If you are an entrepreneur or perhaps aspiring to become one, put this at the safe-keep of your heart that there are lots of challenges on an entrepreneur’s journey. These challenges are inevitable. you can never escape from them even if you are a “silver spoon” entrepreneur.
I’m finding a lot of relations in the questions that I’m being asked these days. Since I’m on this journey with you all as an entrepreneur working towards building a successful business, I thought it would be fun to share with you what I’m learning, what I’ve learned and how I can further help you tackle these common problems that’s affecting our productivity.
This short article is composed to help all entrepreneurs facing any kind of challenges out there. I have put together some of my breakthrough stories as an entrepreneur, my challenges that i think most entrepreneurs also face and how i am able to overcome them.
Here’s My Advice
A well-established myth is that everyone can be an entrepreneur. In my opinion, this is plainly wrong. Some people want to live in their comfort zones, and that is perfectly OK.
In general, some people like to be led, some people want to lead. Some people want to work for other people while others want employees to work for them. Some people see their job as a chore while others see it as their passion. There’s always room for everyone in any category.
Don’t fail to understand that being an entrepreneur is tough and I do not recommend it to everyone.
In case you do not know: you will burn out, run out of money, lose friends, lose hair if you’re a man, work too much, sleep too little and other caveats. But all beginnings are hard, and very few people like to risk in order to achieve a better status in life.
All investors take risks in their wealth to reach a higher financial status later in life. Entrepreneurs do it with their lifestyle.
If you’re not ready to invest all you have in your life, you can’t be an entrepreneur.
But still, there are entrepreneurs with a more complex difficulties like: Finance, decision making. Here’s a rare story i barely tell about my business.
In 2017, i made up my mind to launch my own virtual company Legends Motivation Inc. Did you know i had just $20? I bet no one did. All they could see is an elegant website launching with new features from time to time.
After Launching this company, i realized that i was only joking. It was actually more than what i really thought. I started bringing in new ideas into the business but i was never able to execute any because of my financial difficulty.
Being a graduate in my country would never guarantee you a job. I hoped i could get a side job that could pay me about $100 monthly but i couldn’t find one. I was hoping to achieve something big with this low paying job i never got.
You know what, it took me six months to self-develop Legends Motivation’s website because i couldn’t afford a developer. A website running on a cheap hosting plan and without backup went down totally in a hack and i returned back to stage one. I wish i would give up, but after few mourning hours, i grabbed my computer and fully developed this website better than before within 48hours. That was my breakthrough.
From there on i never stopped. I do what i can, when i can and to the best i can.
Three inevitable problem entrepreneurs encounter
Finance – If finance is your issue, grab the skill to raise the money.
I knew i never could afford a developer at the rate i was going in 2017 – 2018 but i didn’t let that stop me. It took me so much google search and tutorials to set up a whole site in 5months that totally went down overnight.
If i had not learned how to set up a website, it would’ve been the end of my innovation. so i advice you to learn all necessary to progress in your entrepreneurial journey.
Decision Making – Make decisions based on what you really want to achieve.
Unsuccessful people make decisions based on current situations. Successful people make decisions based on where they want to be. –Benjamin Hardy
Decision making is crucial to determine:
What you want your life to look like in five or ten years time! I’ll tell you what I want mine to look like.
- I want to have a nice house. Not too big, but big enough for my wife and 2–3 kids.
- I want to be the founder of a successful life coaching business where I help young entrepreneurs achieve their version of success every day.
- I want to travel the world, but more importantly, I want to be able to travel whenever I want to.
- And I want to have just enough money to say “no” to almost everything and to help anyone.
This is what I want my life to look like.
As such, I am making decisions based on that vision of where I want to be — not where I currently am. But most entrepreneurs make enormously important life decisions based on where they currently are, not where they want to be.
They hesitate, misstep, and settle. As a result, they remain stuck in their average, unsuccessful lives.
There’s a lot of people that make 55 thousand dollars a year when they’re 23. The problem is they go to Coachella, and they want to buy a watch, and they want to buy a BMW, and I didn’t. I ate shit for 13 years, and then when I had an opportunity I struck. I’m ultimately patient. It’s what I do. – Gary Vaynerchuk
Whatever it is, most people continue to make mediocre decisions based on where they are now, without thinking of where they want to be.
Yes i know everyone wants a successful future. But sadly, most people will never achieve the financial wealth, the career freedom, and inner fulfillment they think they’re moving towards.
Making decisions based on where you want to be can be uncomfortable and difficult. But this same “safety and familiarity” is also a prison for most people that prevents them from ever experiencing true success.
I never had complete millions to spare for my company not once. But till date i have made several wrong decisions and also the right ones. Absolutely, i have learned my lesson. No one is perfect.
Instead of making decisions where you are, think ahead and ask yourself ‘where do you want to be’?
Prioritization – Setting priorities on the next important thing.
I remember being the broke guy, but i never failed to set priorities for the things i am working on.
One of the biggest struggles in entrepreneurship is knowing how to prioritize. Workloads are ballooning and everything feels important. However, the truth is that a lot of the work we do every day doesn’t really need to be done. At least not right away.
So as a tool for helping you prioritise your action items, start by identifying which part of the matrix each task belongs in, and then manage them as follows:
Learning how to prioritize means getting more out of the limited time you have each day. It’s one of the cornerstones of real-time productivity and once you know how to properly prioritize, it can help with everything from your time management to work life balance.
But while the elements of prioritization are simple (i.e. Know what tasks need to be done and rank them). It’s far from a simple exercise.
When looking at how to prioritize tasks best, ask which one of the quadrants they best fit in. And then deal with them accordingly:
- Urgent and Important: Do these tasks as soon as possible
- Important, but not urgent: Decide when you’ll do these and schedule it
- Urgent, but not important: Delegate these tasks to someone else
- Neither urgent nor important: Drop these from your schedule as soon as possible
Tasks take longer than we expect. Interruptions come up. And our days get filled with meetings and chats. So while it’s great to know how to prioritize your most valuable work, you should also be realistic about how much can actually be done.
This way, you’ll end the day feeling good about the progress you made and like you can step away and take a well-deserved break.
In Conclusion, Focus on Developing Your Core Skills
Entrepreneurs who are struggling must quickly analyze the source of their difficulties. For some, it is insufficient skill, for some lack of information.
An adequate entrepreneur must be scrutinized it confirm it truly has the skill set needed for success. If the leadership is OK and the plan is still sound, then the entrepreneur must focus on a few high-impact improvement projects to build value.
Anything that is crucial to your success as an entrepreneur is what you should focus on. Don’t focus on the wrong things.
Thanks for reading, I hope this helps you.