Top 7 Challenges Every Entrepreneur Will Face

Patrick Bet-David and the Small Business Resource Center have picked the top 10 challenges that an entrepreneur will face. In this article, I will just pick the top 7 from my perspective – so it is rather biased!

1.         Sacrificing Salary

First, you have to be prepared to sacrifice your 9 – 5 salary. As a 9 – 5 employee, you have a salary and benefits such as health insurance. You know that no matter what, worst case scenario, you make your eight or ten grand a month. As an entrepreneur, your salary goes out the window.

2.         Cash Flow Management

The next challenge every entrepreneur will face is cash flow management. That’s the time clock on how much you’ve saved compared to your expenses. You constantly hear the clock ticking, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. If you manage your cash flow well, it allows you to stay in business long enough to make it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a real estate agent, technology company, or if you run a liquor store; you have to know how to manage your cash flow to stretch it out as long as possible

3.         Processing Issues

As an entrepreneur, you have to process many unknown issues you’ve never experienced before. You’ll often say, or think, “I never knew. . . ” So if you don’t know how to solve for x, you’ll have a hard time. You need to anticipate that there will be many unknown, unanticipated issues that you need to solve that no one tells you about ahead of time.

4.         Team Building

Every entrepreneur, in addition, will face the challenge of team building. How are you going to put your team together? How good of a recruiter are you going to be? Are you good at bringing in solid talent? You’ll face the challenge of building a team when you realize you can’t do it all. And it comes down to how well you build a team.

5.         Many Different Hats

 

Next, you’ll wear many different hats. You’ll be a salesperson one day, clean the kitchen the next day, and file paperwork another day. You have to do it because no one else will. You have to answer the phones sometimes, and get back to texts you probably shouldn’t as the CEO, because you have to wear a lot of hats.

6.         Knocked Out

 

Next, people will want to knock you out. You’ll have to deal with people that want to put you out of business. And you’ll say, “How brutal is this? You can’t be this cold.” But it’s the world of business. You’re taking a piece of business away from them, and they want to put you out of business.

7.         Self-doubt

An entrepreneur’s life is not enviable, at least in the beginning. It’s extremely easy to get discouraged when something goes wrong or when you’re not growing as fast as you’d like. Self-doubt creeps in, and you feel like giving up.

Being able to overcome self-doubt is a necessary trait for entrepreneurs. Having a good support system will help: family and friends who know your goals and support your plight, as well as an advisory board of other entrepreneurs who can objectively opine as to the direction of your business.

There you have it the top 7 challenges I have picked!

References:
1. 10 challenges Every Entrepreneur Will Face, Patrick Bet-David             (https://www.patrickbetdavid.com)
2. The Top 10 Challenges Faced by Entrepreneurs Today: Solved, Small Business Resource Center (https://www.deluxe.com)