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Challenges of an entrepreneur: Getting a job is only an initial part of your journey. More important is growing in it – you may classify it as either intrapreneur or entrepreneur. It doesn’t matter, there are an adequate amount of challenges in both streams.

Having been in a startup environment and also having worked for a large multinational corporation, I have had the opportunity to switch off from a corporate world and be a part of entrepreneurship. I would like to share a few of our experiences exploring similarities and differences.

Challenges of an Entrepreneur

Although your challenges are specific to your business idea, the common challenges of an entrepreneur can be segregated into the following sections. You can find a similar article exploring the key traits of an entrepreneur in our collection. In this section, we talk about some of the challenges of an entrepreneur while setting up a business.

Areas covered in this article are

• Structure of your business – LLP, Ltd Company or parternship, etc
• Policies and processes – contracts, NDAs
• Resources – both tangible and intangible
• Funds
• Budgeting
• Business plan

Structure of your startup

The first key difference between the two is the existence of a structure or lack of it. In a corporate sector, the business is likely to have been existent for a while to develop sufficient structures and policies. In an entrepreneurial setup, you might be the one setting those up.

The workflow is so organic that creating a structure can take a lot of your time, patience and even adopting a new attribute for yourself. 

Policies and Process

This trails straight off from the previous point – what happens if an employee falls sick? Do you have insurance? Liabilities? Do you have cash flow and budgets? Do you have a go-to person for advice when things go wrong? Who is your lawyer? What happens if a customer does not pay you on time? 

You don’t have to deal with all these challenges of an entrepreneur immediately. There are plenty of outsourced companies that can help you create these structures. Instead, you can focus on key areas of business such as your plan, financing, etc.

Resources to develop your entrepreneurship

As an entrepreneur, you are always under-resourced. This is perhaps a good thing sometimes, it lets you be agile about your development processes, helps you embody new skills and perhaps widen your horizon. But you cannot expect that of every employee you hire, you will need to start ensuring that there is enough codification for those employees to act on their own.

You can also look into some online courses most of which are free to provide you with additional, technical information. These courses help you gain expertise in the initial stages of building either your product or business case.

Funding your business idea

This is perhaps the most common challenges of an entrepreneur. Especially, if you are relying on organic growth, it is furthermore challenging to ensure that there is a constant flow of business. Previously I was in the tourism sector which meant the flow of revenue was seasonal. It not only posed a few cashflow problems, but it also brought about the question of sustaining resources and finding ways to maintain a balance between demand and supply through part-time jobs.

Although they seem to work very well, my experience clearly suggests otherwise. It is wrong to be providing employment to people with taking limited responsibility for their growth profile or increasing their employability. It works well for people who are exploring opportunities, but in the long term – if you are a company, you are spending an awful lot of time on training and the attrition rate is high which puts the business in jeopardy. You can find some common funding templates here.

Budgeting for an Entreprenuer

This is a very important aspect of a startup. In my earlier startup experience, I have been in a cash crunch most times without an earmarked spending plan. It makes a tremendous difference if you look at the strategic development of the business.

You are more focused on fire fighting rather than looking at a long term perspective or constantly improving service offerings or even finding ways of development. This way you will always have access to your budgeting efforts, even if you’re out of the office.

Business Plan for your startup

These tend to become increasingly important if you are on the decision making front. Whether you are an entrepreneur or an employee, you will need a business plan for yourself. How do you wish to develop over the coming year? What are your five-year goals? How do you want to keep pushing your possibilities? What are your growth structures?

Discuss this with your manager or business partner and see how you can marry it with the company goals. This is not to preach you how to lead your career, but it is a great feeling to be in some sort of control about how you would like to proceed and knowledge is a great source of certainty sometimes. It helps you be committed to a particular goal or plan. It also provides you with an opportunity to see if you are in the right direction for the final goals you want to achieve.

These are a quick few pointers about improving your employability or entrepreneurial development path. There are indeed innumerable resources as we go ahead, and most of them are free. The internet is a funny world, sometimes, it all boils down to finding the right places to improve your knowledge.

After all, the most precious resource you have is TIME!