Entrepreneurs – Tekrati

53 Stories of Successful Entrepreneurs From USA that Will Inspire You on Your Journey

Jed Morley — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 16:34:23 +0000

53 Stories of Successful Entrepreneurs From USA that Will Inspire You on Your Journey

53 Stories of Successful Entrepreneurs From USA that Will Inspire You on Your Journey

All successful entrepreneurs have risen through adversity and perseverance. Before becoming established, all firms must go through the starting phase. They have to start somewhere, too. Ask any ambitious entrepreneur, and they’ll tell you about the exhausting, persistent process that has kept them awake countless nights.

It’s fascinating to learn about the beginnings of significant corporations that have become household brands. Others of them came from humble beginnings, and some of the well-known firms have founders with fascinating backstories.

In this interview series, we spoke with 53 business owners and executives in the United States to learn how some of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs and leaders faced adversity and triumphed. We have also gone over several strategies that you can utilize to overcome any obstacles that come your way.

INTERVIEW HOST

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

The question we asked:

Can you tell us the difficulties that you faced on your journey to becoming an entrepreneur/CEO?

Kristina Alexandra Kovalyuk

The difficulties with becoming CEO are many and it is a journey not meant for all. As Elon Musk said, “being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and looking into the abyss”. Some of the challenges I faced in becoming a CEO have been:

Leaving a comfortable well paying job on Wall Street that provided a salary, benefits and security and going into the unknown. Not knowing where or when my next ‘paycheck’ was going to come from.
Marketing. Knowing what my product and service is, is one thing, but how to get it to my target audience, getting it on their radar, marketing, pitching, doing PR.
Establishing corporate governance, accounting, operations, structure, CRM.
Hiring talent. Probably one of the most challenging parts of being an entrepreneur is finding talent and then being able to give them the freedom to do their work and not micro-manage and let go. This was a very tough part as an entrepreneur wants to instinctively do everything themselves.

Matt Post

Whenever I am confronted with difficulties and challenges as a leader, I always remind myself that great leadership is forged in the fire of adversity. Yes, difficulties can sometimes discourage you from pursuing your goals further, but if you adopt a growth mindset around them, you will learn to embrace each challenge as an opportunity to grow. That is what I have continuously tried to do throughout my career as a serial entrepreneur.

Chris M. Walker

The hardest part for me was learning to lean on other people.

I waited literal years too long for my first hire and once I did it changed the game for me overnight and let me take things to the next level… but I still didn’t learn.

After that hire I was able to add more offers, grow more products and help more people… until I plateaued again, and had to be convinced to hire further.

This was a vicious cycle that I eventually broke out of long after I should have. I have now finally learned that not only can I not do everything myself, but I should do very few things myself so the things that I do, do get me at my best.

Your business is your creation and it is normal to think no one can do things up to your standard, but you can’t do it this way for long if you have any level of success, it will lower the quality of your work, make you hate what you do, and prevent your from rowing.

I am fortunate now to have a great team that handles most everything for me to the point that I joke that I am just the face on the sign like Colonel Sanders… but it took me a long time to get there, and if I hadn’t struggled with this I’d be years further along than I am now.

Brett Larkin

One of the biggest challenges I faced on my entrepreneurial journey was prioritizing work-life balance. When you start a business, it is hard to focus on anything else, but this hyperfocus can actually cause a lot of fatigue and stress that can lead to burnout.

The key to being a well-rounded leader and business person is to figure out how you can balance your professional life with your personal life. External factors, like friends, family and your social life can actually benefit you hugely by providing comfort and support on your entrepreneurial journey!

Kate Lombardo

The journey to becoming an entrepreneur, also a Yoga Director at YogaRenew Teacher Training is one that is filled with constant challenges. While I’ve faced all the typical ones– from conquering self-doubt to navigating bankruptcy as a result of the pandemic– I think the biggest difficulty I’ve faced is learning to accept that things are always going to change.

When it comes to being an entrepreneur, you have to be open to always learning and growing and learning how to pivot as things around you change. Every time you think you’ve finally got things figured out, something else shifts in the world and you have to adjust in order to stay relevant.

For example, right before the pandemic began I finally felt like my yoga studio was in a good place and then we had to close and learn how to teach online. Thankfully by then, I had already gotten comfortable with needing to always be able to pivot, but that took a long time for me to learn how to accept that I’ll never be “done” when it comes to being an entrepreneur.

The exciting thing about that is that it means you can never truly fail. You just need to keep trying until you find the way that works.

Adam Rossi

Many entrepreneurs have similar stories on their way to the top. Everyone has problems they face on a daily basis, but what separates those who are good from those who are great is how they deal with the adversity that appears in everyone’s lives.

