal is to be the boss. But maybe that Spider-Man quote really is true: with great power comes great responsibility.
Just like when you started the business, there will be moments of self-doubt. You are going to make every decision. There might be people who help you from time to time, but the final call is yours. And what makes it difficult is that no one will take the fall for you if you mess up.
In the first stages of the business, the first decisions you will make might seem a lot easier. You will decide on the perfect location, on the product packaging, and on the launch date-things like that. As your business grows more prominent, there will be more brutal shots to call.
In marketing alone, there is an endless list of strategies. Should you make a new approach online? Do you have to optimize your website? Is there a need to boost your presence on social media?
This is just one of the many hats you wear. But the good thing is that there is a way around this. Running a business is a highly mental game. AS long as you are smart about your decisions, you listen to other people, and you know how to weigh the consequences, you’ll be fine.
3. Making Mistakes
Not only in business but in other things in life, making mistakes is a scary thing. But it’s also natural. Statistically speaking, there is a fifty percent chance that your business is going to fail. However, the same is true for all other companies out there. But what are you going to do about that? Not try at all? No.
You can hear a thousand other cliche inspiring quotations about the beauty of trying and not fearing mistakes. But the choice will still be yours. Even Steve Jobs was fired from Apple. Not that you should fire yourself, too, but you should get the bigger picture.
You will go through dozens of failed marketing strategies, events that flopped, and lots of wasted money. But that is how business works. To lessen losses, you can always calculate and use empirical data.
Some of your products might be a total fail. But that opens a door for you to try new formulas, check new recipes, entertain suggestions from other people. Embrace failure as an opportunity to correct some mistakes. Even the Titanic sank despite it being equipped with technology that supposedly made it unsinkable then. And the reason it even sank was not directly because of the failure of that anti-sinking feature.
Ironically, the most challenging parts of running a business are also what define the process. You will have no journey to finish if you don’t start it. You will not make progress if you don’t make mistakes.
