Looking for a career that offers both personal fulfillment and financial stability? Consider pursuing a high-paying business job. With the right skills and experience, you can land a lucrative job in a variety of industries, from finance and marketing to human resources and consulting.

But what makes a business job well-paying? Factors such as job demand, level of education, experience, skills, and industry trends can all affect salary. That’s why it’s essential to do your research and find a career that aligns with your strengths and interests.

In this article, we’ll explore the top business jobs that pay well, including positions in finance, marketing, human resources, operations management, information technology, and consulting. By the end, you’ll have a better understanding of the various high-paying career options available to you in the business world.

What Makes a Business Job Lucrative?

If you’re looking for a career that offers a high salary, you may be interested in exploring the various business job options. However, it’s important to understand what makes a business job lucrative before choosing a career path.

One of the most significant factors that contribute to a high-salary career in business is job demand. Industries with fewer qualified candidates and a high demand for skilled workers tend to offer more competitive salaries. Additionally, obtaining a higher level of education, such as a master’s degree or specialized certifications, can significantly increase earning potential.

Experience is another crucial factor that can impact salary in the business industry. Candidates with a proven track record of success and a strong professional network may be able to negotiate higher salaries or secure more prestigious roles.

It’s also important to be aware of industry trends and emerging technologies that are driving growth. Staying up-to-date with the latest advancements in your field can help you stay ahead of your competition and remain valuable to employers.

Ultimately, finding a well-paying job in business requires doing your research and finding a career that aligns with your interests and strengths. By understanding what makes a business job lucrative, you’ll be better equipped to make informed decisions about your career path and ultimately achieve financial success.

Top-Paying Business Positions in Finance

Finance is a lucrative industry for those seeking high-paying business positions. Here are some of the top-paying careers in finance:

Financial managers are responsible for preparing financial reports, analyzing market trends, and managing investments for companies. Investment bankers advise companies on financial matters and help them raise capital. Chief financial officers are responsible for a company’s financial strategy, reporting, and compliance.

While a degree in finance or business administration is typically required for these positions, experience in the field is also essential. Those interested in pursuing high-paying business jobs in finance should consider gaining experience through internships or lower-level finance positions.

Conclusion for Section 3:

Finance is a lucrative industry for those seeking high-paying business positions. With the right education and experience, careers such as financial manager, investment banker, and chief financial officer can offer individuals a path to financial success.

High-Paying Jobs in Marketing and Advertising

Marketing and advertising are essential industries for businesses looking to attract and retain customers. As such, these industries offer numerous high-paying job opportunities for professionals with the right skills and experience.

The following are some of the best-paying jobs in marketing and advertising:

Marketing managers are responsible for developing and implementing marketing strategies to promote a company’s products or services. They work closely with advertising directors and sales teams to ensure that all marketing efforts are aligned with business objectives. Advertising directors, on the other hand, are responsible for creating and implementing advertising campaigns to promote a company’s products or services. They work closely with creative teams to develop compelling ads and other promotional materials.

Public relations managers are responsible for maintaining a positive public image for a company. They work to build and maintain relationships with the media, manage crises, and develop and implement public relations campaigns.

To succeed in these high-paying careers, professionals must possess a range of skills, including creativity, communication, strategic thinking, and analytical thinking.

Best-Paying Jobs in Human Resources

Human resources is a critical part of every organization, and professionals in this field are responsible for managing talent, employee relations, benefits, and compensation. For those interested in pursuing a high-paying business job in human resources, several options are available.

One of the best-paying jobs in human resources is the HR manager position. HR managers are responsible for overseeing the HR department and managing recruitment, training, and employee benefits. To become an HR manager, a bachelor’s degree in human resources or a related field is usually required, as well as several years of experience in an HR role. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual salary for HR managers is $121,220.

Another lucrative career option in human resources is the HR director position. HR directors are responsible for developing and implementing HR policies and procedures, as well as managing the HR team. To become an HR director, a master’s degree in human resources or a related field is typically required, as well as several years of experience in an HR role. According to Glassdoor, the average annual salary for HR directors is $137,839.

For those interested in compensation and benefits, the compensation and benefits manager position is a top-paying option in human resources. Compensation and benefits managers are responsible for creating and managing employee compensation and benefits packages. A bachelor’s degree in human resources, business administration, or a related field is usually required, as well as several years of experience in a compensation and benefits role. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual salary for compensation and benefits managers is $121,010.

High-Earning Jobs in Operations Management

Operations management is a crucial aspect of any business, ensuring its processes and systems are efficient and effective. It’s no surprise that operations management offers some of the best-paying business careers available. Here are some of the most lucrative job options:

These positions require strong analytical thinking and problem-solving skills to optimize business operations. An operations manager oversees an organization’s daily activities and manages staff, while supply chain managers focus on coordinating the flow of goods and services. Logistics managers focus on transportation and warehousing, ensuring the movement of goods and products is seamless.

To succeed in operations management, strong interpersonal skills are necessary, as well as the ability to communicate effectively with teams and stakeholders. Operations managers must also stay up-to-date with industry trends and implement new technologies to maintain a competitive edge.

If you’re looking for a high-paying business career and have a knack for optimizing processes, operations management may be a great fit.

Lucrative Careers in Information Technology

The information technology industry offers some of the most well-compensated business jobs. With the continuous advancements in technology and the increasing reliance on digital solutions across industries, the demand for skilled IT professionals has skyrocketed.

One of the highest-paying IT jobs is IT manager. These professionals are responsible for overseeing their organization’s technology strategy, ensuring that all systems operate efficiently and securely. IT managers must also stay abreast of the latest technological advancements, maintain relationships with vendors, and manage a team of IT professionals. The average salary for an IT manager is around $146,000 per year.

In addition to IT managers, software engineers are also in high demand and highly compensated. These professionals design, develop, test, and maintain software applications for a range of industries and clients. To become a software engineer, one typically needs a degree in computer science or a related field and experience in programming languages such as Java, Python, and C++. The average salary for a software engineer is around $107,000 per year.

Another lucrative career in the information technology industry is data scientist. These professionals analyze complex data sets to identify patterns, trends, and insights that can inform business decisions. Data scientists typically need a degree in computer science, statistics, or a related field, as well as experience with programming languages and data analysis tools. The average salary for a data scientist is around $122,000 per year.

With the right education, experience, and skills, there are many opportunities for profitable employment within the information technology industry. Whether it’s as an IT manager, software engineer, or data scientist, the IT industry offers a range of well-compensated business jobs for those with a passion for technology and a willingness to continuously learn and adapt.

Top-Paying Business Jobs in Consulting

Consulting is a thriving industry, with many high-paying positions available for skilled professionals. Those with analytical and critical thinking skills, as well as strong communication abilities, often excel in consulting careers. Here are some of the top-paying business jobs in consulting:

“Consulting is a great field for those who enjoy problem-solving and strategic thinking. It’s a demanding job, but the rewards are worth it.” – John Smith, Senior Strategy Consultant

Consulting careers are not only financially rewarding, but they also offer opportunities for growth and development. Many consulting firms provide their employees with training and leadership programs to help them advance in their careers.

Whether you’re interested in management, finance, or strategy consulting, the industry offers a variety of high-paying positions that may be right for you.

Conclusion: Pursuing High-Paying Business Jobs

When it comes to pursuing a career in the business world, it’s essential to find a job that not only aligns with your interests and skills but also offers a substantial salary.

Throughout this article, we’ve explored some of the top business jobs that pay well. From finance and marketing to human resources and consulting, there are numerous high-paying options available to those with the right education, experience, and skill set.

However, it’s important to remember that salary shouldn’t be the only determining factor when choosing a career. Consider job demand, industry trends, and your personal values and goals when making a decision.

Regardless of the path you choose, doing thorough research and staying up-to-date on industry knowledge and business insurance skills is crucial for success in the business world.

We hope this article has provided valuable insights into the world of high-paying business jobs and inspired you to pursue a profession that aligns with your passions and financial goals.

Key Takeaways

Top-paying business jobs highlighted include:

• Finance: Financial manager, investment banker, CFO
• Marketing: Marketing manager, advertising director, PR manager
• HR: HR manager, HR director, compensation & benefits manager
• Operations: Operations manager, supply chain manager, logistics manager
• IT: IT manager, software engineer, data scientist
• Consulting: Management consultant, strategy consultant, financial consultant

At Tekrati, we deliver engaging tech news stories and in-depth analysis to keep you on the cutting edge. We cover AI, computing, smartphones, cybersecurity and all tech innovations with curiosity and clarity. We believe technology empowers progress when guided by diverse perspectives. Visit Tekrati.com to explore the future of tech through our thoughtful articles, how-tos and interviews.

The post Top Business Jobs That Pay Well: High Earning Careers first appeared on Tekrati and is written by Khezia

It’s exhilarating to start and run your own company, but it’s also difficult. Unexpected challenges will inevitably arise, even with the finest available coaching and preparedness. What matters is how you respond to the unexpected difficulty.  In this interview series, we spoke with 20 business owners and CEOs from various companies in the United States on how they handled challenges during the Covid -19 Pandemic.

INTERVIEW HOST

The host of this interview was Jed Morley. Jed Morley is the CEO of a leading payment processing service provider called PlatPay.

Table of Contents

The question we asked:

The pandemic encouraged many businesses to pivot and adapt to changing market conditions. How did you adapt? Did you introduce additional product lines or services?

Renee Bauer

Tasks have a funny way of stealing your time. When you stop focusing on how to scale your business and only focus on tasks, the growth of your business halts abruptly. Make sure your schedule has plenty of time to work ON the business and not just IN the business.

Linkedin

Paige Arnof-Fenn

My biggest challenge was that the people you start with are not always the ones who grow with you. The hardest lesson I learned when I started my company is not getting rid of weak people earlier than I did in the first few years of my business. I spent more time managing them than finding new customers.

I knew in my gut they were not up to snuff but out of loyalty to them I let them hang around much longer than they should have. It would have been better for everyone to let them go as soon as the signs were there. They became more insecure and threatened as we grew which was not productive for the team.

As soon as I let them go the culture got stronger and the bar higher. “A” team people like to be surrounded by other stars. It is true that you should hire slowly and fire quickly. I did not make that mistake again later on so learned it well the first time. I wish I had known it even earlier though but lesson learned for sure! Another key challenge has been about the importance of focus.

There is so much noise out there with social media, 24/7 news, climate change, etc. that for my clients and me staying focused with all the distractions we are bombarded with on a daily basis can be tough. So my top tip is to learn to give yourself permission to say no.

Whether it means passing on joining another committee, delegating to someone on your team to attend the event, sleeping in (no to an alarm clock), meditating, taking a walk, or just turning off my phone and computer (no I will respond later on my own schedule), simple acts of letting myself focus, relax and be present in the moment are the very best gifts I can give myself as an entrepreneur.

Like most small business owners and entrepreneurs there are never enough hours in the day to fit everything in so when something has to give it is usually time I have allocated for myself to think, exercise, read or just relax. What I have come to appreciate and realize in my 50s is that “me time” is not a luxury or pampering like it was in my youth, now it is maintenance! To improve productivity in my experience when you focus and do less you can get more done.

Linkedin

Emily Lawson

When growing a small business, things rarely go exactly as planned. Within the first few years of the company, we were still understanding the market we were in and figuring out how to produce consistent product. And then all at once, I lost three of my key team members (at that time we were more like a family), and the blow of their departure felt personal.

They all worked on the production of the product and were looking for other opportunities in life, which they all found within a month of each other. This left a gaping hole in the most important role in my company, the production of the product by hands that truly cared what they were producing and that I trusted beyond measure to produce our product. So, I adapted. I rehired and reworked our systems for an entirely new team, brought everything back to basics and got back into the kitchen. The result has put us where we are today.

It was a gift that they moved on and, in the end, we created a new system where people could thrive in their positions, and I made shifts that we didn’t even know we needed to make. These things happen often in growing a small business. All these common issues are things that we deal with and have learned to meet head on. I always have a plan B and have never wanted to give up.

Linkedin

Gary Kohn

The greatest challenge will always be getting past your own self-created boundaries. No matter how head strong the entrepreneur, there will often be moments of self-doubt, uncertainty and moments where you want to run in the other direction.