I’m no different. I’ve faced the same issues, dealt with the same issues of people not believing in me or in my journey toward success. The only difference between me and those who haven’t reached their success yet? I didn’t let any of those problems stop me. That’s the big secret to being a successful entrepreneur. Don’t stop.

Don’t let anything get in your way. You’re going to have problems. You’re going to have haters. It’s inevitable. Don’t let it stop you. Let it fuel your fire. Prove them wrong. Prove everyone wrong.

Devon Fata

The core of my journey to becoming a CEO was the slow realization that it was the only way I would be able to work in a way that fit my vision and values.

I started in the web design business right out of college as a salaried employee at a big design firm. While I learned a lot about the industry and built my skills, I found that there were a lot of things I wanted to do differently, but lacked the power to change.

This led me to becoming a freelancer. This gave me a greater degree of control over my work and the freedom to find clients for myself and start acting a bit like a business instead of an employee, but I was still limited both by the clients I could find and by my inability to bring together teams for bigger projects. That’s when I launched Pixoul. Now I can finally implement my vision on entire projects, from start to finish.

Dain Dunston

One of the biggest difficulties I faced during my career journey was failing as a leader at a tech company, where I lasted only four months. It shook me to my core. The worst part was I knew in my bones it was a bad decision before I accepted the job, and yet I went ahead with it anyway.

I came into the role feeling so uncomfortable for so many reasons that I surely would have come across as inauthentic and even just a little weird. I left feeling crushed, humiliated, and defeated. I had no idea where to go next, yet I was determined to find the answer to one burning question:

How had I become so lost? The experience fired me up to find out why I had made such bad decisions and how I could rewire my mind to be the awesome, inspiring human being I always wanted to be (but secretly doubted I was worthy of becoming). Who among us hasn’t found ourselves in the wrong job, or feeling that we didn’t belong, or wishing we could stop making decisions that took us into dead-end career moves?

My failed job experience allowed me to look inward, and over time, with daily personal practice, I rewired my mind to be the leader I know I could be. Along the way, I helped many other leaders do the same, from CEOs to those just starting out in their careers. Nothing I’m doing today would be happening if I hadn’t gone through that and a few related experiences. All experience happens for one purpose: to increase our awareness.

Ryan Yount

Establishing a clear direction for the business was the most difficult challenge I faced. Developing strategies that will lead the business in the right direction is not easy, especially when starting from scratch.

You must always be ahead of time to avoid losing the relevance of the business. One of an entrepreneur’s most important responsibilities is to bring what has yet to be done into the present. An entrepreneur is also tasked to find solutions to other business issues, such as poor customer service, which is a challenge due to a lack of experience.

Keeping up with business trends and changes is another challenge I faced. When starting a small business as an entrepreneur, you must adapt to the changing trends in the business environment. Trends create or destroy businesses at their initial stages. Seasoned business owners recognize that a trend is a friend, and they are always ready to adapt their operations to the current trend quickly.

It isn’t easy to keep your eyes open for trends while you are on your journey to becoming an entrepreneur, but the real challenge is always the ability to capitalize on these trends rapidly.

Thomas Mirmotahari

The difficulty I faced was the challenges that accompanied the commencement of this pandemic. Overcoming those challenges meant finally taking a leap of faith to start my own business which I did in 2020. Fast forward to 2022, I have 7 full time employees and 2 part time employees on my team. We are dedicated and focused on producing great results that continue to sustain the enterprise.

I am a Business School graduate and my knowledge on what it takes to be a great leader started at college. So for me, making my way to the top of my own company meant hard work at strategizing a business plan that was relevant to the market, taking the bull by the horns and finally getting down to implementing a marketable solution.

Starting your own business is gutsy. It involves many long hours of hard work. So I could say that developing a higher treshold for discipline, and time management was an initial challenge. I believe that if you truly believe that you have a viable solution to a business problem then test it out and go for it. But have a willingness to work hard. You must be willing to put some skin in the game to make anything happen in life and business.

James Parsons

Digital marketing was already a highly competitive niche in 2018. It was a big challenge to market my company since many digital marketing agencies existed.

The best solution was to offer business proposals to my existing connections at more affordable rates with excellent data-driven results. I hired experienced offshore writers and marketers to save me some money and invested in dependable project management software to boost collaboration and increase productivity.

I created a website for my digital marketing agency and marketed my content marketing services across different online platforms. These steps tremendously improved the company’s online presence, gaining decent traffic for the first year and overwhelming content orders the years after that. More client referrals came in because of the soaring 700% increase in our average clients’ conversion rate in 2020.

William Cohen

One of the issues I had to deal with regularly was criticism. It could be about business concepts, small biz decision-making mistakes, or even launching a firm in the first place.

My business was continuously reminded about the different ways it may fail. People would be jealous of and intimidated by me, so these critics would get personal sometimes.

