Many people dream of the life of creating and running a small business that was created by your own knowledge and time. Knowing that you are the boss and worked hard to get that title. It’s not an easy thing to conquer, but it can be done. There are going to many obstacles in your way. Some you will be able to predict and see long before they get here, and many others that seem to come up behind you and crush your dreams of success. Knowing how to get past these challenges is a key element that will shape you, as well as your business, into the future success that is achieved.
Building the Foundation
The foundation of your business is everything. It’s what you continue to build your empire on and if you don’t have a good foundation, it’s not easy to continue to build upwards. Knowing how to build a good foundation is something you learn over time, and won’t come to you right away. You have to work at it and learn that it isn’t about quantity, it’s about quality. A lot of people know this already, but yet so many business owners that are just starting out seem to leave this key factor out of the equation. They want to produce as much as they can, as fast as they can, so they can get their business out into the world and build it up as fast as possible. This will not work. You might be able to get around faster, but this isn’t a good thing. The product or service you are offering isn’t the quality it should be which means a large amount of potential customers are then lost.
Motivation
When you are in the building stages of your business, you won’t see success very fast. After awhile, you start to lose the white hot desire and motivation you first had when you started building. So many times this deters young business owners to quit or slow down. They aren’t putting the effort they were when they first began because they don’t have the motivation that’s needed to create the energy and excitement. Passion is an amazing emotion that can work wonders for you if you use it the right way. If you are every losing motivation, you can easily watch speech about success and never giving up, or an audio talking about someones success and struggles they had to go through. You also want to make sure you are keeping your dreams close to you at all times. Keep pictures, videos, or ANYTHING that reminds you what you are working for. This could be that new car, your family, that beautiful house, etc. Just make sure you are constantly reminded about the things that gave you the passion to begin your journey to success.
Failure
Simply put, failure is the major component that stops a majority of small business owners from going any further or trying any harder. It’s the easiest thing to come by, and the hardest thing to defeat. Failure can take the burning desire for success and make you re-think everything you thought about your business as well as your strategies you have been using. This directly links with the motivation portion of success.
“When you want to be successful as bad as you want to breathe, then you will be successful”
This is a beautiful line that says more about success than a lot of things ever could. When you struggling to breathe and get air, that is the ONLY thing you are thinking about. You aren’t thinking about the game that’s on tonight, or what your doing tomorrow, or what your friends are up to. All you are thinking about is breathing. That is your one and only goal, and you put every bit of energy you didn’t even know you had into trying to get that breath of air. When you want to be successful that bad, you will then be successful. This means that even though you are struggling and do go through failure, you can’t quit because it isn’t an option. You only have one goal, and you will give everything you are made of until you reach that goal. That is success.
Lack of Organization
When you are looking through a container of papers that consists of 9 different subjects and they are all assimilated together, what are the odds that you find the one paper you are looking for without having to dump the whole container onto the floor? When you are operating a small business, especially in the beginning stages, it is crucial that you are keeping everything organized. This will help you clean up any messes that might happen to occur, and also save you a large amount of time that you can be using towards improving your business. You will also be able to look at your business as a whole and see if there is anything you can reform and better your business.
Competition
Competition is what crushes a lot of small business that don’t compare to all the companies that have been in business countless number of years and have the experience under their belt. The thing you have to remember, is that they started out with nothing. Every business starts from the bottom. You want to look at big businesses and competitors in a positive way. See what they did that made them successful, and then replicate it! You already have a similar business that had to go through the same thing you are going through, so use that to your advantage. You can cut your learning curve and also avoid the mistakes they made. Use their failure, for your success.