The solution is to keep pushing forward, even if it’s just for a small amount of time daily. Over those months and eventually years, the hard work and resilience becomes cemented and helps you get past the times that are extremely challenging. The well-formed habit of working daily on your dreams is hard to break, and will get you through the biggest challenges.

Linkedin

Ewen Finser

Challenge:

Having a Robust Business Process Documentation If you think documentation has an insignificant role in your business, think again. It is one of the most critical parts that every entrepreneur should focus on, especially when kick-starting any venture.

The documentation process is the structural backbone of any business. Due to the divergent workflow of your business (especially going online, being in a remote work environment, or adopting a hybrid model), your internal operation may be prone to inconsistencies, confusion, and unproductive staff if proper documentation procedures are ignored.

Most especially, when someone tenured or knowledgeable in the team leaves, no one knows what’s going on or how to move forward because there’s no black-and-white procedure to guide everyone.

Also, you will undergo a constant trial and error phase in starting your business. Thus, it requires a robust document-centric process to define what works and what doesn’t.

How to Overcome it:

Prioritize Creating a Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) I know this is an arduous process and painful process. But writing and paying attention to your processes will allow you to map your business process and growth. A straightforward way is to write everything down while you do tasks (or you can record it through video). Outline every process from start to finish. This will allow you to streamline your process, make more informed decisions and reduce errors in the long run.

Linkedin

Ian Sells

There was a time when I was still managing my first Amazon brand, that I would launch a product and it would fly and get sold out within hours. The thing with eCommerce is that it grows very fast. In my first Amazon brand, I was astounded with how fast the sales were going.

This success has caused me to be impulsive and expand my brand too fast. I impulsively made the decision to launch a lot of products at once. The thing was, I didn’t have systems in place to keep up with the growth my hasty actions has caused. You may say that it is a good problem. But it would not be a problem if I only planned well and followed a gradual process.

I didn’t have the capital to keep up with the sudden surge of order volume nor the manpower to handle the influx of orders. Basically, I didn’t have systems in place and can’t keep up with the growth. At the time, I was a one-man company. Lesson learned: Scaling your brand sinvolves planning and preparation. Don’t scale just cause the market is good. Scale up when you have enough cash, have the capacity to leverage hard and have the systems in place.

Linkedin

Sardor Umrdinov

I always associate my business with chess. Everything, like in chess, must be carefully considered from all angles before making a move. It’s impossible to predict every action with 100% certainty.

However, the beauty of this game is that it can be played by anyone because there are no predetermined goals or rules. I believe that if you always go with the flow, you will lose interest in being an entrepreneur. As a result, I enjoy taking risks because it keeps me on my toes and ready for any challenge that comes my way.

I took one of the biggest risks in 2016 for Home Alliance. I decided to design and develop our own software. We sought the help of Ukrainian developers because dealing with this process on our own would be impractical. We created our CRM system, and our profit margins increased by 15%.

However, by growing so fast, we couldn’t keep up. In 2017, the gross revenue growth slowed down. I didn’t make many projections. We had no process in place. It was me managing most of the things myself. There wasn’t enough coaching and accountability. We started becoming the limits to the growth of our organization.

When a company’s revenue reaches $10 million to $15 million, I’m sure it has a crisis. If you don’t adjust, the organization can die or get stuck. Then I learned to trust my people and let go of control. I started delegating and my team learned to delegate to their teams. This was our first step in developing accountability and structure. It’s more dependable. Rather than focusing on people, we’re focusing on roles and functions in the organization.

Every mistake is a chance to learn something new. When you fail, be kind to yourself. Analyzing yourself now will help you avoid repeating unpleasant situations in the future. Put your faith in your employees and team to take care of the most critical aspects of your business. Your company’s systems, corporate culture, and mission are the lifeblood of your company, and they will change regularly.

You will always maintain control and direct the direction in which the business grows based on how you handle these changes. I have learned to practice detachment as one of the most effective ways to manage change in my business and build trust with my employees.

Linkedin

Emily Martin

Too many tools…..as a first-time entrepreneur, I feel like it’s hard to decide what tools to use for which purpose. While I don’t know things about legal contracts and business operation, there are 15+ different platforms to decide to use for contracting and even then you don’t know what it means.

There are 15 different accounting tools but not all of them connect to the same banks. Also, there are HR management and payroll platforms but not for all types of employees.

It feels like when creating and growing your business you choose a tool that is good for now but then, it adds 10 other tools for other specific use cases. I wish there was just 1 tool – a business-use platform…. where accounting, payroll, contracts, etc. All were in 1 place. My advice is to find a founder with a similar business model to you and follow their tech stack and business setup.

Try to leverage other founders who have already done it and understood the benefits of the software they chose.

Linkedin

Alex Lefkowitz

I’m Alex from Tasty Edits, a video editing company for content creators. I founded Tasty Edits in 2020 as a solo entrepreneur, and bootstrapped it to a team of 10 that has become the best video editing service on Google (in terms of organic traffic.) My answer is about managing crises and what to do when they occur. ———- Being an entrepreneur is hard, especially if you’re a solo founder, because the onus of finding a solution when something goes wrong is solely on you.

When you’re starting your business, solving a crisis doesn’t seem like a big deal because you have very few processes in place, thus, only a limited number of things can go wrong at any given time. As you build your business, however, the number of potential crises increases commensurate with the number of processes you create and the complexity of your workflow / supply chain.

I made the mistake of thinking that once something is done — in other words, a system is built or a process is created — it’ll work perfectly in perpetuity. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. At one point in late 2021 I found myself overwhelmed by multiple crises occurring all at once, causing me an insane amount of stress, needing to work non-stop for weeks straight, and ultimately questioning if I should give up on the business.

To make a long story short, I spent several weeks building a video order workflow and quality assurance system. The goal of which was to make sure we’re producing the highest quality edits to reduce churn. Shortly afterwards, I started working on building our own custom project management software, dubbed our Video Order Management Application or “VOMA”, for short.

Everything was advancing about as well as I could have expected until, simply put, it wasn’t. Seemingly all at once, several of our editors suffered personal emergencies, our quality assurance workflow brokedown resulting in angry clients, and software compatibility issues wreaked havoc on VOMA. Handling the stress of it all at once was too much to bear, and I vividly recall leaning against the shower wall with warm water running down my face thinking, “maybe I should quit.”

Luckily I didn’t. Through sheer perseverance I put my nose to the grindstone and worked non-stop for weeks until everything was resolved. Everything turned out ok in the end, but it was honestly very traumatic. My advice to new entrepreneurs who want to avoid a similar situation is to be prepared before things go wrong. In other words, actively expect that things will break (even if they’re working perfectly right now) and put a plan in place to fix them if they do.

That might mean setting up an alternative workflow system that you can easily switch to if your current one breaks, or having employees on call in case you need them. Another tip is to not build too fast, especially if you’re a solo founder. You’ll find that most problems present themselves within a week or two, so wait for them to pop up before starting the next item on your roadmap. Alternatively, find a cofounder who can help you shoulder the burden when something goes wrong.

Lastly, I’ll say that money can solve many of the problems you’ll face when something goes wrong, so consider searching for angel investors or pitching VCs. Tasty Edits is, for better or for worse, fully bootstrapped so this was never an option for me — you need to have the money ready before crises occur. In other words, don’t search for an umbrella during a tempest.

Linkedin

Michaela Vybohova

When I was starting my brand I had an idea how the industry works seeing it from the other side working as a model for other designers but boy was I wrong.

The greatest challenge I’ve had is how to get established and find distribution without a budget, i bootstrapped my business without any funding, I think that’s were most people struggle and are scared to even start a brand of their own.

Best way to overcome it is to start small, meaning that don’t go into major production ordering thousands of units and then sit on inventory.

If you are new, take baby steps, don’t do something that will bankrupt you if it doesn’t work out, ideally invest maximum 30% of your savings at the begging and whatever your returns are, invest it back into the company, it will take time but there’s a room for everyone and I believe you can make it if you play it smart.

Linkedin

Cody Miles

No one ever said running a business would be easy. As an entrepreneur, you’re always being surprised with new and unexpected challenges, what determines your success is how you handle them.

I started Ashore, an online proofing and approval software, with one goal: to make collaboration accessible to everyone. Today, our app is used by creatives worldwide, including the creative teams at Disney, Adidas, Uber, and Coca-Cola, but it took a lot of work to get to this point.

The biggest challenge we faced, hands-down, was funding. We bootstrapped Ashore, and without big investors, we had to rely entirely on our product to bring in capital. We couldn’t afford much. So, instead of employing massive marketing efforts, we focused on building relationships, and instead of hiring professionals with years of experience, we found people with hidden talent.

Eventually, we were able to overcome this challenge. To start, we focused on our sales and development velocity, as the amount of time it takes to gain a customer or to develop new features is a huge determinant of your trajectory. This helped us keep money coming in the door, which was vital to our long-term efforts.

For other companies facing funding challenges, I’d recommend doing the same. Focus on your sales and development velocity, make sure you have money coming in, and don’t lose sight of your long-term goals.

Linkedin

Rany Burstein

Our biggest early-on problem was a technical one. We started Diggz, our roommate finder web app, with a MVP version that worked great and quite fast. As we grew and acquired more users, our app slowed down and the user experience was quite bad.

At one point, our roommate search section took longer than 10 seconds to load. Our MVP wasn’t built for scale and we didn’t plan for it initially. To solve this problem, we sought guidance from several technical growth experts (who actually helped us voluntarily).

They advised us about what technologies to implement to speed things up and how to redesign our algorithm and database to work in a more efficient manner. We implemented multiple of the proposed solutions and that got our roommate search to load in less than two seconds. Major improvement.

This problem challenged us not to think only on how to make our app work today, but build it for scale and for continued growth. This lesson had an impact on any new feature we released since and we continueosly work to improve our user experience even when it seems it works well at the present.

While you don’t want to spend time and money building the perfect platform or app with all the bells and features from day one. You still want to keep your eyes on the road ahead, and not end up paying for “technical debt” later. Build things simple, but make sure you have a plan for scale, whether it’s your code, infrastructure or even team.

Mark Aselstine

Without a doubt, it’s government regulation and enforcement, especially when both of those things change consistently!

When we opened our wine club, we saw a number of court cases moving through the system, all of which seemed to suggest that more states would be open to more types of shipping of alcohol. That happened, but only for wineries and not for retail.

How can you overcome it? While government regulation is always going to change, especially after elections, there are almost always work arounds. Even in alcohol sales, which we’ve been arguing about in this country for over a century now, there are work arounds.

Sam Cohen

The biggest challenge I faced in recent years was finding suitable candidates for vacant positions after the Great Resignation. A lot of employees quit their jobs which left me in dire need to hire new people.

However, it was not as easy as I thought it would be. The applicants that were applying didn’t have the experience or the skills to fill in the role. So, I took a different route after constant failure to find what I had been looking for in potential hires.

I automated my accounts by using bookkeeping software’s like Zoho and QuickBooks. It took some burden off my shoulders, as I wasn’t manually doing the finances on my own. Therefore, I advise every young entrepreneur to automate any process they believe is demanding too much of their time and energy. This helps you to focus on what’s more important in the growth and stability of your business.

Linkedin

Michael Dean

The most unexpected challenge of running a business was how much goes into maintaining an online presence. If you are a business leader and you are not investing in your online presence, then you are missing out on endless opportunities for growth and longevity.

Consumers are spending more time on their devices than ever, so optimizing your business’ website and marketing for the digital landscape is crucial. When I first started my business, I underestimated the importance of social media and SEO, but now it is a top priority, as those are two major factors in securing my business’ audience and brand.

Having a good online presence includes unique social media content, an accessible website and consistent communication with your audience. All of these factors have the ability to set your business apart from your competitors, but it is up to you to invest the time and money.

Regan Ervin

Snippet:

I started my business on an ethical premise. The problem was that I needed excellent, agency-caliber storytelling to develop the concept and make it viable, yet I’d left behind my job to do the right thing (a financially risky choice). My now-partner and I began an unconventional creative partnership to help me accomplish all this, and it worked out for us.