It’s also quite challenging for any new firm to acquire customers, especially if the company has a limited marketing budget. This concern was always on my mind, and the fact that consumers want to stick with well-known brands made it more difficult for me to advertise.

Tim Absalikov

Being a digital marketing agency, we did not vividly sense the negative effect of the pandemic. We have a mixed staff – both onsite and remote employees – so, we did not have to significantly change the mode of the work. At least, the effect of the changes was not painful for us as we didn’t have to adapt to changing market conditions. We were already practicing remote working, at least part of our staff.

Gian Moore

I’m a single mother. So, Building a business while my daughter was growing up was a huge task for me.

Emily Cooper

Hi Jed,

I’m Emily, the founder of Oliver Wicks, a luxury Italian menswear brand with an online presence.

Being a business leader requires a lot of social responsibility and accountability. There will always be challenges and setbacks present. The only thing that is within your control is your mindset and attitude towards things.

I value integrity and resilience the most in running my business. Enjoy the journey ahead and use the difficult times as fuel to perform better. It’s totally fine to fall down sometimes. The important part is getting back on the saddle and learning from your mistakes.

The first few years of establishing the business are usually the hardest. You are finding your footing, and grappling with growing pains at the same time. It really helps to center on your “why” in venturing into your business, as well as having the right team in place. Never be afraid to ask for help, and always give credit where credit is due.

I hope you find these inputs helpful. I will be happy to elaborate more on the topic, should you need more information.

Warm Regards,

Michael Dean

One of the main difficulties I’ve faced while being an entrepreneur is keeping up-to-date on current marketing trends. I never realized the absolute importance of marketing and SEO strategies until I started my own business.

You can have a fantastic idea, but without good marketing tactics, building an audience for that idea is next to impossible. Successful marketing requires an understanding of your brand, and solidifying your brand at the beginning of your business journey can often be challenging.

As someone who is not naturally savvy with social media, I have had to really put in effort and research into understanding how to use it as a business tool. Social media is one of the most accessible and valuable marketing tools out there. If you’re not prioritizing social media and digital marketing for your business, you are missing out on tons of engagement.

Becky Brown

I have 20+ years of experience in business, but becoming a CEO took more effort than I could ever imagine. My entrepreneurship journey began remotely when I took control of ShoppingKim, and I had to put in a lot of effort to make it all work.

The initial difficulty was learning how to navigate the online space, getting acquainted with the technology, and learning how to utilize it to grow my business. I had to learn a lot about website development, content creation, e-commerce, and digital marketing.

Managing a remote team was another difficult issue to resolve because I had to learn how to rally my employees to do their best work so that my business can grow.

All things considered, it took a lot of time and effort to learn and understand how everything works in order to make the best decisions as a CEO. Every CEO has to learn the inner workings of their business, but there’s also the need to acquire people and leadership skills to succeed.

Sherry Morgan

The hardest challenge I faced in my road to becoming a business owner and CEO is actually starting the journey. I had a lot of self-doubts and I always thought that maybe I shouldn’t start since I’m sure that there are always people better than me out there.

I got stuck in the planning stage for a long time, always visualizing what I want to happen but not taking any action towards it. Eventually, I decided not to pursue my ideas anymore but then my closest friends talked some sense into me.

They reminded me about the problems I want to solve and why I wanted to start my business in the first place. They also gave me a lot of advice and support and made me feel that I can do anything that I put my mind to.

There may be better people out there, but what’s important is looking at my own progress and aiming to be better than who I was yesterday. This motivated me to finally start and now whatever challenge I face in my business, I’m now brave to face it.

Stephen Keighery

One difficulty I faced on my entrepreneurial journey was keeping my head out of the competition.

Aside from the struggle to stay competitive in the marketplace, you also have to be aware and not get lost in the competition, which may influence how you conduct your business and offer your services.

It is challenging to stay level-headed, especially if you see your competitors earn more than you despite providing the same benefits as you do. You have to learn to extract yourself from that mindset, focus on the quality of services you offer, and establish a good rapport with your clients.

Devin Schumacher

The transition from being a technical consultant or contributor or employee to a full blown businessman providing payroll to others is a large step and it is not always a smooth road to walk on.

The growth pains of building a sustainable business in its infancy on top of a highly irregular business climate with covid-19 is a real challenge. I worked by developing grit and having systems, making small decisions on a daily basis that build into great results.

Here are the things that helped me:

Discipline through a Regimen or Workout
I was able to develop grit and resilience by training in the boxing ring for fitness. This really helped me show up for myself and my business rain or shine.

Center on a Natural Industry of Interest
You can zero in on so many materials when you are incredibly passionate about a subject. So the sucess comes more naturally on the things that feel and seem appealing to you.

