TOP FIVE SMALL BUSINESS HEADACHES

                                  TOP FIVE SMALL BUSINESS HEADACHES

If you have a good idea for a business idea, then do what you can to make the vision come true. But don’t underestimate the challenges inherent in self-driven enterprise. The reason why one out of three small businesses fail - those restaurants, salons, and firms you see come and go through the same property within three years – is typically attributed to a lack of preparation for the undertaking at-hand. Knowing what lies ahead is key to seeing long-term success for your startup.

Instead of counting on luck to guide your way, count down these top ten small business headaches for a head’s up on what’s in store. Doing so will better prepare you for the challenges ahead.

5. Dependence: A common and potentially risky situation for startups to find themselves in, even years into operation, is a dependency. This can happen one of two ways. One is for the majority of revenues to come from a single source. This puts small businesses in a tight spot if the particular client or customer ceases the relationship for whatever reason. The second way a startup can see disaster through dependence is by relying too heavily on the leader, principally you. It’s important other team members can step in and fulfill leadership roles the best they can in the unfortunate event you are hurt or otherwise unable to manage operations for a period of time.

4. Security: Small businesses are increasingly becoming the prey for cyber criminals. Needless to say your startup will almost certainly be saving great volumes of digital data and relying heavily on software to function, key points of weakness these keyboard crooks exploit to attempt extortion. It might sound too sophisticated to ever happen to your cupcake shop, but ransomware strikers make targets out of anyone with vulnerable virtual caches of information. A cloud-based password manager is one of the many tools you can use to reduce this risk. As the leader, the due diligence for maintaining cyber security rests with you.

3. Planning: Cool-headed business leaders take their challenges one day at a time. But it’s equally important to always have plans in place for the variety of possibilities lying ahead. It’s one thing to discuss the potential for stress down the road with your team during a meeting. It’s another to commit to devising a contingency for it if such were to occur. Whether it’s a project falling through, or one becoming a bigger success than anticipated, it’s always smart to have ideas for how to keep the momentum steady.

2. Competition: The key to dealing with business competition is to not let the free-market sparring go to your head. By that we mean don’t let yourself get too caught up in what the other folks are doing. It’s important to do your homework regarding the other sharks in the tank, especially at the launch of your startup. But similar to the way in which we incorrectly perceive our friends to be leading better lives than ourselves when seeing their social media profiles, you’re likely to always walk away with the perception your competition is reeling ‘em in when nothing is biting your line. Don’t fall prey to poorly thought-out campaigns aimed at outdoing the alternatives to your services. Instead focus on gearing your offerings to what your clients or customers have expressed the most interest.

1. Routine: Your small business idea started with an ambitious desire to give people something they hadn’t yet been offered. Business innovation, whether through product or service, is the core of entrepreneurial spirit. But once you’ve settled into a consistent pattern of productivity and performance it becomes increasingly harder to stay on the cutting edge. Some companies are less pressured to be continually taking new leaps forward, but it’s always important for small business leaders to take a step back once in awhile and reassess operations. Can something change? Is there something new to offer or take advantage of? Letting an enterprise lapse into routine can prevent these important questions from ever being answered.

Failing to appreciate the challenges of small business management is the fundamental reason why so many of these ventures fail. There’s no real secret to success, but if there were a list of ingredients then awareness of what’s ahead would be one of them. These headaches of running your own company are hard to avoid, but taking them into consideration is one way to succeed in overcoming them.