Detailed Story:

Three years ago I started Capital E Advisors, a wealth management firm in the Kansas City area. Leaving an established firm to start my own business was a Jerry-McGuire-kind-of-moment for me. I had quit my job because I believed a large swath of the financial services industry had gotten some fundamental things wrong, and I was embarking to get it right.

I had a big vision, and knew the unique advantages I planned to offer our potential clients were compelling ones. The challenge I faced was communicating my business’ messages in a simple, effective way—and doing so without hiring a big agency with an even bigger price tag.

The answer to my problem was simple, strategic storytelling. I formed a partnership with a local creative director, Stephanie Klein, who used a combination of her academic background in fiction-writing and the StoryBrand marketing method to tell my story. Eight months after launching the new brand, we’ve been able to gain 250+ followers on both LinkedIn and Facebook, 100+ on Instagram, and high-relevance engagement on our Twitter.

We’re also very pleased with our client acquisition rate since then. Attached to this email is a simple case study with audience data and financial results included.

We credit our success to four distinct solutions. The first solution was a brand messaging guide with story-driven messages. The second solution was implementing those meaningfully and strategically. We implemented these messages on a new website, social channels, and a short video series. Implementing our guide also included a visual rebrand to match the messages we’d written.

The third solution —which powered the first two—was an unconventional, small-business-to-small-business partnership. Solution four was simple, but can’t be overlooked. We had a business model that was worth taking a bet on.

Solution Number One: Our Brand Messaging Guide

The brand messaging document was intended to make sure our marketing copy was purposeful and succinct (and it’s done just that). Creating powerful messages required a deep dive into the brand’s history and motives. Stephanie was emphatic that we were thorough with this part, reminding us that the story has to be deeply true for story-centric marketing to work.

We spent several days in interviews, ending the research with beers at a local brewery. Stephanie recorded the conversations, journalist-style, just like she had been doing all week. During that conversation, the four of us who were involved in the interviews collectively hit the answer we’d been looking for. A couple weeks later, she called me, saying she’d finished the first draft. It needed more work, as she’d indicated it would, but the feeling I got even at that early stage was that we were
telling our client’s story. And, by extension, our own.

The above order of the characters in our story is particularly significant. We know now that the most captivating stories for customers place them in the main characters’ role and help them imagine a successful journey with a brand. We found it to be crucial that potential consumers see one of our messages and feel immediately seen. This messaging step set us up well because we had a central checkpoint for our marketing strategy, something to make sure whatever we were writing aligned in all the ways we decided were important at the onset.

Solution Number Two: Implementing the Messages

We took on a massive amount of work to implement our messages. Maybe even more than we needed to. But it ended up being more fun than tedious. We built a website with the help of a local developer, spent a couple of days shooting the videos (and many weeks editing them). Once the brand was ready, we established social media objectives and channels to meet those objectives. The process took months, with a launch date almost a year later.

Stephanie shares her perspective of this stage here:

One of the coolest moments we had was after the brand was launched and we started running a social paid campaign. We’d been pretty thorough in our audience research, and we noticed that there were some big gaps in the potential audience and the current audience being targeted by other firms.

• We identified that millennial men of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, and women 35 and up, would be interested in the transparent promises of our brand, and we believed that there was data out there that proved this interest would turn into leads.
• After we launched the first brand awareness campaign, our click spend was incredibly low—and we discovered that 60 percent of our audience was women in the targeted age bracket.
• Finally, we noticed that the men who engaged with us were from a far more diverse age and race demographic than other firms were experiencing.

Solution Number Three: Building a Partnership

Like most new business owners, I needed to find a way to market my business without adding more financial risk than was fiscally prudent. A partnership was the solution, and we both had to take risks
to form one.

As I mentioned earlier, my big vision was difficult to convey. I was inspired, but I needed help captivating and inspiring others. I’m merely an entrepreneur with an idea, and I needed a creative with vision of her own to take this idea and mold it into a tale that can have an impact.

Finding the partner I needed required me to take a risk. Agency costs for the kind of project we completed are intended for corporations, and even small-scale collaborations with creative consultants (like the one I opted for with Stephanie) can eat profits in those early days. In my case though, the story and the business were so dependent on each other that I couldn’t see myself waiting to work on the brand.

I haven’t heard of a financial firm with a creative partner before, but doing it this way meant both of us could experience exceptional results. We feel great about the success we’ve found in this joint venture.

Stephanie’s perspective:

When we started negotiating, we chose to be transparent about our mutual business goals. If we hadn’t started this way, I don’t know if it would have worked in the long run. We ended up reaching an agreement that included profit-based compensation for me, and ownership of certain business assets at a second growth stage. It was a risk for both of us. There was risk for me because there was a lot of commitment involved up front, and for Regan, he was giving up a significant share of future earnings if we were successful.

I think the reason why this arrangement worked is because we both really believed in this idea. Regan was willing to take me on based on my passion for his story. He chose to overlook the fact that my corporate acumen was different than partners he may have envisioned having when he made the leap—he was a former COO at a successful investment firm; I was a former English instructor finishing an MFA degree.

When we met, I was wearing a teacher’s blouse and cardigan, and probably came off as a little reserved. I was definitely the unconventional choice, and it would have been easy to dismiss me as “not a good fit”. But he prioritized risk differently, and we’ve both benefited from it.

Solution Number Four: A Business Idea Worth Betting On

When I launched Capital E, I had a big vision to genuinely help clients simplify their financial lives without sacrificing investment quality. I believed there was a better way to serve clients and I was eager to put this into practice. Under a standard fee structure, I aimed to deliver a robust, holistic client experience inclusive of estate planning, tax preparation, financial planning and unique investment management that prioritized value-added activities.

I knew how improved the results would be compared to traditional RIA outcomes, even from good firms. Stephanie had to have her own discovery of my idea. Her’s came from an outside perspective of what I was offering (one that was more similar to what my clients might have). But the important part was that, looking at it from either end of the idea, the business was a solid concept.

Stephanie’s take:

One of the things I like best about telling stories is this possibility on the horizon that I might discover someone with a really great story. I didn’t know when I met Regan that I’d get that feeling of epiphany. But during our early days of what we marketing professionals call “brand discovery”, I started to realize he had that indescribable thing I am always hoping to find when I met with a new client.

We connected over the logic (and yes, it was logic) of why he’d quit his incredible c-suite job at a respected firm to rally a small slew of clients under a different premise. As Regan described to me the systemic problem he noticed —across the investment industry—I realized he was pitching something brave. Smart. And in an industry nearly void of empathy—his whole idea was particularly empathetic.

In the investing industry, most clients hire their advisor to manage their money. Therefore, the advisor needs these clients to believe they are good investment managers. But studies repeatedly indicate the vast majority of investment managers underperform their benchmarks. Regan had data to show how he’d corrected this aspect, but the corrections he’d made for investment performance were only part of his overall plan.

He explained that the over-focus on investment decisions distracts from the aspects of wealth management in which advisors have a greater impact on their clients’ well-being. Regan reprioritizes the allocation of resources to those items he can control.

Truly knowing each client as a person allows him to identify the matters that are a source of financial anxiety and complication. Consulting with clients on financial matters that are important to them, keeping clients organized and on task, helping clients optimize their financial decision making, facilitating the completion of estate planning and tax preparation by professionals –these are the things an advisor can do to add value. After all, isn’t the experience of wealth the whole point?

This realization was my moment of epiphany. I thought of luxury brands I’d worked on and how honesty and adding holistic value was high on the “needs” list of Regan’s high-net-worth client demographic. I also thought of big brands who successfully told their disruptor stories and changed their industries.

For me as a storyteller, a disruptive brand with a big heart is one heck of an exciting find, especially since I could also see how the business could scale. The story and the scaleability combined gave me the courage to jump in with both feet.

Linkedin

John DiBella

The greatest challenge that my business has ever faced and had to overcome was the sudden demand for our services when the pandemic hurt. All of a sudden, everyone was working from home, launching their own online businesses, and looking for any edge that they could utilize to increase their profit margins.

And it felt like they all decided at exactly the same time that the one thing they really needed if they were going to be the best at what they were doing was SEO optimization. The sudden influx of business meant that we went from working eight-hour days to twelve-hour days, and we’re still locked into the same pattern, and it doesn’t look like anything is going to change anytime soon.

The greatest challenge my business ever faced is the one that it’s still facing, and that’s the incredibly enviable position of having more work than we can comfortably handle. It is a challenge, but someone has to rise to face it head-on, and that someone may as well be me.

Linkedin

Tequila Cousar

The greatest and unexpected challenge that I have come against as entrepreneur in business was creating content on a consistent basis that converts. Warming: in the beginning you will be fired up and may be finding customers or clients, but you need to create a long-term strategy for growth.

The best thing you can do now is to start creating content that converts. How? There are 3 fundamentals of creating content that converts into 1-3 clients.

The 3 keys are: results, pain points, and invitation to work with you. It really is that simple. You want to highlight the results in the headline of your content. Touch on the pain point of what they may be struggling with to receive results. Invite them to engage on your post or reach out to you.

Linkedin

Jim Rennert

There are so many challenges when you go to work for yourself. First and foremost, as an artist, you not only have to create the work, but you also have to find those who are interested enough to purchase it.

While most artists can create, not all artists can sell. And without sales, you can’t continue to create the work. So it’s important to find a gallery and build a loyal collector base so you have those consistent sales to continue creating more work.

In addition to that, the financial aspect is huge for most artists and was a challenge when I wanted to become an artist full time.

Typically, when a piece of artwork is sold, there are three people that get paid – the gallery that makes the sale, the foundry that produced it, and the artist that created it. Back in those days, the breakdown of payment was 1/3 for each of these people. Now, if a piece of my work sold for $3,000, the gallery would make $1,000, the foundry would make $1,000 and I would make $1,000.

The problem was, I then had to pay the foundry another $1,000 to make the next piece, so I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to make any money. So, I had a decision to make. I could either open a gallery to receive 2/3 of that payment, or I could learn the casting process and receive 2/3 of the payment.

When opening up a gallery, you need a brick and mortar, a lease, employees and other aspects I didn’t want to take on. I’m a worker, and have always been a worker, so I knew I would be able to figure out the casting process. And that’s what I did. Learning the process allowed me to create my own work, have the independence to cast it myself and make my money go twice as far. To this day I still cast my own work and haven’t looked back.

My advice to everyone is to believe in yourself and keep going. It can be tough at times, but if it’s something you truly enjoy, go for it. And most importantly, don’t let those who can’t do what you can do determine your future.

Howard Birnbaum

Uncertainty is one of the biggest challenges that my business faced during the pandemic. Uncertainty in business can arise at any time, sometimes because of the global debt or sometimes due to the economic crisis. Due to uncertainty, many businesses tend to shy away from long-term planning and so did I.

A failure to plan your next 5-10 years can destroy the value of your business. Always plan for more reactive long term policies.

Linkedin

Follow us on Linkedin

The post How Businesses Reacted and Adapted To The Covid -19 Pandemic first appeared on Tekrati and is written by Jed Morley

Many firms were prompted to pivot and adapt to changing market conditions as a result of the pandemic. We spoke with a number of business owners in the United States to learn how some of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs altered their firms and added new product lines or services.

INTERVIEW HOST

The host of this interview was Jed Morley. Jed Morley is the CEO of a leading payment processing service provider called PlatPay.

Table of Contents

The question we asked:

What is the greatest, unexpected challenge you faced with your business, that you’d like to warn new entrepreneurs about? Please share your advice on how to overcome it.?

Wiliam Scott Goldman

Having pioneered the field of Branding Law and working primarily with startups/entrepreneurs for the past thirty years, here are three very common but easily avoidable mistakes:

1. Using a brand name with the mistaken belief that filing as a corp. or LLC with the Secretary of State confers trademark protection.

2. Applying for a trademark and/or using a brand name without properly clearing it first with a thorough database search, including all possible variations, checking for similarities in sound, appearance and meaning.

3. Choosing a trademark that’s generic or descriptive rather than coined, arbitrary or even suggestive as generic marks are unregistrable and descriptive marks are considered ‘weak’ and difficult to enforce. BONUS: Mistakenly believing that hiring an independent contractor confers copyright ownership as a work made for hire.