Have a Why or Purpose
Ultimately, I thrive in serving clients by making them more digitally visible for revenue. I take pride in being close to the revenue line of my clients and that empowers me everyday.

Erik Wright

Any new enterprise has a significant risk because there is always a fear of the unknown. The worry that I carried with me was leaving a well-established and stable job to pursue my dream of being an entrepreneur.

As there is no in-time or out-time while running your own business, it is hard to manage a job and a new business venture at the same time. For the business to succeed, 100 percent devotion is required.

It’s difficult and scary to leave a well-paying career, but if your instincts tell you that being an entrepreneur is the best fit for you, go for it. Do something that makes you happy at the end of the day, and if becoming an entrepreneur is your desire, work hard to make it a reality. That is exactly what I did.

Bryan Scudiere

When I think about my journey into entrepreneurship it almost happened by accident. My father lost his job in the ’08 crash which removed college from my option list, and I had to get a job in sales.

With no degree, the only type of sales job i could get was a commission-only D2D position – so I had to completely trust that I was capable of producing results. I spent 4.5years in the ups and downs of a commission based sales role some weeks making great money others, not so much. My first hurdle in my career was actually learning to manage cash flow, so I could survive a dry spell of sales.

This was where I learned budget based/profit first type of budgeting. In 2016 Once I opened the doors of my first franchise, I was off to the races and grew extremely fast in just 30 days, shooting up to a 30 person organization. I was young, audacious, and exceptionally loud haha I was running a sales floor in a Class A office building with incredibly thin walls next door to a 100+ year old Law Firm.

The music blaring and sales reps on the phone trying to close appointments made the owner of the building quite upset. He stormed in, and in front of my entire sales team screamed, smashed my speaker, and proceeded to aggressively kick everybody out.

So about 4 weeks into opening my first business I was banned from ever coming back into that office building [to this day] and had to find another location on the fly, while saving as many reps from quitting as possible. I managed to hold onto 12, find a cheaper bigger office space, and still put up over 300,000 in sales in the next 90 days and over a million the following year.

Garnering me the #1 franchise spot in the company for new business created in 2017. Just one of the many wild stories from owning a small business. Hope this is inspiring and helps people who are on the verge of quitting, I know i sure was back in 2016.

Kathleen Steffey

The difficulties faced on my journey to become an entrepreneur/CEO shaped me into the successful business owner that I am today.

When 9/11 happened, I was working as an ex-pat overseas in the Netherlands and I was part of a reduction in force for the European operation. All of a sudden, I found myself unemployed and so far from home during a tumultuous period for our nation.

This was a very pivotal moment for me to stop and reflect on myself, what I want for my future and quality of life while growing my career, similar to the behaviors and decision-making that you see in our current “Great Recession”. This is when I really began to ask myself “What do I want to do?”

I took that hardship and evaluated my life. This hardship gave me a wound to look back on but also to look ahead to new beginnings. Without the events that struck the nation that day and the immediate impact it had on the world and my career, I wouldn’t have had the fortitude or even moment to reflect on what I could make of myself.

I am so glad that I took the entrepreneur road (less traveled) instead of getting back into the corporate rat race. Here I am today celebrating 20 years in business!

Paul Sherman

The key challenge that I faced in my journey to the top was growing my network. The higher you go, the more you run into groups of people that are closed off to newcomers and like things the way they are. They’ve climbed up the ladder and pulled it away from under them, so to speak.

Breaking into such groups and thus moving my career forward required me to grow my network, but it was a vicious cycle. I couldn’t grow my network because these people often didn’t welcome newcomers, but I couldn’t break into these groups because my network was so small. The solution for me was pure luck. I met someone, who I consider to be a mentor, who vouched for me and helped me break into these networks of very high-achieving experts in the field.

Once I had my first break, it was, ironically, a virtuous cycle of my network growing, being accepted into more business professionals groups, my network growing even further, and so on.

As the saying goes, your network truly is your net worth.

Dragos Badea

A little over ten years ago I was your standard software engineer working at a design agency when I had the bright idea that it would be great to be able to digitize offices – really make it so that every aspect of the office was interconnected via software rather than all of the random clunky systems and paper-based processes that dominated the office at the time.

A good place to start, I reasoned, was a digital meeting room booking tool. As luck would have it, the concept caught on and here we are in 2022 with a rapidly growing hybrid workforce management solution business that’s been ranked as an industry leader by G2.

Naturally the way to get there was paved with it’s own fair share of difficulties. At the time everyone thought I was crazy. “Why would I pay to stick a tablet to the wall just to tell me whether the meeting room is busy?” is a phrase I heard more than once, which is not a great motivational help after you’ve taken your leap into entrepreneurship.

