Big Challenges (And Solutions) When Starting Your Own Business
Have you ever heard someone say it’s easy to start your own business? No, never? Neither have I, and that’s because it isn’t. Starting a business takes a tremendous amount of time, effort, passion (and a dash of luck) to make it work. Business owners need to be a jack of all trades, from cultivating a supportive team to creating a business plan for the upcoming year.
Alex Dyer is the founder of Tutor House, a leading UK online tutoring company. Here he shares some of the main challenges he faced when starting a business and how best to solve them.
Problem: Brand Awareness
Building Brand awareness is a top priority for all companies, after all, how else will potential customers know what you offer? For small businesses this can be a challenge. With a forever changing market and many competitors, it’s unlikely you will appear at the top of search results at first.
Solution: Unique Selling Point
In this economy a lot of markets are saturated, but that’s not to say that your company can’t have a unique selling point. Find out what yours is and, with a great marketing scheme, tell everyone about it.
It’s also important to remember that marketing plans adjust and change over time. What may have worked for you at first, might not work in a couple of years when competition gets more fierce. Always adjust to the current climate, and stay up-to-date on trends (through seminars, colleagues and social media) to adapt when necessary.
Problem: Money Management
It’s a catch 22; every business (big or small) needs money to invest and grow, but without a track record of success it’s difficult to raise the necessary funds. Start-ups need to consider their cash flow and how it might be affected by unforeseen expenses, but also be able to pitch a positive vision of the future to potential investors. Not doing these often results in businesses failing within the first year.
Solution: Plan Ahead
The number one thing to consider here is if you have enough money to begin? There is no harm in starting off slow and working on the business part time whilst you save up to go big.
Once you do start full time, make sure you are still planning ahead. It can be very tempting to fast-forward your ideas, but make sure you put some money aside and set yourself realistic objects so the plan is in place. It will look great for investment purposes too.
No matter how hard you try to avoid it, there will always be unforeseen business expenses that you’ll be glad you had some money tucked away for. Once things start to pick up, it may be good to find someone that can help assist you with payments and bookkeeping to stay on track.
Problem: A Very Busy Schedule
Whether you’re starting your company alone or with a partner, chances are you are going to experience some sort of fatigue, mentally and physically. Learning the ropes, whatever you are doing, always takes a lot of adjusting and can be very time consuming. Be aware of the effect working long hours and in a high pressure environment can have on you.
Solution: Positive Support System
If you are starting the business alone, it can be difficult to find people in a similar position to you, however there are a lot of support groups that can help with this. Also make sure you are getting enough sleep and that you talk to your friends and family in order to manage your stress and feelings.
A lot of business owners tend to worry about what might happen to the company in their absence? And we get it, there are lots of things only you know how to do but your team is still there to support you and will understand if you need to take that necessary ‘me’ time to relax a little.
Up For The Challenge?
There may be a few hurdles that you’ll have to face, some more unexpected than others. But with the right patience and passion, you’ll see your business booming before you know it.
Written by Sadiyah Zaman, Senior Content Writer at Tutor House
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