Instead, the contractor automatically owns copyright unless otherwise assigned by written agreement. 

Linkedin

Chris Kille

The greatest unexpected challenges I have faced in my businesses over the years have always been people-related. Daily challenges will occur in day-to-day operations, and usually, those can be anticipated and corrected without much damage.

Employees and talent, however, are a completely different story. Employees can be like the ocean: ever-changing, unpredictable, and even hostile at times. On the other hand, they can also be gentle, warm, and calming. Both perspectives can change without notice.

The past 2 years have been extremely challenging because of what has been going on in the world. People have been laid off and started their own hustle. Some have decided they do not want to go back to work altogether. Some have risen to the top and made the best out of a bad situation.

Now that things appear to be calming down, there are another set of challenges. Who’s coming back? Do we need as big of an office as before? Can people continue to work from home indefinitely? These challenges can be frustrating, but are also some of the most rewarding because building and maintaining a business is one of the most satisfying experiences an entrepreneur can have.

Chris Kille is the Founder and CEO of Payment Pilot- a financial technology company, and Elevate Outsourcing- a global outsourcing agency. He has been an entrepreneur since 2005 and has built and sold multiple businesses for a profit. He currently resides in Charlotte, NC with his wife, Kristen, and their 3 dogs.

Linkedin

Leandro Sandmann

The most unexpected challenge we faced was scaling quickly enough to meet the demand. Since ExitLag was originally created for ourselves and a few friends, we were not prepared for a lot of users to be using the software but word quickly spread and more and more people were interested in signing up for the software.

From payment approval to granting access to the software, everything was done manually. One day, there were suddenly hundreds of clients waiting for their payments to be processed and their accesses to be granted.

I had to spend the entire day grating access to the new clients and processing their payments manually. I learned that business can grow a lot quicker than you anticipate and you need to be ready for that growth.

Linkedin

Christina Russo

Too Much Content – The Right People For The Right Job When my friend Cassie and I started our business, we thought it would be a humble little site that maybe twenty or so thousand people visited a month and we never expected it to grow into the behemoth that it has.

Instead of twenty thousand visitors, our business now attracts more than three million, and as the site grew faster and faster, we had to research and create more and more content, and before we knew it, we were overwhelmed and had to face the truth.

If we were going to stay in business and satiate the appetite of our community, we needed to hire researchers and writers and we need to do it fast. So we reached out to the people who mattered most to us, our community of faces and readers, and within a month we’d recruited a team that knew exactly what kind of content we needed, as they were part of the community that we were trying to appease.

I never imagined that runaway success would ever be an unexpected problem that I’d have to deal with, but it was and I’m eternally grateful that the universe saw fit to throw that problem at us.

Linkedin

Paul Sherman

I never thought that hiring the right team members would be so incredibly difficult. This is especially difficult when you’re small because small businesses often need employees that can wear many different hats as they grow and figure things out.

I would warn entrepreneurs to be very careful about hiring people that are qualified but a poor cultural fit. This is hugely important when you’re a small business because if you have one bad apple in a company of 500, it’s not so bad; if you have one bad apple in a company of three, it’s a real problem.

We overcame this issue by focusing on word-of-mouth hiring and less on traditional hiring boards. At the time, and still very much today, I felt more comfortable getting a referral from someone I trust because that person knows me and what I’m looking for in an employee. This made it easier to hire people that were cultural fits for the company.

Annie Singer

The biggest surprise to me in launching my own business was the sheer patience it takes to be successful. After launching, it is incredibly common to enter a phase that my business mentor refers to as the “trough of sorrows”. During this phase, your business is growing… one user at a time.

It makes you question everything you know to be true about your business and your product. It might take weeks to get out of this trough — or it might take many months! The best way to persist through this challenging phase of business is to have a strong network of support, including your family, friends, and business mentors.

Linkedin

Anthony Martin

Insurance companies pool money to pay claims. They have a ballpark of the premiums they will receive and the payout they will have to make. The pandemic resulted in a increase in the number of payouts in the form of business interruption claims, travel, cyber liability and trade credit.

This means that payouts have seen a massive spike in a very short period of time. Even though certain insurance companies factor in unexpected events, pandemics are difficult to gauge as they occur rarely and lack historical data. Since we are directly in touch with insurance companies in our line of business, this has affected us as well.

Linkedin

Yuvi Alpert

Our industry typically relies on an in-person experience, as consumers often wish to have a tangible feel for the types of products we offer, so recreating that in a virtual environment was our biggest challenge.

Whenever a business, especially those in the fashion and accessories industry, utilize an ecommerce platform, finding the best ways to instill confidence in the consumer can be a difficult hurdle.

I never anticipated the amount of platforms and programs, content, and service outlets we would need to utilize in order to find that perfect combination. Definitely, recreating the consumer experience in virtual space was the biggest challenge I faced in my business.

Linkedin

Adelle Archer

When we started our business, we knew that our product was unique and rare, and although it touched upon several different market spaces, the greatest challenge was identifying the best ways to communicate that to the public.

The vast majority of startups are entering a well defined market space, where expectations are already set on what is required of a product and service. Ours was a completely new and different concept, and deciding how to promote what we did, both to stakeholders and the public, was more difficult than I had anticipated and presented great challenges. After much work, and some trial and error, we were able to overcome these difficulties and carve out our space.

Linkedin

Joel Jackson

It’s a challenge to find the kinds of people willing to listen. In the entrepreneurial space, you have a lot of talkers, a lot of aggressive salespeople – but not a lot of listeners. I started early at Honest, and no one noticed what we were doing, but we didn’t let that deter us. In the end, the entire diaper industry changed its practices because of what we did.

You can’t let discouragement creep into your head. You have to be willing to put yourself out there. The key is to get your ideas in front of as many people as you can find. If you’re persistent enough and strategic enough, you will find those people who are receptive to your ideas. You never know which conversation will lead to success, so keep finding ways to put your product in front of people.

Linkedin

Gene Caballero

The thing I didn’t expect when starting my business was how lonely the journey would be. Immediate family and a few friends will always be supportive….sharing on social media, writing reviews, actually using your product, bringing food to the office at midnight, etc. Second-tier friends, like your bar buddies and old co-workers, just don’t understand the work it takes to build something from scratch.

They can’t fathom why you are not able to grab a happy hour or grab dinner on a Tuesday because you have to work. Slowly but surely, these friends will eventually quit asking and become mere acquaintances. There are 3 8-hour workdays in 24 hours…pick which two you want to work and you will be successful.

Linkedin

Nakia Whittaker-Woody

I am an entrepreneur, small business for 4 years now, my greatest and most unexpected challenge was Imposter Syndrome. I have been an Administrative Professional for 24 years and I am a ROCK STAR! But when translating those years and skillset to being a business owner, I cowered like it was day 1 of my career.

I would hyperventilate on camera, studied everything I could get my hands on, and still felt incompetent. I had never had any business experience or knew how to be an entrepreneur, so I learned to align myself with like-minded individuals who encouraged and supported me. I invested in some courses, because coming from Corporate, education equaled authority, thus helping my confidence.

I also invested in Mindset Coaching. It was an investment in myself, I was lucky to be associated with a great coach who was growing and testing her program using a Pay What You Can process. It was so instrumental in me learning to celebrate small things in my business, understand the reason for my pricing, and gave me the courage to increase my pricing to my expertise level.

Linkedin

David Jacobs

The greatest, unexpected challenge most successful business owners will face in the lifecycle of their company is successfully exiting from the business. With the success rate of finding a buyer and negotiating a transaction which closes close to 20%, most business owners will be unable to successfully from their companies after years and years of hard work and effort.

It is typically for successful business owners to receive unsolicited offers from time to time. While it is possible for a cold inquiry to result in a sale and a lucrative exit, most end up as wasted weeks or months spent supplying highly confidential materials for a due diligence process to a buyer who ultimately walks away. This happens because buyers reach out to hundreds of potential business owners per year but only make 1-2 acquisitions. After a few of these failed deals, many buyers conclude their business can’t be sold.

The most reliable path to a successful business exit is to find an advisor who understands your industry and can create a competitive auction between the potential buyers. The competition not only pushes up the transaction value, it also keeps deal structures and terms reasonable. A good intermediary will be able to properly package up your business for sale and then attract a large number of potential buyers quickly in order to create the needed competition.

Linkedin

Shaunak Amin

SnackMagic launched in 2019 and scaled rapidly. Our team now consists of in-house, hybrid, and remote employees across the globe. While flexible schedules offer a better work/life balance, we quickly discovered that good team collaboration doesn’t come down to workers being available at all hours.

Round-the-clock communications can put a significant amount of pressure on your team and lead to lower productivity and higher staff turnover. Fostering a good work/life balance for hybrid and remote employees across time zones comes down to managers and team members being mindful of everyone’s designated hours.

As projects require a significant amount of interaction, workers must be conscientious of when and how they contact their teammates to avoid a constant sense of urgency. We find that being considerate of time zones keeps the stress levels of our employees lower and reduces the chances of human error.

Linkedin

Becky Brown

One of the greatest business challenges that I had to face was learning how to set up, organize, and manage a remote workforce. As an executive, working remotely comes down to so much more than “work-from-home using a computer.”

First, it was the technology — I had to research, develop, optimize, and manage all of the technology necessary to run an efficient remote business. After all of that, I had to learn how remote management and leadership so that my whole team was up and running efficiently. If you are considering working remotely, you should be ready and prepared to do your research and optimization to make it all work. I hope that helps!

Linkedin

Zach Letter

Taking a passion and converting it to a business requires viewing that market differently, and making the transition from enthusiastic participant to a business creator represented my greatest challenge. It is very simple to critique a business from afar, passing judgement while not fully understanding the complexities they face.

]When taking my passion into a business model, I began to realize some of my unrealistic expectations, forcing me to make adjustments and thinking about modifications I never considered. Being able to merge my vision with the reality of business, and picking and choosing where I could realistically meet my goals was my biggest challenge.

Linkedin

Omer Reiner

The greatest challenge we experienced with our business was cash flow. We underestimated the importance of keeping healthy cash reserves in the bank to cover months where cash was not flowing in steadily, but the expenses, on the other hand, did not stop flowing out.

So we learned the hard way, and now we try to keep at least 3-4 months of operating expenses in a separate savings account just in case we have slow revenue months.

Linkedin

Jaclyn Strauss

Be aware that you don’t know what you don’t know. As entrepreneurs, we plan to launch our new company and feel quite confident that we have dotted every “I” and crossed every “T.” However, the truth is that you will have no way of knowing what the market desires until you launch your product or service.

Every entrepreneur should have completed numerous potential customer interviews, received feedback from a BETA version, or had a fresh set of eyes and ears on the concept and/or the product pre-launch. Before launch, these are all must-do items; however, the real valuable stuff comes in after the service or product is on the market. Be ready and willing to change paths, incorporate new ideas, change your target market, adjust your product/service for better market fit.

Do NOT resist what the market is telling you, or you will fail. We must be willing to listen, take the feedback as a gift and continue moving forward. Thinking that I had all of the answers and not quickly releasing this belief would not have been a recipe for my company’s success since the launch of my company. I am solving a real problem, but the way I am solving it looks different and feels different from what I initially thought it would be.

Overcoming the hurdle by being flexible and receptive to embracing the feedback has been the most valuable shift I have made on my entrepreneurial journey.

Linkedin

Nikhil Arun

Developing testing and vaccination products for governments, corporations, and communities in need during a pandemic was the hardest challenge we’ve faced. We were able to accomplish this by spending a lot of time understanding our customers and the intricacies of the issues in the pandemic to understand exactly what would help our customers.

When you do that, you recognize patterns and build solutions that address many problems at one. Doing this, we were able to deliver the first at-home saliva test, a way for organizations to launch their own tests, and a simple way for organizations to track and report vaccinations.