This wasn’t helped by the fact that I was, as I mentioned earlier, a software engineer. I knew next to nothing about the business side of running a company, but thankfully you really can learn just about anything online these days. I was putting together the tool, gaining our first clients and taking an online sales course on our way to bring in our first million of repeating yearly revenue.

What I took away from this is that not knowing how to do something or going against the way things are done are no real excuse for not giving your idea a try. Find the way to make it work and change the industry paradigm as you’re doing it.

Pati Recarte Iguaz

Patricia Recarte Iguaz is the founder and CEO of KADO Networks, a remote networking company. Pati created KADO during the pandemic as a way for businesses and individuals to grow meaningful relationships through a remote app you can download to your phone.

You can learn more about KADO by going to www.kadonetworks.com. Here’s what Pati has to say about some of the difficulties she’s faced on her journey to becoming an entrepreneur / CEO:

“On a personal level, preserving my mental health was an issue and still is, but to a lesser extent. Not managing my personal anxiety and stress levels ended up taking a toll on me. It’s key to find activities that allow your mind to drift away and escape the constant fires that need to be put out. It doesn’t necessarily have to be meditation. It can be anything from going for a run to boxing, or even a night out with friends.

Bringing on a co-founder can also help with the feelings of solitude and stress management. Entrepreneurship is a long and lonely road. Bringing in a co-founder helped me with sharing the weight and also helped with having different perspectives.

On the business side, setting a clear go-to-market strategy and getting our first clients was a real hustle! How can you convince people to use your app when no one else is using it? How can you convince a company to pay for your service when you have no referrals or reviews?

At the beginning, we did a lot of beta testing for free and interviews with potential clients, while also improving the app at the same time. To encourage usage, we’ve been offering it for free to individuals. Having some metrics is critical for SMBs and enterprises to move forward. Potential customers often ask about the number of users or need some name-dropping to be convinced. We are still at the very beginning of our story and this is still one of our key challenges, but we are getting better and improving every single day. “

Kunal Gandhi

Kunal Gandhi is the founder and CEO of EZPT, a new at-home fitness app. Kunal’s app tracks movement using your phone’s camera and corrects form using AI technology to prevent injury and encourage a safe workout experience. You can learn more about EZPT by visiting their website at www.ezpt.xyz.

Here’s what Kunal has to say about the personal difficulties he’s faced on his journey to becoming an entrepreneur and CEO:

“Every day is a new challenge. The fun part about building a startup is that we are constantly faced with obstacles that we must learn to jump over while also running at top speed. One of the biggest challenges that I faced as a founder was building product, talking to customers, and staying focused. As a young (& first-time) founder, there were tons of experienced founders and investors out there providing their advice on which direction to take the company. Our technology had a great problem – there were so many industries to apply the technology to.”

“Everything from sports, fitness, physical therapy, warehouses, truck drivers, day-to-day consumers and so many more. Learning about all of these industries and the market opportunity for each has really helped us evolve our roadmap. Focusing in on our core vision and brand values has allowed us to focus on building a movement health platform creating injury specific workouts for patients and providing data to care providers. We’ve also learned along the way to listen to customer feedback first, rather than jumping to the next industry. Talking to customers is a major key.”

Lauren Petrullo

I think the biggest difficulty I faced on becoming an entrepreneur and CEO was realizing that my unique set of skills in Facebook Ad has like one tenth of the skills that I would need to lead a team because I have to figure out project management, account management, reporting and every other course service that we offer.

We service lead generation and e-commerce clients which I can do all day long and Facebook ads. We extended our services to include marketing automation with emails and SMS, Google, Bing and Amazon PPC as well as the host of other services and having to mitigate the ability to know enough about services we offer to speak at it at a high level to build our client as well as to hold our team accountable.

The biggest difficulty was like to figure out how to manage a team, manage a remote team, manage a diverse remote team so that when my name, my face, my company is at the forefront, everything we do with every pack member equally represents the same level of quality my customers and clients came to know when they work with just me before I was a CEO.

Barbara Bolotte

The pandemic forced a majority of businesses to have to change the way in which they were doing something in order to adapt to their new environment.

At Clean Creations, we saw this as an opportunity to expand our services to help more individuals. During the height of the pandemic, fewer people were going to the grocery store or eating out. In response to this, we doubled down on keeping our staff safe and healthy which included COVID safety protocols like hand washing every hour on the hour.

We have an obligation to our community to keep them healthy and we wanted to maintain our service, especially for those who might not be comfortable leaving their homes to go to the grocery store. The pandemic has only fortified our mission of changing people’s lives with clean eating. We are grateful to be able to continue our mission during these times.

