Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2013; its reference to the red tape involved in setting up a company in Spain reflects the situation at that time.
Making the decision to start your own business is not always easy, especially if you have never done it before. Depending on the country you live in, the mere act of setting up a company is enough to put many entrepreneurs off. In Spain specifically, bureaucratic red tape is the acid test for anyone who wants to open their own company.
However, after consulting various active business owners, many of them point to other kinds of situations that some entrepreneurs take more seriously than others, to the point of losing their motivation. Being a business owner is not just about having a good business plan, a good strategy or a good product. It won’t always be a bed of roses, so you have to keep your motivation up constantly. That motivation can start to wane because of some of the small situations you will go through. Most of the business owners consulted insist that you have to be mentally prepared for them and set certain feelings aside.
1. You will lose clients
Not all clients will stay with you forever. While it is true that when clients start leaving we should analyse why, we should also bear in mind that with some of them there may be no solution, because we may change a product or service to please the large majority and lose a minority.
Of course, the biggest blow to motivation comes when you lose a major client. Imagine you landed a client that accounts for 50% of your total sales. That hurts. We should certainly try to find out why they are leaving and try to win them back, but if, after trying, that is not possible, you have to move on. Tip: be careful about having a lot of exposure to, or dependence on, a few clients, because in those cases you are not losing one client but a large percentage of your turnover. This is the main problem for self-employed people who work for a single company.
See also: The best-kept secrets of the most successful businesspeople
2. You will lose some friends and have friction with family
We have always said that at the start of a business you will have to devote yourself to it body and soul, practically 24 hours a day. That will inevitably damage your social circle. If it is a family business, being with your family all day long (at home and at work) could end up burning you out unless you set some very simple rules: “Home problems are not discussed at work, and work is not discussed at home.”
Also, remember to keep your personal finances separate from the business accounts as far as possible. There are many businesses that are not profitable even though they make good profits. We need to keep accurate accounts for the business. That will save us family problems in the medium term.
3. Money, debt…
Most businesses, whatever their size (probably every single one of them), have had the same problem when opening or growing: at some point they ran into cash-flow problems. Invoices piled up, payments were delayed or we simply got our forecasts wrong. Some of these business owners say that when this situation arrives, as it has for almost all of them, you have to know how to stay calm and not lose sleep over it. You do, however, have to look for solutions to the problem. Above all, just as when we talk about financial education, they agree that you should be very careful about taking on too much debt: “Slow, gradual and healthy growth is better than growing fast and falling by the wayside in debt.”
4. Employees let you down, but the perfect worker doesn’t exist
It is true that in the job market there are people you wish you had never had working for you. It is demoralising to hire someone, pay them well, and have them deceive you in any of the many ways a business owner can be deceived.
Other business owners make the mistake of looking for the perfect worker, and that probably doesn’t exist. It’s like marriage: you have to know the other person’s virtues and accept their flaws, because everyone has flaws.
5. Stress
Many new entrepreneurs don’t know the destructive power of what we call stress. Either you have the mental strength needed to master stress, or in the end it will finish you off. Many business owners agree that every entrepreneur should combine their business with sport or yoga.
6. Sales
Not all entrepreneurs are used to selling. Of course, you can always learn. Others simply aren’t interested in it. The point is that knowing how to sell is necessary, and not only to sell a product or win a client. Being an entrepreneur means selling: you sell yourself to raise finance, you sell yourself (negotiate) to get better discounts, and so on. Sometimes it is demoralising to realise that your business doesn’t bring in enough revenue simply because you don’t have good salespeople. Fortunately, here are the 15 habits of successful salespeople, in case they help.
7. You may fail…
It is beyond your control. Everyone is afraid of failure. What’s more, many people do nothing for fear of failing, and that is already a failure in every sense. Some people, after trying, close their business, their bank accounts drop to zero and they end up in bed in a depressed state. Others fail three times and try a fourth as if nothing had happened.
Failure is a possibility that will always be there. Accept it and face up to that possibility. I don’t believe in luck (the good kind), but at certain moments I could believe in a stroke of bad luck. Whatever the case, and even if it sounds like a cliché, a person doesn’t fail until they stop trying. Failing may be the hardest part, the one not everyone is mentally prepared for.
Further reading
- 23 motivational quotes for entrepreneurs
- 17 articles for entrepreneurs
- Entrepreneurs: chasing a dream
- How to master the “if only I had…”
Featured image: Andover – Empty Shop Units by Chris Talbot, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