Linkedin

Follow us on Linkedin

The post Entrepreneurs Discuss the Top Unexpected Business Challenges They Have Faced first appeared on Tekrati and is written by Jed Morley

As a result of the outbreak, many businesses were forced to pivot and adjust to changing market conditions. Some were able to make the necessary adjustments, while others were forced to shut down. We spoke with 20 business owners and leaders to learn how they made changes to their companies and all the challenges they encountered during the pandemic.
We’ll also go over some strategies you can use to overcome any obstacles that come your way.

INTERVIEW HOST

Hello, my name is Jerome Knyszewski, I’ll be the host of your interview today. I am the CEO of HeavyShift. My specialties are online reputation marketing and SEO. Looking forward to reading your insightful answers and publishing your featured interview.

Table of Contents

The question we asked:

What is the greatest, unexpected challenge you faced with your business, that you’d like to warn new entrepreneurs about? Please share your advice on how to overcome it.?

David Ciccarelli

You’re going to hear no a lot. “But that’s not unexpected.” Sure, you probably expect to hear no. But you likely aren’t expecting to hear no quite as often as it actually happens, and it can be a devastating blow to morale to new entrepreneurs after hearing it over and over and over (and over) again.

Here you are, a new entrepreneur with a fantastic new idea or improved way to do something, and you just know it’s going to be revolutionary—or, at the very least, successful enough to become a profitable business. You’ve done your research, you’re ready to pitch to investors, you’re ready to find business opportunities and partners, and you’re ready to take on the world, bolstered by hope and excitement.

And then the NOs start rolling in. “It’s not a good time.” “We don’t typically take on projects like this.” “This isn’t a good fit.” “You just don’t have the data to back this up.” “Do you really think this will work?” “Is there even a market for this?” These statements keep piling up, most often accompanied by a resounding “no.”

Be ready for this. Be ready to hear no 50 times for every yes. And, perhaps most importantly, don’t take no for an answer so readily. As a young, green entrepreneur, hearing “no” can be disheartening and is often easily accepted, because who are you to be questioning established business folks on their “no”?

Sometimes, no means no and the door is closed, but in business, “no” can actually mean “not right now” or “there’s no room in the budget this year.” Hearing “no” can actually be an invitation to get creative and find ways that your proposition will be of benefit to your intended business partner or investor without breaking the bank or creating additional work on their end.

Rejection can also be an opportunity for you to re-evaluate your position and the information you’re putting forth. Are you missing something? Does something need to change in order to better resonate with your intended audience? Analyzing the potential shortcomings in your planning will help you to better approach it next time.

Better yet, don’t be afraid to ask for genuine and transparent feedback from those who said “no” in the first place. Ask for clarity and an explanation as to what exactly made them reject your proposal so you can take that away, fix it (if possible), and come back stronger. In short, seek ways to turn “no” into “yes” and don’t accept defeat so easily.

Linkedin

Samantha Odo

I am Samantha Odo, a licensed real estate expert at Precondo. We take pride in adhering to high-quality journalistic ethical guidelines, and we retain journalistic integrity to assist in making the best decision per necessities.

With the pandemic and the following restrictions, entrepreneurs and business owners faced several challenges. I, as a realtor, was one among many others who stuck at home, not able to mark my presence in the industry. As a realtor, it was challenging for me to meet both sellers & buyers.

However, technologies stepped in as a big help. Meeting my clients online and giving them a virtual tour of properties they are interested in was convenient for me. It resolved many problems I was facing.

Linkedin

Loren Howard

When I first started as an entrepreneur I did not understand the importance of marketing your business. You can do everything ‘technically’ but without the proper marketing and sales funnel in place your business will never take off. Invest time and money upfront into marketing your business for a successful launch!

Alex Gastle

As entrepreneurs we are excited about our business and what it can do for paying customers. This excitement and the potential we see is often what drives us in the early days to work harder and persevere through the tough times getting started.

In my experience, the side effect of this excitement is that entrepreneurs struggle to remove themselves from their own excitement and view their business from their eyes of their target customer or user persona. Tech entrepreneurs love to focus on the fancy features of their new app in everything they do without having a crystal clear understanding of the problem their product solves and how their target users are solving that problem now, without their new app.

This doesn’t mean researching your competitors, that’s different because you’re all trying to solve the problem in a new way. Speak with as many people as you can to discover what they are using now to solve the problem and then apply that back to your own business.

Your perspective will change on things like what features are most important, often the features that an entrepreneur is most excited about aren’t the features that target users will gravitate to. If you can get a handle on this, your product development time, sales and marketing will all become much easier.

Linkedin

Adam Millman

As an entrepreneur, being able to be nimble is key. You quickly learn that you can’t get too attached to certain ideas, and being able to pivot accordingly is an incredible strength for any business.

More often than not, the first iteration of any product/business may not be the best — it takes countless versions, tests, and ideas to get to the end product. Down the line, you realize how necessary every step was in order to get to your final product/business.

My advice on how to pivot with the most ease is to build a strong team. A cohesive team that compliments each other’s strengths is a perfect recipe for a nimble, quick-thinking business. You need several voices trained onto one razor-sharp vision, bringing perspective and ideas to the table without clouding the end goal.

Linkedin

Lisa Richards

Constant fatigue was perhaps the most unexpected challenge I encountered when starting my business. The crazy hours, the intense work involved, and the pressure to make sure the business succeeded really took a toll on me, physically, emotionally, and mentally.

However, as the business grew, I was able to find a pace that allowed me to keep the business thriving while still managing to protect my wellbeing. I also learnt how to delegate more effectively, which enabled me to rest more, and to focus on the areas in my business where I could make the biggest impact.

Linkedin

Lillian Brummet

I’m not sure how far you want the story to go back but here is a brief overview of my life: My mom married 5 times; 2 of those were abusive… and so I was on my own at 13.5 years old. My 2 older brothers were on their own before I was, both left at 16.

I supported myself, paid rent, worked hard labour jobs to get by and partied hard – often sheltering young people who needed to get away from their home life, giving them a place to stay until they figured things out.

At 20, I put myself through a university level of grade 12, meaning I took the extra hard, more advanced courses in math, biology and science, etc. so that I could qualify for university. At the time I was thinking of becoming a biologist. Met and married my husband Dave around this same time, and started a business providing home maintenance services for upper-class clients.

Ran that successfully for 6 years before being in the middle of a 3-car pileup that had me in full-time physio (5 days week, 4-5 hours per day) for over a year. I had to close my business – and fell into chronic depression, something I struggled with most of my life, and developed an anxiety disorder (which I struggle with today). At that point I changed directions – began studying the world of writing as a profession, and haven’t looked back yet.

I chose this career because I needed to feel like my life had value, that I was leaving a positive legacy and using every moment I was given to the best of my ability. I entered this field in 1999 as a freelance writer, later becoming a staff writer, columnist and assignment writer.

My greatest adversity early on in the career was having the confidence that my voice had value in the clammer that already existed. I overcame this by ensuring what I wrote was unique – researching recent writings about the topic to find out what was missing, what wasn’t addressed, what I did or did not like about the published materials, and then I would find an angle that I could write about filling a negative gap.

Both my parents (mom & step dad) committed suicide in 2009, forcing us to reconsider the direction of our lives and reminding us of the tragedy in waiting for a tomorrow that may never happen. Instead of buying a home in the big city, we moved to a smaller city about 3 hours drive from our home town.

Since then I have worn many hats; at one time I wrote book reviews professionally; donating over 700 books to our local literacy organization because of this task. I also wrote product reviews professionally, and still offer this service on our blog.

I ran a popular talk radio show for about 7 years or so; it ran 3 x per week, 1 hour per episode, called Conscious Discussions Talk Radio. Around this same time period I also ran the Author’s Read podcast for a few years. About mid-point in our career we had another crisis.

Dave had been working shift work while we both worked ourselves thin refurbishing our first home and running the business. Both of us were exhausted, diminished by the weight of heavy grief after the suicide of my parents and the cancer diagnosis of his biological father (the last of the parents).

The stress was beginning to affect our marriage. We all decided, the dad included, to move to our dream location before it was too late. Life is just too short to wait for tomorrow to live your joy.

So after a year of looking at properties we sold everything, packed up, bought a house (another fixer upper), and began our new lives here as of 2012. This also meant revamping the business so that it better represented our current projects, including a few book updates or publishing new editions. That was 10 years ago.

Since moving to our dream location (in the Kootenay Region of BC, Canada), and caregiving for the dad who passed 4-5 years ago; we have been methodically converting the abused lot over to the little park it has become – and in doing so have gained certification with bee, pollinator and wildlife organizations. Our home, too, has become energy efficient via the many upgrades we have done.

Our business donates 10% of the profits to wildlife, bee and pollinator, pet rescue and seed saving organizations. Our business includes Dave’s music studio, percussion accessory products and services, as well as numerous award-winning non-fiction books and 2 popular blogs.

In 2020 we relaunched the business with a new look, logo, colours, design, new bio’s and profiles and updated everything from social networking sites to our main website. We also launched Dave’s Drum It With Brummet blog. We realized we needed to learn better skills to deal with changing business needs.

Starting in 2020 I began taking a number of online courses to better understand SEO, Keyword Management, E-commerce and online advertising (Facebook & Amazon Ads).

In ’21 we released 2 books and due to all of the marketing and other efforts I am proud to say that we appeared in the media more than 125 times that year and our main blog, Brummet’s Conscious Blog, has had a huge increase of visits as of late.

In December (a 31-day month) we saw #143,000 visits, in January (also a 31-day month) this increased to #346,788, and so far in the past 9 days of February, we saw #134,547 visits. The blog has helped us solidify long term networking relationships and discover new ones, because of kinds of submissions and interviews that we accept.

For instance, just last month I put in a few weeks of work following up with the 940 connections we made last year. For those we had a positive interaction with, our message simply stated our gratitude and interest in continuing to network and offered a few ways we might be able to support feature them on the blog. For those who did not reply, we were able to reach out again with a slightly different approach.

I find I get about an 8% additional return on investment using last year’s work. Four years after the dad’s passing we are finally in a place where we can face the emotional journey of publishing his work. We are currently working on what we hope to be a trilogy, celebrating Dave’s late-father’s lifetime collection of poetry, short stories, family memoirs and photos.

I speculate that the first 2 books will be published late-spring ’22. This is our way of honouring his dad, and doing our part for future generations of this family. Bio: Lillian and her husband Dave are the team behind Brummet Media Group, high-fiving cheerfully as they pass each other on the way from checking off one item or other from their long to-do list.

Their business includes Dave’s music studio and percussion accessory products and graphic design work as well as numerous award-winning non-fiction books and 2 popular blogs. Find them online here: https://linktr.ee/LillianBrummet

Linkedin

Danny Neeson

What I’ve learned through each entrepreneurial venture is that the biggest challenge can oftentimes be yourself. When you face obstacles or challenges, your determination and work ethic are what will either make or break you. Business owners need to dig deep and face the battles within themselves to transcend beyond their self-made limitations and see the potential that others might miss.

Confidence isn’t always a natural thing; it takes strength and courage to show up every day and believe in what others won’t. Know what you bring to the table every day!

Linkedin

Ravi Davda

“I was young when I left my corporate job to start my first business. I was earning a great salary in a banking role, and I left it to start with nothing. If there’s one challenge entrepreneurs should know about, it’s getting through those first months or even years without taking a proper salary.

Even if/when you do make money, it’s likely that you’ll be reinvesting some, if not all, of it back into your business. This is tough, especially for people who have never been there or have always had a stable salary. It takes a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of determination. Don’t underestimate this if you’re starting a new business.”

Linkedin

Alessio Lorusso

My name is Alessio Lorusso (Forbes 30 Under 30) and I am the founder and CEO of Roboze (roboze.com), the most accurate 3D printing technology in the world for high-performance super polymers. Roboze is a startup based in Houston, TX, and Italy.

As an entrepreneur who has built a successful company starting in a region of the world where there are few investors (Southern Italy), attracting initial outside investors was the most unexpected challenge, and I can share some lessons learned.

Looking back, I realize that one of the reasons for my success was because I had confidence in myself and the strengths of my innovation which I built when I was 17 years old, by developing the world’s first 3D printer without belts.

This innovation, de facto eliminated the issues linked to the rubber belts regularly used in desktop 3D printers: distortion, wear, inaccurate repeatability, and the need for frequent calibrations. It was thanks to this invention that I then founded Roboze, which now employs over 100 employees, has facilities in Italy, Texas, and Germany, and has attracted numerous investors and key strategic partners.