Renee Dominguez

I had struggled from very early on and it has been a journey to get where I’m at today. I was a high school dropout that never truly felt that I would have what it takes to be successful. As the years went on, I learned from many of my positions and I ended up going to private colleges earning multiple degrees. However, I continued struggling with imposter syndrome and feeling that I would never be educated or skilled enough to hold a high-ranking position.

Again, I underestimated myself. I have created glass ceilings for myself that I have also shattered. Now, I teach others to do the same. I went from a statistic to a bad-ass CEO and continue to prove to myself that I can do hard things!

Tapping into my intuition has allowed me to energetically attract the right type of clients. I grew up thinking I didn’t have any skills or talents. I seriously thought GOD missed me when it came to assigning these to babies. It took me nearly 40 years to realize I didn’t just have a skill or talent, I have a superpower. Now that I know this, I don’t doubt my decisions or waver on them. This superpower has guided me to create transformations not just for myself, but also for my clients who are now able to tap into their next levels of success, with ease.

My clients are women in Leadership who are ready to empower themselves and claim their seat at the table. I work in collaboration with you to develop your own unique leadership style in order to be heard, seen, and respected in the workplace. I have created strategic development tools to uncover your core values, true worth, and passions that will lead you to success and future endeavors. My clients are then excited and prepared for what lies ahead for them.

Joseph Gardzina

I’m Joseph, the CEO, and founder of ADAPT Programs which provides outpatient treatment services for substance abuse disorders. I’m a licensed US DOT Substance Abuse Professional along with a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor. Throughout my professional career, I have worked in several agencies and have worked as the Program Coordinator of their inpatient adolescent treatment program as well as the Director of Programs for Phoenix House in San Diego, CA. I have faced many difficulties in order to get to the position of a leader.

The trek up to leadership.
The journey to becoming a leader is much harder than it seems. Transitioning from a manager or employee or starting your own business is a completely new experience and that difficult part about that is no one ever teaches you how to become a real leader, it’s something that you only learn from experience. The journey towards leadership is one with obstacles at every step.

In my personal experience, when I was working as a manager and the next step was a promotion to a director, every day was a challenge. What differentiates a good leader from a bad one is how quickly you bounce back. Problems will be common in your role as a leader. How swiftly you deal with them as well as stay motivated throughout is how your become a good leader.

Dealing with the challenges.
The hardest part of becoming a CEO was taking the position of a leader. Deciding on goals for the entire team was something that was relatively new for me. I was used to defining goals for myself but forming goals for the entire organization was a challenge. Moreover, the added responsibility of so many people is a huge burden as well. I am responsible for the culture of the workplace and the execution of creating such a culture is a daunting task especially when you want to create a healthy and motivating environment.

The best way, in my opinion, to overcome difficulties on the way to the top is to find mentors and allies. Your support system is what will make or break you. Engage with your mentors who have ideally been in the same position as you and gather their insights on the process. Learning from their mistakes will prevent you from making your own.

One more thing I learnt is to not put off difficult decisions. As a leader you will have to make hard decisions every day. Surround yourself with people who are there for you in these hard times but also encourage you to do the right thing. The journey is not an easy one but staying focused is what works.

Lastly, one of the greatest challenge while on the journey to becoming a leader is learning the art of patience. It’s a removal of the ego and you cannot lash out on anyone if you are in a rut. You must always be calm and collected and embrace tough times as they come. A positive mindset and mindfulness goes a long way.

Will Cannon

How Do Leaders Cope with the Challenges
Leadership is what everyone is aiming for. Aside from the power that you are entitled to, it is also a door for more opportunities. However, it does not only take overnight to become one. A lot of successful leaders have endured the hardships that may come along with their careers.

There is no exact formula on how to be a leader. And, there is no precise number of levels of work needed for leadership. Some leaders have to spend a lifetime to attain success. But there are explications to achieve the goal.

How do leaders cope with the challenges?

1. Face conflict positively
2. Always stay calm in every situation
3. Look for opportunities
4. Reach out for help when needed
5. Be proactive and creative
6. Make sure to have a personal time
7. Leaders possess humility. They always remain humble even if they are on top. This characteristic keeps them in position.

Adit Jain

As you progress through your entrepreneurial journey, the kind of challenges that you face keep changing. For example, right now our biggest challenge is how to scale the business to $100M in terms of revenue. But for us, we were hardcore techies, so learning sales as just a three-person team, without the money to hire a team was the first challenge we faced.

During those early days, it was about product-market fit, and after that, it was about hiring the best people to build the best solution. That said, hiring the best is a constant challenge throughout a business’s journey.

Now, coming to overcoming these challenges. As I mentioned earlier, we were hardcore techies, and sales were something we had to learn from scratch. But we gradually learned. We understood how to sell to investors and customers alike. To add to that, we were dealing with the fear of “What if someone says no?” But over time, we’ve learned that you have to be comfortable in your skin because 99 out of the 100 times you hear a no. The day you get that lodged; you improve.

