One reason entrepreneurship isn’t easy is that, at the end of the day, you can only ever blame yourself. As we are well aware that Nobody is born an entrepreneur.
Different people with different mindsets choose their parts path as per their hobby and passions. The latest entrepreneur study shows that the minimum age of young entrepreneurs is reduced to 20 to 29 years.
Young Entrepreneur starts their journey by doing something unique or as per their hobby and tries to achieve success by overcoming the problems. There is no ready reckoner or set-in-stone instructions for becoming a successful entrepreneur. Young Entrepreneurs take on a number of different roles and these roles can vary depending on what field you choose to enter.
Nobody has the perfect guide to entrepreneurship, there are a few steps that should be taken before beginning the endeavor, however. As with most forms of success, one way to achieve your goal is by avoiding mistakes. A young entrepreneur takes the different ways to sort out different problems comes across.
Entrepreneurship can be a tough and long journey for young entrepreneurs. Some get lucky and succeed the first time. some are facing so many obstacles during their entrepreneurial journey.
Most Common Problems That Young Entrepreneurs Face
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Most Common Problems That Young Enterpnuer Face
- Too much dependent upon the client
- Having lack of confidence
- Coming with a limited mindset
- Not being taken seriously
- Having a hard time in money management
- Trying to do everything by themselves
- Work Fatigue
- Business dependent too much on their founder
- Having lack of patience
- Having no courage to quit their day job
- Hiring right employees and team members
- Lack of knowledge and expereince
- Having too much focus on the big picture
- Having unrealistic expectation
Too Much Depending Upon the Client
New entrepreneurs or small businesses often have a single client that makes up more than half of their income.
This makes you more of an independent contractor than a business owner. It is very vital to have multiple clients as multiple resources for revenue streams for your business.
For newbie entrepreneurs, this comes as quite shocking at first because they are new to this whole business clientele relationship thing.
It becomes a trick to grow business in this case especially when your client is paying quite well and always on time.
Not just for starting business owners but even for seasoned ones, clients always ready to pay on time for the product is all the good luck they wish for.
However, unfortunately in this case, it handicaps the business owner in the long term even if you have employees.
Basically, you will be working more as a subcontractor for that business, even feel like a mediator between the client and your employees or the end result.
There is just too much client dependence when you are starting out as at one side you’re trying to have a good business to stand on, and want to prevent the risk of failing the client.
This also means that when your primary client has completed their project or wouldn’t need your services, you will be left to hang dry without any business creating financial turmoil.
However, this can only work when one primary client at the beginning of entrepreneurship needs you as much as you need them and has a consistent need for your product or service.
Having Lack Of Confidence
Lack of confidence comes from inexperience and unfamiliarity with this new thing young entrepreneurs are starting.
While it is natural, their lack of confidence becomes a problem when it starts fogging their decision-making and communication.
Any decision comes from the fear of perception, planning, and even rationality. So this is definitely a problem for young business owners at an early stage.
A lot of business is about communication and collaboration, and without confidence, you are not going to be as approachable and convincing as needed.
It is only going to hamper your business growth in the long run. So you better start working on your confidence by facing more and more of these challenging situations.
Also, you can learn and educate yourself to gain familiarity with things to boost your confidence.
Coming With A Limited Mindset
Mindset is everything when it comes to starting a business. Having a wrong mindset at the beginning of entrepreneurship is just preparing for failure.
Most of the young entrepreneurs are really not coming from a growth mindset which you need for the business.
Generally, people’s upbringing has been with a limited mindset. Even though one hears that they can achieve everything, there is always a doubt.
A growth mindset propels visionaries who believe in their core that they can change things but not without consistency and a whole lot of failures in their way.
It is all about believing that anything is possible because once you do that, you will see solutions popping up automatically all around you.
Basically, you will be attracted to the solutions subconsciously rather than pointing out problems.
Not Being Taken Seriously
One of the most common obstacles that a young entrepreneur faces right away is not being taken seriously as much as seniors.
There is a huge chance of being judged by their senior counterparts, colleagues, and any other collaborations, seminars, or financers they would approach.
Sometimes people become skeptical to invest their time and money both in younger entrepreneurs as they consider them confused or not driven enough.