For startups like mine that are not located in the more traditional hubs, it is a greater challenge, and it often takes longer to attract initial investors, than for startups located in Silicon Valley, Israel, or the UK. That is why, in order to start growing relying just on initial funds from my savings, I needed to outline a growth path that had very little margin for error. This can be accomplished by learning in-depth about the market you are in, having a clear vision of your goals and what it takes to get there.

Typically, especially in early stages, there are fewer people who support you, believe in you, and help you when you want to create a new innovative company with the intention to disrupt a segment of the market. So, you must be focused enough to know when to take risks, believe in yourself, have the courage to do things differently, and not be afraid of failure.

Failure must always be taken into account, it’s part of doing business. However, staying focused and having a direction that you pursue consistently (avoid the “shiny ball syndrome” at all cost) without ever losing motivation despite obstacles will allow you to grow sufficiently to become attractive to investors, wherever they may be.

Linkedin

Humza Khan

All of us, and especially business leaders find discomfort in uncertainty. Because of the pandemic, supply chain struggles, and labor shortages, uncertainty is more pronounced today.

Those unknowns lead to short-term myopia. Many people shy away from long-term planning in favor of immediate concerns. Uncertainty drives business owners and executives to hunker down, and customers to stop spending.

While this might feel right, failure to strategically plan and stay focused 10, 5 or even 3 years into the future can end up eroding tremendous value. The world is simply not going to end. Plan well. Be agile. Yet don’t lose sight of the milestones and goals you intelligently set in the first place.

Linkedin

Taylor Ryan

A risk management plan! When you run a business, be prepared for more significant losses than you initially anticipate so that the company can survive in the event of a crisis.

This was certainly one of the hardest parts of starting and running my own business. Life is full of surprises, especially in business. There’s almost certainly going to be a few expenses that you did not anticipate – tax changes, changes in the financial market, new competitors, a global pandemic.

Small businesses often generate relatively low income. Therefore, even small financial turbulences can lead to their complete collapse. It’s crucial to factor risk management into your financial plan: Be prepared for the worst, and a crisis will cost you much less. This is the best advice I can give anyone who is planning to start a business.

Linkedin

Ellenor McIntosh

One of the greatest challenges I’ve had to learn is effective time management. More often than not, new entrepreneurs can find all their time being consumed by the new business venture they’re pursuing. You work tirelessly to make sure this becomes a success, that you forget about everything else.

All your energy and time go into your business that can ultimately end up working against you. Pouring all of your energy into work, you forget to take time for yourself, and you realise that other important aspects of your life will eventually take the backseat.

Over the years, I have come to appreciate that less can be more, and apply this to certain aspects of my business. Overworking yourself is not adding benefit to your business’ success, but rather you’ll find yourself feeling stressed and overwrought. Learning how and when to ‘switch off’ has been such an indispensable lesson and is something I have come a appreciate more and more as my business continues to grow. Switching off can mean different things for everyone.

For me, that means taking time away from work to do a completely unrelated activity. Whether that was going out with friends, starting up a new hobby or just taking time to myself to decompress at home – carving out the time to focus on just you are something I firmly encourage all entrepreneurs to do.

I find by doing this, it can significantly affect your mental and physical wellbeing for the better. When you’re in a good mental space it reflects in the work you do. You are taking the time to ensure that you are in the best shape possible to successfully run your new business venture. Some of the methods I’ve found that has greatly helped me overcome this has been setting feasible deadlines with certain tasks and projects, and effective time allotment on tasks set for myself and others under my management.

I realised that while setting deadlines is a great start in managing my time more effectively, I also had to learn to discipline myself in sticking to them. It can be so easy to find yourself doing a little extra on that one project or working a little later than the time you set for yourself, but once you fall into the habit of constantly working overtime, it can be extremely difficult to come out of.

This is why it’s so important to implement these ‘guidelines’ for yourself near the beginning and act in accordance with them. Once you learn how to stick to the guidelines you’ve set, whether it’s to do with time management or something else you struggle with, you’ll notice how much smoother and more efficiently your business venture operates. Ellenors Bio: Just to introduce her, Ellenor McIntosh, is one of the few young, black female entrepreneurs in the UK, and is paving the way for others to follow.

Having graduated from the University of Bedfordshire with a Bachelor of Science (BSc), Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Elle has used her science background to create the formula for her innovative creation – Twipes. Twipes is the world’s first truly flushable and biodegradable wet wipe, that’s 100% plastic-free! When flushed, Twipes are completely dispersed in just 3 hours, and will fully biodegrade within 7 days. Co-founded with her long-time college friend, Al Borz, they boldly set out to start their own business.

And after 5 years of much research and development, their resilience paid off with the success of Twipes. Elle has been the recipient of multiple prestigious awards, namely the Princess Diana Award in 2017, awarded the Forbes 30 under 30 in 2020. She has even been recognised by the Mayor of London and featured in Time-out Magazine in 2021 for her (and her co-founder’s) innovative product. She is not only making strides in the entrepreneurial world as a successful young, black woman but also in the world of single-use items, with her cutting edge and ingenious creation of Twipes!

Linkedin

Cliff Auerswald

My name is Cliff Auerswald, President at All Reverse Mortgage, a top-rated financing and mortgage company.

The greatest challenge new business owners are going to face is when they hit the bottom of the J-Curve. At that point, business owners find out that most of their initial assumptions about their product and market are wrong, so they don’t see much return for their effort. And then the money and morale start to dry up.

In order to escape the bottom of the J-curve to enter the periods of steep growth and traction, new business owners need to be open to changing their ideas. They might need to change their ideas about the product, market, or strategy (sometimes, all three) in order to keep the company alive.

Linkedin

Rachel McMichael

When first starting out and trying to build an audience, it’s easy to believe that any visibility means your business is doing well, when getting in front of the right audience (those who need your product, program, or service the most) is actually the true goal.

So many beginner entrepreneurs try to create content that attracts the most people (quantity), rather than creating content that attracts their ideal customer (quality). But a popular business does not necessarily equate to a profitable business. A larger group of followers might get your business plenty of “likes”, but a group of qualified ideal customers is what will give you the sales and conversion you’re looking for.

Linkedin

Christiaan Huynen

Shift in people’s buying habits. The next level of online shopping has taken over the ecommerce industry. More engrossing digital experience is now the trend in selling.

Consumers are shifting into an “experience economy” wherein they want not only the item itself but also the act of the digital purchase. Products are big because of their curated content and with the influence of social media, the fear of missing out is fostered in the e-commerce business.

This trend changed the way our company designs logos, websites, brand identity and many more. An appealing graphic design is not enough to increase lead generation nowadays.

Alexej Pikovsky

“The greatest and unexpected challenge was the lack of paid traffic opportunities on platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Tiktok. Our initial business idea was to build a CBD marketplace with a diverse growth channel mix including pay per click.

Not having the ability to pass through Google and Facebook algorithms was an unexpected challenge and prevented us from growing as fast as we wanted to. The way we overcame it was by doing a lot of search engine optimization and influencer marketing. We have invested a lot into content and technical optimization, as well as building up a database of influencers.

In addition to that, we scaled up revenue from adding a services business providing value add to brands on our marketplace, as well as acquiring non-CBD brands under our alphagreengroup.com banner.”

Linkedin

Ryan Walton

“The most unexpected challenge for me, which applies today and when I started the business, is how obsessive you become with working and how hard it is to switch your brain off.

It’s really prevalent in my life – that addiction to work is a really big challenge because you’re suppose to live a life of balance which encompasses and embraces relationships and friendships outside of work. You can easily find, without knowing it, that your business can take over your life. My advice to new entrepreneurs would be to try and create a balanced life ahead of time before starting the business, form those positive habits and not experience burnout as a result.”

Linkedin

Alice Ojeda

“One of the big challenges we faced as we grew was scaling our systems. By systems I mean, how we built our website, where we hosted our subscriptions platform and our email marketing provider. When you start, it’s easy to go for the free trials and cheap start-up offers on digital providers.

It’s worth bearing in mind though the cost of switching as you grow and whether the platform you’re about to choose is the one you really want to lock your business into for the long-term. For example, we’ve migrated our subscription platform twice now and it was a real headache. To save this, do your research and choose carefully – start as you mean to go on.”

Linkedin

Pavel Stepanov

In the last 4 years of operation, some of the major unexpected challenges we have faced are finding and retaining good talent and leadership. It can be hard to find people who think similarly to you and want to see the company go in the right direction.

Finding employees who understand the company’s mission, and have the company’s interests in mind has been a struggle. It’s also been a challenge to find good leaders who can lead by example, be good trainers and mentors, and build up team morale and productivity.

Hiring someone can be scary, as you are taking the chance to trust them with part of your company. That’s why in the beginning, it was hard for us to let employees go, as you do invest and put faith in them that they will do well. When you let someone go, you’re letting them and yourself down, at least that’s how it felt in the beginning.

I ended up finding out that when you hire people who don’t think similarly to you, it can be harder to take on new projects together. Again, hiring was fast and easy – even fun and exciting. However, there have been times when people proved they didn’t have what it took, and it took a long time for us to decide to let them go.

For aspiring entrepreneurs that will hire someone for the first time, please keep in mind that they should not be qualified on paper only. Assess whether or not they were a good fit for the company. Make sure that the people you will hire always have the best interest of the company in mind. Bring on hard-working people who have a vision for your company and want to grow with you.

Linkedin

Follow us on Linkedin

The post 20 Entrepreneurs From Europe & North America Interviewed On The Challenges They Encountered During The Pandemic first appeared on Tekrati and is written by Jerome Knyszewski

Entrepreneurship comes with a lot of challenges, and if you want to succeed in the business world, you will have to overcome obstacles and challenges along the road. In this interview series, we spoke with a number of business owners and leaders about the unexpected challenges they encounter and how they overcome them.

INTERVIEW HOST

Hello, my name is Jerome Knyszewski, I’ll be the host of your interview today. I am the CEO of HeavyShift. My specialties are online reputation marketing and SEO. Looking forward to reading your insightful answers and publishing your featured interview.

Table of Contents

The question we asked:

What is the greatest, unexpected challenge you faced with your business, that you’d like to warn new entrepreneurs about? Please share your advice on how to overcome it.

Anton Giuroiu

In this industry, the fast-changing trends and consumer preferences set the greatest challenge to face. This may not be new or unexpected, but we can say that its phase is overwhelming. Entities, in whatever industry, must prepare to cope faster and not be blown away by how different companies create their edge to guard their status.

Sometimes, the trend is creating a continuous reaction of challenges as attribution to it. The ability of an organization’s management to handle well their strategies for each trend while finding new hints on how to hold and be ready for what is coming will be a vital key.

Aria Miller

It is important to define your ideal consumer community and target the same. Otherwise, it is nothing less than shooting in the dark, which produces no beneficial results. Initially, our business faced difficulty in finding the right kind of consumers owing to the narrow niche.

However, with time and effective marketing, you do end up having some lucrative lead generations and collaborations. What worked for us was using the right marketing tools and specifically describing the consumer community.

Dominique Flux

“One of the biggest challenges I faced was ageism. I’m a goldsmith and 3D designer, founder of Fine and Flux a custom jewelry and engagement ring designer. Starting a business in luxury has an expensive barrier to start but also one of preconceived stereotypes.

Most luxury brands especially fine jewelry are industries run primarily by middle aged men. And age is more often then not associated with quality. When clients would see how young I am I could feel a certain element of uncertainty arise. Over time it became easier and easier to navigate past this by showing them the quality of my growing portfolio.

I also established myself as an industry leader who’s taste and judgment could be trusted via my countless educational videos on YouTube. So as you can imagine it took allot of time and work! However it was definitely worth it!”

Vishesh Raisinghani

Starting a business might feel like going back every time you make a step ahead. Guts are a must. At the outset, you’ll have to put on several different hats, both metaphorically and literally. In order to succeed, you’ll need to push yourself beyond your comfort zone on a daily basis.

