7 Challenges You Will Face as an Entrepreneur and Why Perseverance is the Key to Success

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Ever feel like hanging it up? Shut down your website, stop social media and move on with your life? Well, you are not alone. Every business owner has felt these feelings before. But the entrepreneur who perseveres through the challenges and obstacles comes out the other side with a successful and growing business. So to put things into perspective, let's take a look at 7 challenges that you are going to face and knock them on their heels now, so you are ready to deal with them when they happen.

Let's start with the definition of perseverance. According to Dictionary.com, perseverance means "a steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement."

Ok, if you have been an entrepreneur for any time, you know you qualify because you undoubtedly face difficulties, obstacles, and discouragement. So let's dive into the 7 challenges and see how to persevere.

You Will Face Obstacles

If it were easy, everyone would do it. Building a successful business is hard. There are obstacles around every corner, and the solutions are not always easy to come by. But by committing to perseverance, you commit yourself to work through and overcome every obstacle, even when it gets tough. The lessons you learn will be priceless, and the confidence you will gain will be gold.

Being a business owner means you are the decision-maker and head problem solver. The more obstacles you face, the more experience you will gain in solving problems.

When I was a newbie programmer back in the late '90s, my mentor taught me how to troubleshoot my code to figure out the source of the problem, not the symptom. You see, sometimes my code was not the problem. The lousy outcome was simply a symptom of a different code problem in another program which created a domino effect of bad data in my code. Those lessons in troubleshooting crossed over to my entire career and now to my business.

The point is, obstacles are more the norm than you might like, but it is a part of building out your business that you can't avoid. Learn how to troubleshoot so you can identify the cause of the problem, not just the symptom. Once you know the cause, you can eliminate it and the symptoms. However, if you only address the symptoms, you could be setting yourself up for problems later on.

You will Have a Learning Curve

You were not born with the knowledge of owning, building and managing an online business. You must learn it. And depending on how long you've been at it, you may still have a learning curve ahead. As you learn, you will likely realize you still have much more to learn.

But don't fret. You will ALWAYS have things to learn as a business owner. So embrace it. However, do your best not to get stuck in learning because that can be an implementation killer. There is much to learn, so learn as you go when relevant to what you are doing.

You Must Learn How to Be Your Own Boss

Part of your learning curve will be learning to be a boss. If you have employees, you must be a leader to them and yourself. But if you have never supervised or managed before, this is a skill set that you must learn to lead effectively.

However, leadership does not stop at making assignments and holding people accountable. You will need to create structure in your business. The structure provides a foundation of core values, systems and processes that you and your team can lean on to be consistent, efficient and feel a sense of accomplishment.

Even if you work alone, creating structure in your business, even creating policies and procedures can help you take your structure more seriously, so you adhere to the rules and boundaries you set for your business.

Learning to be your own boss starts with managing your own desk effectively. Once you have mastered that, you can more easily juggle your day-to-day work and projects.

Your First Attempt May Flop

Even the best entrepreneurs in the world have flopped. Failure is part of the process.

When you commit to persevering, you commit to overcoming failure by learning from it and taking action to improve.

Rest assured the mistakes you make and the failures you incur will likely never happen again. By giving up too soon, you miss the opportunity that will open up to you BECAUSE of your failures.

When my daughter was in the 4th grade, she had to do a science project. If you have kids, you probably know about this. They create a project display board and go through the scientific process by conducting an experiment.

She wanted to test batteries in a flashlight to see how long each brand would last. So she went off to school with a flashlight that she needed to leave on at all times until the battery died, recording the results as she went. But being just ten years old, she began playing with the flashlight in class, creating a disruption. Her teacher sent a note home stating she could not continue this project.

She was devastated because she was already several days into her experiment and didn't want to start over.

My husband and I, both in IT, realized experimentation was a part of our process. We took it in stride, but she was not having it. Once we realized this, we explained that this IS part of the scientific process. A failed experiment taught her what NOT to do to move forward more quickly. The boundary created with that failed experiment helped her focus more on her next effort.

She took her project to school with the first failed experiment taped to the back of her board. The judges loved it. One even made a note on her evaluation of the project stating, "way to persevere after the first project." She won an award of $75 for that project. At 10 years old, that $75 reward taught her that perseverance was the key to success.

You Have to Find a Suitable Business Model

There are many ways to run an online business and many different business models to follow.

Part of your early years in business may be finding a suitable business model to you and your niche.

This process could involve a lot of trial and error to find the perfect fit. The difference between an ill-fitting business model and the ideal fit could mean millions in revenue.

Allow for time to determine what works best for you, your family and your niche.

While you are going through this process, work on your implementation skills so that you can implement them efficiently and effectively by the time you find your perfect business model.

Financial Reward May Take More Time

I know there are many people out there claiming the six-figure business model and how to get there. And the truth is, not everyone is an overnight sensation. You often won't hear about the ten different businesses they had in the years before they finally made it.

But they found their perfect niche through trial and error. They found their perfect people by talking to thousands and learned to take challenges, obstacles, and failure in stride. They persevered.

This is precisely why you want to do a year-end assessment to evaluate how far you've come from the previous year, where you are now and what you need to do to get to where you want to be.

By tracking your progress through self-assessment, you will see your growth in more ways than just money. When you get past your learning curve, create structure and learn to implement effectively, everything will finally come together to create financial reward.

Outlast Your Competition

The day you started your business, thousands of other people started a business too. Conversely, thousands of businesses closed down that day too.

Instead of looking at this as a tightrope you must balance, embrace the fact that the longer you persevere, the more likely you are to crack the code to make YOUR business successful. To do this, you make learning from your mistakes a top priority.

When you are a beginner, your competition is not the person in your niche who has been at it for the last ten years. Learn from that person.

But as the months and years go by you will be ahead of those who start after you. They learn from you.

You may have heard it before like this. "Don't compare your beginning to someone else's middle."

That is true.

The bigger your learning curve, the longer it will take.

The slower you learn, the longer it will take.

If you don't prioritize creating a structure that supports productivity and implementation, it will take longer.

But knowing your limitations will help you overcome them, just as you would any other obstacle you face. It's just part of the process.

The bottom line is that this journey is your own. You can learn from others and maybe even find success, but in the end, it all boils down to you and how well you persevere.

Starting a business is cheaper than ever. And you are going to face many challenges. But none of them are so difficult to overcome that they justify giving up. If you think about this article, don't most things you encounter fall into one of these categories?

Don't stop. Keep Going! You can do it! 💪🔥