There are many good reasons to start your own business, but the primary one is that you get to do your own thing. In fact, according to the New York Times, the pandemic might just be the right time to launch one—because unique business opportunities often arise during a time of crisis.
If you start your own business, you can look forward to calling all the shots and making all the rules, including pursuing a passion project and starting something new from scratch. It’s also empowering to set your own deadlines and to market and sell how you’d like rather than following some directives from a corporate overlord.
Still, while there are many upsides to starting your own business, assuming you have all the capital and support you need to launch and enough knowledge and experience to make a success of it, there are downsides, too.
Here are some common problems that a new business might face and some solutions to resolve them efficiently.
Unexpected Legal Issues
Although you do your best to understand and follow business regulations and strive to run an honest business, lawsuits can show up unexpectedly. They can occur even if you’re guided by a strong moral compass. For instance, a security data breach in your business could cause customers to lose their sensitive information to hackers and sue you for not taking the proper security measures.
Canyon Legal Group advises all entrepreneurs to obtain professional advice in advance of starting a new business.
When confronted by an unexpected legal issue, avoid trying to figure things out yourself or procrastinating. Take action. Get the expert legal help you need.
Never Enough Time
Since you will probably start the business alone or with a small staff, you’ll quickly discover that there is almost more work than you have time to do. The biggest danger of this pressure to get more work done faster is burnout. The longer you continue to fight for progress, fooling yourself into believing that you’re about to break through to a new level of productivity, the more discouraged and exhausted you will become.
The solution is to make time rather than hope to discover a secret productivity hack that will allow you to do more work with less effort. You need to make time for your life outside work to maintain a sense of balance, and you need to make time within your business by following basic time management techniques, such as working from a goals list, eliminating any unnecessary tasks, and delegating as much work as possible, perhaps by outsourcing it.
Not Enough Money
Even if you were well-funded when you launched your business, you still need to repay all the money you borrowed. This means that your creditors are expecting you to turn a profit fairly quickly. Even if they say nothing to pressure you to perform, you still wince every time you dip into your capital for a new business expense. Your frugality may be admirable, but it forces you to work from a small budget and fret over not generating sufficient revenue.
The way to ease this pressure that you’ve put on yourself is to tackle your budget and your revenue generation head-on.
The solution to your small budget is to focus on your priorities, which means paying your staff and vendors on time and prioritizing things that get meaningful results, such as marketing and sales. And the solution to your insufficient revenue is to track your marketing to eliminate any costs that are not bringing in measurable results.
For instance, if you’re unclear about the number of leads generated from your print advertising, then switch to online advertising, where you can more closely monitor response rates. If you’re generating enough leads, but not closing enough sales, then you must find out what is not working for you.
In closing, remember that running a business is always challenging for everyone, so set realistic standards for yourself. Appreciate all your small wins as they arise and see any problems as challenges that you can overcome with some pragmatic thinking and a little help from your friends.