So, how far are you prepared to go? How committed are you to see your startup succeed? When you’re in need of money, can you persuade investors that you’re the right person to pitch? Is there anything in your life that you refuse to compromise on? Is there anything you’d rather avoid doing at all costs? It’s better to know your limits early on so you can locate teammates who aren’t afraid to step outside of their comfort zone with you.

Rohan Kadam

Hello, I am a marketing consultant and an established entrepreneur. I run a successful Niche website called Biking Know How. I scaled my business, especially during the challenging COVID pandemic, and made it profitable in a short period (From the first month itself).

I focused on doubling down my efforts on growing my niche website, which was initially just my passion project. I would say that my online business has helped me stay occupied, motivated, and financially stable. I love the outdoors, biking and camping. I always wanted to share my unique experience with people. Initially, I would maintain a diary and would write about my outdoor camping endeavors.

Thanks to social media and my website, my audience over time has increased significantly. With social media and my website, many more people can access my adventures and plan their own. This gives me immense joy and fulfillment.

Challenges: As far as the hardest part or challenges are concerned, I had to face many, but two challenges stand out the most. They are as follows.

1. Time Management: This was a very significant challenge because I was managing and growing my blog while having a full-time job. I would use my weekends and holidays to educate myself on skills, especially web development and digital marketing.

My blog allowed me to have multiple streams of income. As I saw decent cash flow coming in, I was interested to upskill myself on digital marketing and social media. I knew this would require my time and dedication. So, at every opportunity that I got to polish my skills, I made sure that I dedicated my time and attention to get better.

2. Getting Right Education: Well, to educate and polish my skills in digital marketing, I enrolled in many digital marketing and web development courses. I used courses like Authority Lab and Nite Site Project to teach myself affiliate marketing. I started voraciously reading blogs and success stories of affiliate marketers as I found them very inspiring. This helped me get creative and experiment with the growth strategy of my blog.

Brian Lee

Implementing new health and safety protocols including vaccination policies. In order for the business to stay afloat and get moving, we have to really pay attention to the new health and vaccination protocols. We have to make it one of our top priorities while still adapting to the new normal, work from home set up.

And that’s somehow a very unexpected and biggest challenge for us. We have to make a lot of adjustments physically and also financially because no one has ever expected a pandemic like this to happen. And because each one of us has our views regarding the vaccines and we are not forcing our employees to get vaccinated. It’s really a decision we all have to make and everybody has their own beliefs.

The company just sees to it that proper safety protocols are being implemented as needed, assuming whether people are vaccinated or not. Regular sanitization and disinfection is implemented. Aside from that, the company gives additional benefits for those who get themselves vaccinated.

Why? It’s a sign of appreciation because although we do not require they still willingly get themselves vaccinated. We do not mandate but we do encourage our employees to always keep their guards up for the safety of everyone. Proper health measures should always be practiced because the pandemic isn’t over yet. And no one really know when it will end.

Deborrah Ashley

Managing my impostor syndrome, which I’ve experienced for much of my life until lately, has been the biggest unexpected challenge I’ve had thus far in the operation of my business. I used to be that person who didn’t believe I knew enough to go on stage with incredible experts and their impressive bios, so I constantly passed up opportunities.

Then I started talking to them, and they confessed that they, too, are afraid of being exposed as a fake on stage. I’d like to tell new entrepreneurs that impostor syndrome is very real and that you are not alone if you feel this way. That being said, the best way to overcome it is to talk to other people about it because you’ll be astonished that even the most successful people share the same fear.

They’ll be able to provide you with advice from their first-hand experience and from there you’ll learn how they managed to talk to their inner gremlins. Lastly, it would also help to internalize that you just have to share a new perspective in order to go after opportunities. You don’t have to be incredibly qualified – you just have to be really innovative.

Alex Williams

We want to know what you think is the hardest part about starting and running your own business. Whether it’s financing, managing employees, or something else entirely The hardest part of running your own business that entrepreneurs often don’t talk about would be high debt.

Entrepreneurs resort to debt financing when they want to expand their business or enter a niche market. They proudly take on debt and sugar coat it as bootstrapping. Individuals take on high debt either through their credit card or business’s line of credit. Small business owners often take more debt than they could handle, which leads to short-term and long-term consequences.

If a company has issues with its cash flow and is unable to pay off the debt in time, a high-interest rate would be levied upon the organization. This measure would then drastically impact the business’s credit score rating, making it difficult to secure a loan for future endeavors.

Ben Wagner

What is the greatest, unexpected challenge you faced with your business, that you’d like to warn new entrepreneurs about? Please share your advice on how to overcome it. The greatest challenge my business has had to deal with is uncertainty. Granted, it’s a given that entrepreneurs have to trudge through uncertain periods.

But still, sometimes, you face uncertainties that you could never have predicted. Take the pandemic, for example. My business was still in its infancy when Covid-19 turned the entire landscape of the market on its head. I was ill-prepared to deal with this issue, so I had to make hasty decisions that ultimately cost me a lot of money, employees and customers.

My advice to aspiring businesspeople is to always prepare for the worst-case scenarios. Never lift your business off the ground without having a disaster plan in place. If I had adequately planned for the worst outcomes myself, I wouldn’t have incurred such heavy losses due to the pandemic.

Connor Brown

Recruiting the right people was an unexpected challenge I faced. I thought that hiring new employees would be a smooth sailing process. After all, I had to only go through some resumes and select the most qualified candidate, right? Wrong. Little did I know that a good resume should not be the deciding factor.

An individual’s interpersonal skills such as communication, leadership qualities, adaptability, and the desire to learn more were far more crucial. It was initially very difficult for me to judge these qualities. But, I soon got the hand of it.

By asking questions that probe information on how a candidate will deal with things such as employees, difficult projects, and other company problems, I am able to see whether he/she is qualified for the job or not.

Eduarda dePaula

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced when starting out was not making profits during the early phase of my business. This is one challenge that I’d like to warn new entrepreneurs about.

Even if you have a killer product idea, a target market that wants your product and a pipeline to produce, there’s no guarantee you’ll make any money. I, too, faced this obstacle. Any money that we made was reinvested into the business to keep it afloat, strengthen its foundation and grow it.

The first few years are the most difficult to cross for a new business, and those that only care about reaping profits and not sustaining long-term growth will not survive.

Elisa Bender

The biggest challenge I faced when I started my own business was teambuilding. This is especially hard if you’ve never run or managed a team before. But even if you have management experience, for me picking the right team for a startup was very stressful and difficult.

It’s not enough to find candidates who fill certain roles, you also need to consider their cost to the business, their culture fit and how they’ll work as part of your overall team. Such considerations are exceptionally hard when you’re under the pressure of filling those positions as soon as possible.

Even if you do find the right employees for your company, which is just a minor task. The real challenge is forging those hired employees into a team.

Patrick Crane

Lack of sufficient digital marketing skills and experience proved to be a major unexpected challenge for me during the early stages of my entrepreneurship journey. I was unable to craft and implement effective marketing strategies at the beginning, and I found the whole marketing business function to be very time-consuming and frustrating.

To overcome this challenge, I pushed myself to learn everything there is about digital marketing, and to implement strategies that were the best fit for my business. I subscribed to several leading digital marketing publications, as well as enrolled in and completed several reputable online marketing courses. I am still learning, but my digital marketing skills have improved phenomenally, and so have my marketing strategies, and their effectiveness.

Prav Solanki

That there are only 24 hours in a day. I thought owning a business would give me more control of my time. But it is quite the opposite. I always have more things to tick off than hours in a day, and it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the challenges and stay focused on the goal.

There were times when I felt like I didn’t accomplish enough. You’ll feel the immense pressure of learning and achieving things. So, it doesn’t hurt to pause and delegate. I was mistaken to think that I could do everything myself. Hire people smarter than you and people to help you. You have to learn that the further you go, the less time you’ll have. Focus on strategic goals and not on daily operational tasks.

Ernests Embutnieks

I faced many obstacles to becoming a Senior SEO analyst. To start with, I was a fresher in the field who had no prior experience. Advancement from position to position is always difficult. In my organization advancement has its own importance. There were two main obstacles in my way of becoming a Senior SEO analyst.

The first was the lack of formal training I received. Due to this, I lacked the expertise most of my colleagues had. I had to work harder to keep up with them. The second obstacle was the lack of relevant experience. Despite my experience with SEO, most of my colleagues had more experience with SEO techniques.

I also lacked SEO experience outside of a large corporation. In spite of these obstacles, I was able to leap past them. I reached my goals by promoting myself. I offered to help my colleagues in need of extra help. I became an advocate for SEO within the company. I used my time and knowledge to become a leader in the field. My company gave me the opportunity to expand my expertise in SEO. I did this by attending conferences and learning from other professionals.

Richard Clews

My #1 challenge: hiring the wrong people When I started running an e-commerce business with my wife, I was elated. I was working with my favorite person, and our business was more or less immediately successful. We started generating a profit quickly and raised $300,000+ in exchange for 5% equity in year 1 (link).

That being said, I feel like we lost multiple opportunities because we didn’t hire the right people as early as we could’ve. Our marketing agency in particular let us down, not doing what we expected them to – and not improving after months of constructive criticism. But there were also multiple employees, including an intern I had to let go, who we shouldn’t have hired. I didn’t feel this problem as much working in brick-and-mortar.

I suppose I felt I could train people more there, because I knew my way around a retail store and had worked every role I was asking other people to perform. The solution to not hiring the right people is to look for the best people and hire them. It costs more, but it leads to *far* better results and has paid off for us in a big way. Or, as a mentor put it to me once – “if you want to get paid well, pay people well”. 100% true

Thomas Borcherding

The greatest challenge that you will face as a new entrepreneur is that of intrusive thoughts. Constantly your mind will bombard you with thoughts that you would otherwise not have should you have remained an employee at someone else’s business. For instance, the thought of opportunity cost could be a major theme.

After a twelve hour day you may start thinking about how much you would have been paid on someone else’s tab, meanwhile you will not receive a paycheck in direct correlation to the work done on your own business. Another example could be a recurring thought of failure, perhaps linked to a failure to deliver a quality product. Overcoming intrusive thoughts is a quality skill to have regardless of whether you’re an entrepreneur or not.

This is why self-help books are so popular among the successful. One must realize that it is natural to have these thoughts. The mind, for survival purposes, likes to remind you of things that can go wrong. This is why when you’re driving your car you may envision someone running through a stoplight, for example. You must remind yourself that these thoughts are not your fault, but they are your responsibility.

Do not let your mind attach itself to these thoughts. Simply acknowledge them and let them gently pass. There is no need to generate a large stress response to them. It helps to also close the loop, or in other words finalize the thought. Have something reassuring to tell yourself if the thought presents itself.

Harrison Baron

The greatest challenge of being a new entrepreneur isn’t a single task. It’s all of the tasks at once. Chances are good if you’re a new entrepreneur; you’re good at many things. This includes what you do, how you do it, and everything in between.

You can calculate the cost, time, how much effort it will take. These are all important for growing your business. Over time you’re going to have to grow your business. You will need a website, social media, email list to help grow your marketing efforts. You will also need to get an accountant involved to make sure your books are correct and your business is growing the way you want.

Your business will also need insurance, so you need to buy that and understand what you’re getting. You may need to seek legal advice and hire a lawyer as well to make sure you cover your butt. All of these alone are easy to do yourself or hire someone for. They are all important, and all add massive value to you and your business.

The hard part and unexpected challenge of being an entrepreneur is doing all of these tasks all of the time. This is the one thing no one talks about. It’s the daily operation of running your business and doing all the things you are good at but adding in everything else as well. This is where things get tricky.

No one prepares or gives you a heads up that when you start a business and grow, you have to do all of these things, especially as a solopreneur. There isn’t one part that is harder than the other. It’s the fact that you have to do them all the time, and many of them you can’t outsource. You need to conduct the interviews, hire the right people and make sure all aspects of your business are working in harmony.

There is no way to prepare but making your life easier is important, and bringing on the right team will accelerate your growth and alleviate stress.

David Pressler

Civil Rights and Bill of Rights violations by the State of Florida and discovering that corporations not even single owned service disabled veteran owned small business can file a civil rights complaint!
In 2009 DRD Enterprises inc of Davie purchased a certified Florida aquafarm to develop into an off grid solar powered farm.