That’s one, now coming to the challenge of product-market fit. Product-market fit tells you whether you should start scaling or not, and it is critical because it tells you whether or not your business idea will be a breakout success.

So, we decided to go back to our customers to understand their needs and figure out how we could effectively solve their problems. It is important for entrepreneurs to go back to their customers and understand their requirements. As soon as you see repeatability in your customers, you know it is a fit.

Jonathan George

At the age of 26, I was named the Grand Champion Winner on Ed McMahon’s “Next Big Star”. It was the highlight of my career and my dreams were coming true as a brand-new record deal slid across the table… and then they discovered I was gay. I was left with no deal, no direction, and my dreams shattered.

My team tried to get me married, they tried to change my music, they tried to change everything about me. All I heard was…“You’re. Not. Good. Enough.”
You see, I had already spent a lifetime of being relentlessly bullied for not being a sports kid. Also, as the son of a preacher, I was told that I could never fulfill the purpose I knew I had in my life.

Again, “You’re not good enough.”

I didn’t know who I was or how to show up in the world. And no matter the accolades, I truly felt I wasn’t good enough.
That’s when I said “no more” and vowed to become the kind of coach I so badly needed in my own life. I needed someone who wasn’t going to CHANGE me… and make me different from who I was. Instead, I needed someone to help me ROCK the person I already was.

Since then, I’ve spent over two decades developing celebrity personal brands for entertainers, influencers, politicians, entrepreneurs, and professionals. As the CEO of Unleash Your Rockstar – Personal Branding Agency, they now call me The Human Hitmaker because my clients have over 150 million online followers.

My battle wounds gave me purpose and helped me impact the world around me.

Dan Voss

Thanks for putting this query out, hope you are doing well! It is true that every leader has faced difficulties and challenges, and continues to do so, that’s what a leadership role is about. As a leader, you are going to pave the way for your team, company, industry, or sector, and it comes with a whole lot of challenges.

One of the biggest I’ve faced in my years of working is ‘people management. Working together synergetically to achieve the best outcome, or to make sure everyone is productive and contributing to their fullest. Initially, it was thought that having the best players in the industry on your team would automatically mean success, but that’s not all that matters.

You need to be able to lead that team, navigate negative attitudes, bring direction, monitor outcomes among the other intangible things, like job satisfaction, culture, work-life balance, loyalty, etc. This for me was a big challenge and learning for me when I started out, but once you get a hang of it, it can be one of the biggest driving factors to your success.

Corey Tyner

GETTING PAID DIFFERENTLY
Real estate’s financial and technical dynamics were the most challenging aspects when I started as a new agent. Because I was used to salary work, it was a financial challenge. After putting in a certain amount of labour, I was used to receiving a paycheck every month. I only ate what I killed in real estate.

WEARING MULTIPLE HATS
For the first time, I considered marketing budgets, marketing tactics, branding, and lead generation while also attempting to pay the bills. During my real estate schooling, I received training on performing specific tasks and the regulations that govern them. Still, they did not provide me with training on operating other areas of my business. To remain afloat, I quickly understood concepts like lead generation, how to follow up with leads, and organizational procedures.

NO OFF-HOURS
Off-hours work is one of the most challenging aspects of the real estate market. My working hours are opposed to those of my friends and family who work the regular 9-to-5 job. People who purchase and sell houses work full-time throughout the week and are only accessible in the evenings or on weekends. This entails working throughout your friend’s and family’s vacations. Knowing that you are required somewhere else while others enjoy a weekend BBQ can be depressing.

WORKING ALL THE TIME
As a real estate agent, I’m in charge of establishing my business. I have absolute control over my business, which means I can make or break it based on my efforts. There’s always more work that has to be done. This leads to a desire to work as hard as possible and a sense of slacking off when attempting to rest.

Keron Howe

I am passionate about helping people and also love real estate. A friend bought me Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. The book made me focus on the idea of building wealth and freedom through real estate, and ultimately led me to co-founding Property Nation in 2011.

The journey has been incredibly rewarding, and I really appreciate that I can help people who are facing financial difficulties. Admittedly, at the start of the business, I had a very steep learning curve and faced many challenges.

Initially, I relied heavily on my business experience, research, and instinct. Real estate investment encompasses a lot of different aspects. Understanding renovations, repairs, and building a list of fair and reliable contracts were some points I needed to learn fast.

Seeking a mentor helped me meet those challenges. I learned it is unnecessary to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Finding the right mentor for each stage of my journey, to learn from their knowledge and experience, lowered the learning curve whilst motivating me to succeed.

Finding a mentor can be a challenge, but by networking within in the industry and expanding your personal circle, it is possible to find your perfect match.

