The potential rewards of being an entrepreneur are evident, but challenges also characterize the entrepreneurship journey. Both old and young entrepreneurs experience challenges, but for budding entrepreneurs, the obstacles are many. Budding entrepreneurs need to gain the knowledge or skills to run a business, need to have access to capital, and need to trust in their abilities. These factors significantly make their entrepreneurial journey challenging compared to more established entrepreneurs.
Despite these challenges, there are budding entrepreneurs who push through the storm. Every challenge they encounter is handled with perseverance and courage. Their readiness to learn from their weaknesses makes them succeed. You could do the same. Here are three obstacles you could experience as a budding entrepreneur and how you can face them.
- Determining What Products And Services to Sell
Budding entrepreneurs have self-confidence and know they can make money by running a successful business. However, the challenge is that they need to figure out what to sell. Choosing a niche is challenging.
To tackle this challenge, it is important to undertake research. Look into your potential business area and determine pain points. This can help you establish a profitable niche. It’s best to entrust this assignment to experts in different business fields. You can seek the services of a freelance researcher or research business services companies such as Roving Entrepreneur to read about the different niches they’ve already researched. They might find something that could pique your interest.
If you seek the services of a freelance researcher, make sure they carry out comprehensive market research and generate a document with recommended niches. The report should have detailed profitability estimates and a comprehensive situational assessment or situational analysis.
However, note that seeking experts’ services doesn’t mean that they should make decisions for you. After you have received the recommendations, analyze each recommendation to determine what is good for you. Conducting research will save you time, resources, and a lot of hassles when running your business.
- Failure To Manage Cash Inflows And Outflows
For any business, whether big or small, cash flow management is the wheel that will keep the business running. However, many budding entrepreneurs often undergo a cash flow crunch. They tend to struggle to settle their bills as they wait for invoice payments. The root cause might be delayed invoicing, but that’s a prevalent phenomenon in business.
You offer a service or a product, you invoice the customer, and then you expect payment depending on the due stipulated in the invoice. However, you have responsibilities and expenses along the way. You need to pay your staff, you need to pay your landlord if you’re renting a commercial space, and you need to buy food or pay your personal mortgage. Waiting for payments can make it difficult to run your business. And if several clients fail to deliver payments on time, you might end up ceasing business operations, either temporarily or permanently.
To avoid this, estimate your income and expenditure well, and create a comprehensive plan for your cash flow. Undertaking an estimate of your income and expenditures and planning will help you control and manage your cash flow, but this won’t save you from the headache of recurring expenses.
To handle the problems in your cash flow, you can ask for a deposit for goods delivered or services offered. Make sure the deposit can pay any expense related to a specific sale and some income for the business. With a deposit, you’re certain that you won’t stress over unpaid bills.
Another approach to ensuring you have enough cash flow for your business is sending invoices to your customers much earlier, maybe two weeks before the due date. Normally, an average invoice duration is around 30 days. If several clients pay within 15 days of invoicing them, you have another 15 days to sort bills on time.
- Growing Business
Growing a business doesn’t sound like a challenge for a budding entrepreneur, but the way toward growth can be tough. It may even reach a point where you can’t handle any more tasks in your existing layout.
To face this setback, it is important to reevaluate your procedures and duties as an entrepreneur. Establish new procedures geared towards task allocation. If you try to do everything yourself, you might affect your growth negatively since you can’t focus on more important tasks and operations. The only viable way to boost your business is to assign responsibilities and streamline your operations effectively.
Final Thoughts
Success may seem like a long shot when you’re starting as a young entrepreneur, but it’s not impossible to break the glass ceiling. Many challenges can overwhelm entrepreneurs, but material like this one can help you face these challenges and achieve business growth. As a budding entrepreneur, all you have to do is to harness your primary weapons, which are your persistence and the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Recognize that there are entrepreneurs like you who have been in the same position and eventually succeeded. As a budding entrepreneur, there will always be resources to assist you in kickstarting your business.
