5 Challenges All Businesses Face and the Skill You Need to Master Them All

Anyone who is an entrepreneur has probably dealt with various business challenges. Being a business owner is not as simple as being an employee of a corporation. When you are an employee, your day-to-day is pre-structured for you. And, all you have to do is come in everyday and perform your designated tasks. For your weekly commitment of time, you earn a guaranteed paycheck that comes on a set schedule. This structure of time helps to keep your life easy for the most part because you operate upon predictability.

On the other hand, entrepreneurship creates a vastly different world. When you are an entrepreneur everything falls upon you. This means you are designing your structure as you build and grow. This can be a difficult thing to do, especially when considering the many factors that go into operating a business. If you are not careful, you will find yourself on the losing end of business ownership because you do not recognize and properly handle the business challenges you must deal with. 

Since we want to ensure that you are put in the best position to succeed as a business owner, we have compiled a list of five business challenges that you must be aware of as an entrepreneur. Learn how to resolve these challenges, so your business is able to succeed long-term.

1. Upholding integrity

   Any business that wants to be built for the long haul must make integrity a cornerstone of its operations. It is tempting to take shortcuts and cheat your way to the top. And while such tactics may work in the short-term, they will certainly backfire as time progresses. This is because a business that does not have a solid foundation will eventually collapse once the pressure mounts. This is why Ponzi schemes can never be converted into legitimate businesses. If your business is built on a lie, it will eventually be exposed.

   Even though patience can be hard to exercise, you cannot allow yourself to be tempted by shortcuts. If you cheat your customers, you will lose their trust and patronage. And should you shortchange your partners, they will cut ties with you. If you use dirty tactics to beat your competitors, you will eventually be outed as a cheater. Although the thought is to win at all cost, you cannot jeopardize your reputation to gain a competitive advantage or steal more money. Doing business the honest way will help you build a stellar reputation that speaks volumes on the level of service you provide.

   Money management is imperative

   Cash flow seems to always be a business challenge that comes up in the midst of operations. You need customers to make money, and you need money to attract (market to) customers. It is a battle on two fronts that can create a lot of frustration and anxiety. After all, cash flow issues can impede your business’s operations. In order to cure money issues, most businesses seek to borrow money from a traditional bank. They may also turn to alternative sources such as crowdfunding. Wherever you choose to borrow money from, you need to be sure the loan you are receiving helps to grow your business — not do it harm. This happens when the interest on the loan exceeds your weekly/ monthly profit. This means the loan you received is a liability rather than an asset.

   Before borrowing money, try to change your business model to see if new results can be produced. This can be done by raising your prices, shortening the time of invoice payments, reducing expenses, and even getting rid of bad clients. You should experiment to see if these changes increase your business’s cash flow. If it does, you saved your business from having to take on debt. If it does not, new debt will pile up. The key thing is if this option has to be taken, you should create a strategy that pays back the loan on or ahead of time. A lot of business owners use a debt strategy to grow their business to new profitability. Maybe utilizing the same approach will work for you.

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2. Navigating business laws and regulations

   Operating a business is already tough enough. But that difficulty increases significantly when you must deal with new regulations and laws that cost your business a fortune to follow. Business taxes always have business owners grumbling about how the government makes it hard for small businesses to succeed. Most recently, health insurance caused a major uproar, which made small businesses lay off workers or reduce their working hours. Now the issues include tariffs and restrictions on international trade. There always seems to be some new external factor that forces businesses to brace for a new shock. With this being the case, you must ensure that your business is built to absorb the impact, so it can keep operating without dealing with major setbacks.

3. Using the correct problem-solving tactics

   Problems will always occur when operating a business. No matter how great the strategy you have created, or how well your intentions, business challenges will arise. And, you will need to solve them immediately. If these problems are not corrected, it means that your company could eventually collapse due to underlying business challenges that manifest beyond repair. Therefore, proactive business owners always try to get ahead of problems before they become disasters.

   When you are managing a business that is diverse and full of different personalities, you must be a great communicator. This does not mean that you dominate the conversation. The best communicators are great listeners. When you listen, you can process the information given to you and propose the best solution. Solving problems is a collaborative effort that should produce a win/ win outcome. Anytime a win/lose outcome is produced, the fallout from the losing side can intensify into a situation that disrupts your team’s productivity. You want to definitely avoid having to deal with this type of scenario.

4. Building the right team

   In order to build a great company, you need to build a great team that helps your business experience consistent growth. Unfortunately, finding the right people that fit the standards set for your business can be a hard task. A lot of individuals are only seeking to be employed by a company to do the bare minimum and collect a paycheck for their time. These types of employees can drag your company down, since their poor work ethic is most certainly felt by your customers. This will cause you to lose said customers in the process because your frontline is not doing upholding the standards you have set.

   Sometimes it is better to build a small team full of all-star individuals than being surrounded by a lot of mediocre individuals. Mediocre employees always have excuses for why they cannot get the job done. All-star employees always find solutions despite the business challenges they face. You need a team of problem solvers and not complainers. Your employees are a reflection of you and are an extension of your business. Therefore, you want to be sure you have the best people promoting your business to the public.

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Master Skill to Overcome Business Challenges: Resilience

When you are dealing with so many different business challenges as an entrepreneur, you must be resilient enough to not crack under pressure. After all, you are not only fighting to build a successful company for yourself. You also have a family to take care of and employees who have their own families and households to take care of. If you fail, you are failing everyone who is depending on your leadership to provide for them. This can be a heavy burden to take on, but this is the responsibility that comes with business ownership.

If you cannot properly manage stress, then being a business owner will eventually become too much for you to handle. Therefore, it is important to realize that business challenges will always occur. And, you will have to deal with them accordingly. But it is these challenges that make you a better business owner, because you learn how to operate under high pressure situations. You are able to remain focused and optimistic no matter the occasion. In the long run, this will rub off on your employees as a result.

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Even though we all wish that owning and operating a business could be a straightforward process, this wish is impossible to grant. Being a business owner will always come with challenges, which is why it takes a mentally strong individual to succeed at entrepreneurship. If you want to position your business to succeed, you must possess the resolve that keeps your head in the game despite how dire your situation may seem in the moment. You can overcome any problem when you operate with a mindset that influences your actions to work towards creating solutions.