Within 45 days of purchase and while constructing tornado proof storage sheds DeSoto County issues a cease work order on this certified farm and orders the aquafarm caretaker off the farm, violating two Florida farm laws, Right to Farm Act and the Aquaculture Policy Act. Florida Agriculture Law states only the Florida Department of Agriculture has authority over farms and farm structures! Recognizing the error committed DeSoto County the following year rescinded the eviction demand, once the violation had been committed!

So as not to prosecute DeSoto County, a Republican District in Florida, Republican Governor Scott, Department of Agriculture Putnam and counsel for the Florida Department of Agriculture declared DRD Enterprises inc of Davie guilty of violating the farming laws of Florida! When the demand for evidence of guilt was demanded NONE could be provided! Attorney General Bondi uses the tactic corporations cannot file a civil rights complaint so as to deny showing evidence of guilt!

Six Florida officials violated the Conspiracy Act of 1964 so as to protect DeSoto County from prosecution a crime yet disclosed. Stephen Hall, counsel for the Florida Department of Agriculture declares tornado proof storage sheds NOT farm buildings, in an effort to further conceal the truth!

BEWARE corporations you are but one violation of your rights away from bankruptcy unless you have the money for that high priced civil suit. Still seeking Justice in Florida.

Michael Nova

I have a unique take on this… My inspiring story has helped many people understand how to overcome adversity in business. We all deal with adversity. It’s how we overcome it that can define us. Coming back from the brink of blindness, near bankruptcy and a host of other challenges all at once taught me that the “impossible” is achievable.

My unlikely recovery is what inspired me to share my story with the world in order to inspire others. In a nutshell, I became so enveloped in a creative project that I lost sight of the day to day running of the company to the point where I was close to bankruptcy. At the same time, due to the stress I was undergoing, I became seriously ill, nearly losing my sense of sight permanently.

Only a last-second diagnosis saved my vision, and I was able to get my business back on its feet. I went from the brink of bankruptcy to get my successful printing business to where it is today, serving major corporations. So the lesson here is, although you may be wrapped up in a project that envelops all of your attention, don’t lose sight of running your business on a day-to-day basis, and taking the time to concentrate on the basics to keep it running.

The cliché “everything in moderation” applies here. No matter how passionate you might be about a project, always remember that you still need to pay the bills. Alternatively, we can discuss another great challenge that everyone had to face.

During the pandemic, our business, lost 50%, but because of the adversity I faced previously, I understood that a setback can be viewed as an opportunity. During that time, I concentrated on overhauling our website, www.novacustomlabelprinting.com to help serve clients In a more intuitive way.

This resulted in us exceeding the 50% we lost in 2020 to greater heights than we ever achieved before. My motto is “don’t look at adversity as the enemy, look at it as your ally”. I say this because challenges strengthen you to become the person that you are meant to be, so even though it may appear as the world is ending, it can actually be a good thing.

Because of what I learned from overcoming challenges in my business, I founded the website, RiseUpEight.org, a non-profit platform designed to highlight the stories of those who have overcome adversity, to prove that nothing is impossible!

Daniel Nyquist

I’d say it’s assembling the right team for the job. It’s one thing to have a clear picture in your head about how the business should evolve in the next 6 months or even a year. But the trick really is surrounding yourself with passionate people that will help you realise that goal.

I’ve seen first hand how important it is to get the right people onboard from the outset. In the early stages of our company we had employed people that just didn’t ‘gel’ with the rest of us.

That doesn’t mean that they weren’t good at their jobs, it just means that we didn’t share the same vision. Once we dealt with those early ‘teething’ issues and got the right people in the right positions we started to see the results we were looking for. Choosing the right Marketing Specialist, Web Developer and Content Writer would mean the world’s difference to any startup. Lay a strong foundation and you stand a good chance of being successful.

Jesse Solomon

Co-Founder, Mickey

“The biggest, unexpected challenge we’ve faced has been with financing our business. As a startup with little-to-no history it’s hard to get credit. Banks don’t care about your vision and projections like a venture capitalist does. They care about the historical data and eliminating their risk.

Given that our business requires working capital to facilitate deals, we thought it would be smart to use debt rather than equity capital and ultimately have had to use a combination of a bank, a non-bank lender, and a factoring partner to grow.”

About Mickey:
Mickey is a commoditech company that brings physical commodity trading online and allows suppliers and traders around the world to transact openly. Mickey has built a digital platform that modernizes the complete commodity transaction — from sourcing and shipping to invoicing and payments — providing a marketplace that’s fast and easy for global buyers to purchase, track, and acquire the commodities they need.

Alex Rabens

The Co-Founder, CEO, Mickey

“In Mickey’s early days, we used outsourced technical engineers to build our first platform. As dilettantes leading our first tech startup, we felt that as long as the business had a strong sales and growth trajectory, that actual product could be pieced together by an offshore team.

Unfortunately, the product couldn’t iterate as fast as the business (in its early stage) needed it to adjust and we ended up with a product that no longer fit the needs of our company. I would recommend our offshore team to any business, but an early-stage company needs an in-house team and should be careful venturing out without one.”

Sumeer Kaur

The greatest challenge when starting my business was realizing how many moving parts there are involved in manufacturing and shipping products.

Figuring out the logistics of an online store, managing employees overseas or working with vendors overseas, and figuring out shipping costs and time frames is such an interesting challenge for almost any eCommerce business today.

It requires you to be nimble and find creative solutions at a moment’s notice to ensure your product is manufactured to your standards and gets to customers on time.

Estelle Keeber

During the pandemic we noticed that more business owners than ever were turning to social media marketing but had no idea how to use it effectively, we helped to support them in their growth with regular live trainings on all of the latest Instagram updates and features so that whilst focussing more on online marketing they were spending their time on the right areas that would create the most impact and income.

Benjamin Stenson

The Covid-19 pandemic caused so much devastation in the business world, resulting in companies shutting down or filing for bankruptcy. Thankfully, we’ve survived and even come out stronger. We adapted to the pandemic situation by shifting to the digital office quite early on.

Our company culture already emphasized flexibility, so we didn’t have much problem shifting to remote work. The one thing that we did introduce was a four-day workweek. This was an essential part of our model’s success. This helped raise employee satisfaction, and we retained a major part of our workforce while the rest of the country faced The Great Resignation. We did not introduce any new product line. Our pivot was solely based on improving the company culture and flexible working model.

Edward Lee

To adapt to the pandemic, I temporarily shut down my brick-and-mortar store, and focused more on the online side of my business. The salary I would’ve paid a sales associate to work in my store, I instead invested that money into heavily promoting my business via Facebook and Instagram ads.

I also began doing Facebook and Instagram lives to build an online community with the consumers who were used to buying with us in person, and to share who we are with the new consumers coming from the online ads. While I did not introduce any new products or services, this pandemic and business shift helped me realize the importance and value of social media.

It helped me learn to use social media in a new way (by doing lives and ads) and in doing so, it helped me build a larger audience and community I would not have if I had mainly stuck with my brick-and-mortar presence. I even began posting on TikTok and gaining traction in the audience from that!

Marcos Martinez

The pandemic has greatly impacted many small businesses, especially event producers and party promoters. My brand is Men Who Brunch (themenwhobrunch.com) which promotes a black gay lifestyle. Before the pandemic, I was hosting events for the gay community in New York City.

The purpose of these events was to provide safe spaces for gay men to network. My target audience enjoyed my social events. However, I had to stop hosting events and shift more focus to blogging. I’ve spent a lot of time and resources on blogging and even hired a blog coach. I may even spend more time on blogging than even event planning when the world turns back to normalcy.

Brent Hale

The pandemic wasn’t easy on business initially. It took time to get used to the “new normal” and many changes were made to ease out the process. According to my personal experience, I observed reduced motivation levels. The teamwork wasn’t working out, and things were falling out of place. That is when I realized the need for the re-organization of the workplace.

The first step towards this was to create a dedicated space for the team to communicate and exchange ideas. We set up our team on Slack. In addition to that, we made sure to conduct regular team meetings and make the most out of the team’s collaborative efforts.

George Tsagas

Our whole business is based online, which means that our business braved the pandemic very well. Here are the elements that will keep your business afloat when things are uncertain.

A considerable presence on any two platforms at least, especially if you are starting to shift your services completely online. Adapting is going to get hard whether there’s a pandemic or not. Consumers change and want different things, competitors get better or cut corners to price lower than you, algorithms on social media channels change, SEO rules change periodically. The key to adapting despite all this is to not put all your eggs in one basket.

Have a strong following on Instagram and LinkedIn. Use your website as well as referrals or another social media channel. If one lets you down, you have another. Read your audience very well and provide accordingly. We’ve recently started a course for general math which is very different from the usual high-school math courses we provide. We saw a need for it, and we acted on it. You have to read the cues to make your business work.

Dan Ni

It is no secret that adapting to change, especially of this magnitude, is a tedious process. The pandemic took a lot but it also taught a lot. Lessons in crisis management were the ones we learned the most. As a business leader, I had to step up and put my leadership skills to test.

Keeping my team motivated was one of the major tasks. During this entire change, I revamped my website to become more user-friendly by making it more informative and more accessible. This change helped increase customer retention and customer acquisition. It wasn’t an all-bad process it was and continues to be a learning process.

Wesley Exon

My business successfully pivoted to adapt to the changing market conditions by shifting products and services online. During these tumultuous times, I decided to shift my focus to my website and social media presence, offering similar services as my clinic. I got my health website designed by a professional. I also created various social media handles to cater to my business online.

Administrative or internal tasks, for example, dealing with various vendors, coordinating with my other team members, required us to work remotely. We had a daily huddle over different online channels, for example, Zoom and Slack. Yes, I introduced additional products by including a free mask and sanitizer designed with my company branding with every product purchased online to encourage online shopping over in-person shopping.

Steven Duncan

At Ball Are Life, we initially focused on health-conscious consumers and digital information to help individuals make the best choices for themselves and their families. And while our business suffered little during the pandemic, we took the opportunity to greatly expand our offerings.

While prior to the pandemic we were focused solely on digital content and marketing, we found that with the increase in time spent at home, individuals were looking for fun, unique, and creative ways to spend their time and time with their families.

And although prior to the pandemic we were hesitant to enter e-commerce and national distribution models, we found ourselves motivated by the opportunity and understood that our digital content was in-line with consumers expectations during these unprecedented times.

As such, we created and launched a basketball specific board-game that could be played with family and friends. And although the process was grueling, we understood that in order to remain competitive and successful, particularly during the pandemic, we were going to need to take some risks and move out of our own comfort zones.

Similarly, we really had no idea how to launch a board-game. But with the help of other board-game creators, particularly ones we found on Kickstarter and Reddit, we were able to design, configure, implement, and launch the game within 8-months.

However, we never stopped creating and producing our own digital content during this time. And although the pandemic was a difficult time for many individuals and businesses, we understood that the long-term would prove fruitful and that this short-term difficulty would pass.

We are now even more successful then when the pandemic first hit and I like to think that the steadfast, nose-to-the-ground attitude we maintained has helped us grow as quickly as we have.

Charles Leduc

Just like every other business, our office went fully remote during lockdown. We had to help employees create distraction free environments at home, and help them create a hard stop time for work each day. Several of our people were replying to emails at midnight, so I stepped in to prevent them from burning out.

We also focused all of our efforts on digital marketing, much like every other company. Lockdown created an environment where every company had to be able market and conduct business online. Home service company’s bread and butter is word of mouth referrals, and that is true for us in the mold remediation business, but with everyone staying home, those referrals were non-existent.

We had to pivot our focus toward maintaining our online reputation, and inbound marketing. Thankfully, our services were deemed essential because a mold problem in the home weakens the immune system.

The only extra service we have begun to offer during the pandemic is replacing drywall that we have to demo. This makes things much more convenient for our customers after we have fixed their mold and moisture problems. 

Follow us on Linkedin

The post Entrepreneurs On The Greatest Unexpected Challenges They Faced With Their Businesses first appeared on Tekrati and is written by Jerome Knyszewski