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Having that grand opening for your business is a great achievement and every business owner should be commended for making that big step. However, maintaining the business has proven to be a big challenge for many owners, here are three of the biggest challenges unique to small business owners.
Not having a steady supply of customers is a problem face by all businesses and particularly the smaller ones. Companies big and small can’t just sit around waiting for leads to come in. One has to be engaged in marketing everyday to find new customers. For the small business owner who don’t have a household name this can be particularly challenging. There seem to be so many avenues you can choose to focus your marketing on, how do you know what to prioritize and where to allocate your scarce resources?
Figuring out who your ideal customer is should actually the starting point for small business owners and any businesses for that matter.
Hope and wishing that customers will show up at your business just doesn’t work. You need to make sure you’re spreading the word to a targeted set of people, the right people.
Develop an idea of what your ideal customers look like, what they do, where they spend time online by building your buyer personas. Once you’ve built your buyer personas, you can start creating content and getting in front of your target customers in the places they spend time online and with the messages that they care about.
Depending on a single client or groups of clients is a sure recipe for disaster. If a single client makes up more than half of your income, you are in trouble. At this point you would be considered more of an independent contractor than a business owner. Diversifying your client base is vital to growing a business, but it can be difficult, especially when the client in question pays well and on time.
Such dependence can actually result in the longer-term handicap of your business and it is generally better for a business to have a diversified client base to pick up the slack if and when any single client quits paying.
A small business owner’s life is not without trials and tests, in-fact it’s not an enviable life, at least in the beginning. It’s extremely easy to get discouraged when something goes wrong or when you’re not growing as fast as you’d like. Self-doubt creeps in, and you feel like giving up at times.
Having the conviction to believe in yourself, your dreams and aspirations and having the temerity to stick it out are necessary trait for entrepreneurs. It helps also to have a good support system of family and friends who know your goals and support your struggles, as well as like-minded entrepreneurs who can be objective as it relates to the direction of your business. There is a very motivational poem called, “Success is failure turned inside out”. This can help the entrepreneur to refocus when things aren’t going the way expected.
The bottom line is this, a competitive drive is often one of the reasons people start their own business, and every challenge represents another opportunity to compete. One of the worst things a small business owner can do is to go into business without being cognizant of the challenges that lie ahead. Remain focus and don’t give up in the face of challenges.
User | 12/02/2020