But it is okay to face these challenges, the only thing you have to understand is that while your senior counterparts have more experience, you can bring the freshness of ideas and innovation along with brute passion and energy to the project.
Also, business owners are leaders, and leaders can be young where they can definitely hire experienced experts as their employees.
It is also to understand that everyone has to start from somewhere including your senior counterparts, so there is no need to take offense or get upset about it.
Just focus on bringing conviction in what you say and what you offer, even though you might be judged initially, you will be taken seriously once people see through their prejudices.
Having a Hard Time In Money Management
You need to have enough cash flow into your business to cover your bills and expenses including the cost of every individual involved.
Whenever there will be a cash pull from one side, every other aspect of the business will suffer. This is the worst part of running a business when you are all new.
Money management is about utilizing money by generating funds, spending smartly, managing, and reserving. It is all about spending according to budget and calculations.
There is prioritization required but there is only so much you can cut corners, hence a cash drain is such a frustrating state in business.
All you can do is heavily capitalize business funds beforehand or always have extra savings from your income or other funds as a cash reserve for business when in need.
This is also quite the reason why small businesses always have their founders have a working job when they are trying to build the business simultaneously.
As the business grows, cash flow and management become a critical aspect to handle. Any miscalculation or mistake hampers the business growth.
Business accounting, finance, and money management can be tricky and sometimes unimaginably chaotic, so it is suggested to get professional help in this case.
Also, have trust that this is a valid and worthy investment.
Trying To Do Everything By Themselves
This is a common challenge or problem for all new entrepreneurs where they feel like they need to do everything by themselves.
It becomes almost impossible to fight their urge to not handle everything by themselves and not practice outsourcing or hiring.
This also comes from their inability to leave the work and trust them for completing it.
Not being able to deduct from themselves from their day-to-day operation, even minute jobs which can be done by freelancers and employees, is what becomes really tiring and overwhelming.
They take up more than they should or could do and by not prioritizing the work they should be actually focused on.
It is advised for the newbie entrepreneurs to hire professionals for the specific tasks to perform, better the specialist in the specific niche, task, or work.
They should not dive into every aspect of the business themselves in the name of cost-efficiency, lack of trust, not finding the right person, or any other reason.
In fact, instead of building a product right from scratch which includes so much work in the areas that business owners usually know nothing about, they must partner up with the manufacturers or buy raw materials or even have a contractor.
It is wise to not reinvent the wheel, focus on your strengths and stick to what you are truly expert on. For the rest, hiring or outsourcing is the best thing to do.
Work Fatigue
Starting a business needs hours and hours of work throughout the day and night. And usually, entrepreneurs starting out are quite passionate and forward to put as much hard work as needed.
Even successful business owners are stuck in long hours of working more than their employees.
Entrepreneurship is consuming, and aspiring business owners are tempted to put all in for their dreams to come true.
It even becomes quite an obsession as they think if they take any time for themselves or for their friends and family, their business can collapse.
Some business owners couldn’t remove themselves from the equation, the fieldwork, or action whereas it is always wise to create an auto-functioning system through outsourcing, hiring, and other strategies.
What happens over time is, they suffer from work fatigue, get frustrated even with the tiniest disappointments, and have strong urges to abandon their business altogether.
So the challenge for business owners is to grow their business gradually, adapt and use strategies to automate and create systems for auto-functioning and operations.
Business Depends Too Much On Their Founder
If your business is too founder-dependent, it means that if you are hit by a car, your business won’t function the next day.
A lot of times business owners start their companies too much centric on their primary skillset, interest, and capabilities.
A business must have the ability to work without its founder as efficiently as ever. Businesses suffering from founder dependence are a commonly seen problem with new entrepreneurs.
If you look at the solution for this, it is pretty obvious. Business founders simply have to give away more control to their partner or employee.
However, to really pull this off, founders have to trust enough and find capable partners or individuals.
The best way can be having a co-founder, so better start a business with someone you trust or have faith in their experience, passion, and skill set.
Having Courage To Quit Their Day Job
This probably is the very first challenge or problem every young aspiring entrepreneur goes through.
They have to muster a monumental amount of courage to quit their day job and start the business full time.
Even if you are doing your day job and growing your business simultaneously, there will be a point where you have to make this decision.
And usually, it still has the same risk as there is no assurance regarding the business you’re running.
Even though it is a bit difficult at the moment, to leave your heavy paycheck job on which your livelihood is based, to start from scratch is a huge gamble, at least at the moment it seems so.
To resolve this, you need to focus on long-term goals rather than short-term profits. You have to see what you need to do today to achieve your goals in the coming 5 years or ten years.
If that is leaving the job, then you can make the decision on the basis of rationality and logical reasoning, making it easy to do rather than just coming from passion and desire.
Lack Of Patience
Patience is the one thing with which one can achieve anything they want. But that’s one thing primarily lacking in young entrepreneurs.
They tend to face a lot of frustration due to roadblocks and failures where they only had to focus on the learnings and finding new methods.
Overnight success is quite a flirtatious idea for youngsters and especially in this age of social media, patience is the hard thing to keep even for older folks.
You see people growing and achieving success without understanding that everyone has their own time to grow.
Rather than focusing on the long-term game plans, they get obsessed with short-term validations and comparisons.
Without patience, it is impossible to achieve anything in life or build anything worthy as everything good takes time.
Hiring Right Employees & Team Members
The moment you decide to start your own business, you need to think of capable people you need to achieve your business objective.
Hiring your dream team is not a piece of cake and this journey certainly is not romantic. There is a lot of mistakes, mishappenings, and disappointments towards making your team.
The initial team of any business is detrimental to the success of the business.
In fact, this team or employees have to be as good as you in terms of their aspiration and passion towards achieving the common business goals.
And when it comes to skillset, they need to be even better than you and more diverse as multiple skills are required to form a business.
What you can do is arrange a walking interview once you plan the pool of prospects. This will allow you to save a lot of time as you are pre-qualifying the candidates through highly specific considerations.
Do not forget to take references and have a clear and open conversation about their passion or interest in the job along with their long-term sustainability.
Reward your employees and team with flexibility, freedom, and inclusivity in the business to really shape them for the long term.
Lack Of Knowledge And Experience
Being all new to entrepreneurship while starting out will certainly make you feel an lt of not knowing irrespective of whether you are young or old.
When one get into a new thing, there is a lot you know what you don’t know and then there is a lot that you don’t know what to know.
So it becomes the most overwhelming challenge for any young entrepreneur which often gets consuming, so much that they even think of abandoning altogether.
The game here is to keep learning and getting more experience and till then have patience knowing the fact that you’re all new to this.
Another way is to find a mentor or a group where experienced people in business can help you.
If you don’t have experience, you can definitely learn from others’ experiences whether with their successes or past failures, both as a lesson.
It is also nice to have someone like your mentor or guru whom you look up to when feeling overwhelmed or confused.
But more importantly, you need to learn from your own experiences, mistakes, and experiments, the more you do, the better you get at it.
Having Too Much Focus On The Big Picture
Nothing comes right away. Patience, perseverance, hard work, and believing to do the best that you can do is how you eventually achieve huge success in business.
Many business owners are just too much focused on the big picture, the ambitious dream aspect of their business.
It becomes easy for them to focus on the long-term goals because as those are distant to achieve, subconsciously, they can go slow with things.
And that’s where they become reckless and lose grip on the short-term aspect of the business.
If you just take care of the day-to-day operations of the business the best you can do, things will start falling into their respective places.
Young entrepreneurs prefer to romance with the idea of a long aspirational long-term ambition of their business rather than acting upon all tons of short-term advice staring at their face.
To really deal with this problem, you need to aim for small wins from time to time in your business, focus on the day-to-day decisions, and see as far as only months, not years.
Having Unrealistic Expectation
One of the reasons why most businesses fail is not having realistic expectations about it at the beginning. And this certainly is the most common challenge or problem faced by young entrepreneurs.
Your mindset is everything when you are starting a business. If you are having a false notion about how you are going to achieve the results or how soon it will come to you, it is going to be disappointing.
A lot of young aspiring business owners follow wealthy and successful business mentors or tycoons, their stories.
Sometimes they get a wrong impression or idea about getting successful quicker or it seems easier to them by just hearing the success stories.
Even many are just awestruck with the glamour of success and money, not their passion for the business.
All of these directions or wrong mindsets give birth to wrong expectations or unrealistic expectations.
The same happens with people who are overambitious and less patient as that’s the worst combination one has to set for failure early.
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