Sophie Chiche

The greatest difficulty I faced as an entrepreneur is, ironically, also my greatest strength The fact is, when you’re running a company or starting a new business venture, you have to devote virtually all of your time to it.

You have to eat, sleep, and breathe your business; to truly be successful requires an almost 24/7 commitment. But despite the never-ending dedication that your business requires, you still need to find time for yourself – some time to get away, to forget about the business or venture for a bit. Most people can only do so for short snippets of time here and there, but even these tiny respites will help to recharge you and keep your mind and soul fresh.

Unfortunately, as I was getting my business established, I found myself unable to follow this advice. I was completely consumed with growing the business and “keeping my eye on the prize.” I did grow my business – quite well, in fact – but it took awhile for me to learn how to step back and occasionally relax, putting aside all work-related items to “smell the roses.” I’m sure I would have burned out if I hadn’t been able to adopt this mindset. Even if you give 99% of your time to your business, you’ve got to save at least 1% for yourself. That 1% can go a long way towards helping you maintain your sanity and your focus.

Erin LaCkore

1. Following through.

This is the most common challenge a leader faces in their life. They can get busy so much that they won’t even have time to look into every problem. So it is important that a leader creates a priority list that includes which task needs their most attention. This will help them to pay attention and overcome any challenge.

2. Dealing with stress and anxiety.

Having a busy life can cause stress and act as a hurdle in achieving your tasks. So it is important that you take out some time to meditate to deal with your stress and anxiety. When you have dealt with it, you can pay more attention and put all your focus on the work.

James Simmons

James Simmons is the founder and CEO of GameApart, a new online gaming platform. The platform connects users to loved ones via their favorite card game or board game by using virtual software such as Zoom, Teams or FaceTime.

Simmons created GameApart during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for loved ones to connect virtually. You can learn more about GameApart by going to www.gameapart.com. Here’s what James has to say about some of the difficulties he’s faced on his journey to becoming an entrepreneur / CEO.

“The biggest challenge was learning when to take risks. As a senior leader (but NOT the CEO) you can suggest or advise tough courses of action, but the ultimate decision on whether to bet the deal, the lawsuit, or the company fell on someone else, and there was always a little bit of comfort in the fact that someone else was making the final call on the really big issues (and also a bit of frustration!).

When it’s all on you, the fear of making the wrong choice can be crippling or, conversely, actually making the wrong choice without due consideration can be catastrophic; learning to handle this and find the right balance of caution and boldness (still working on it!) has been a huge part of my personal founder/CEO journey!”

Shawn Plummer

In my journey to becoming a CEO, I struggled with transitioning from a corporate environment where I had a lot of resources and people to support my work to starting my own business where I had to do everything myself.

There were a lot of things I took for granted and having to get everything in place on my own was difficult in the beginning. However, I’ve never looked back. I greatly value working for myself and investing in my own growth.

Stephan Baldwin

At the start of my CEO career, I dealt with internal conflicts regarding the conditions of existing care facilities. Many of these centers are well-decorated and promoted with excellent advertising, but they often lack financial support to sustain senior dependents. Some people might say that the negatives drove them to achieve successful businesses, but that disappointing reality nearly deterred my plans.

That experience taught me to leverage the power of research as a professional marketer. If we commit to learning about our competitors, we should also dedicate time towards recovering the facts about our industry of interest.

I realized that Assisted Living couldn’t be better or stand out in an uninformed environment. So I spent months performing a deep dive into senior care facilities, learning about each company’s history and retention rates. My choice to take a journalistic approach to healthcare marketing allowed me to uncover more than 19 000 care centers in the U.S. and Canada that I partner with proudly today.

Here’s the bottom line: If you want to be successful, you need to be willing to accept some hard truths and build on them. Entrepreneurs who shy away from the nitty-gritty work miss out on the foundations for thriving businesses.

Benjamin Rollins

The difficulties I faced in my journey in becoming an entrepreneur / CEO was learning to focus on other people instead of myself and not being secretive about the problem I was trying to solve.

I thought that if I talked about the problem I was trying to solve, people might steal my idea or take advantage of it. I was focusing only on myself and wondering why I wasn’t achieving the success I wanted.

After I got over myself and started focusing on helping others, and I started talking to others to get feedback on my idea, I was able to build a better business.

Froswa Booker-Drew

When I started my business, it was the result of dealing with a boss who was threatened. Instead of nurturing what I brought to the organization, my willingness to grow and learn, she saw it as a problem. This experience along with others taught me to value my team and create the space for them to unleash their talent. Insecurity is a trap that destroys your possibilities and the confidence of others.

I was already being asked to provide consulting. I walked out on faith believing I could grow my business. In a year, I exceeded what I made at my job through my business. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, ebbs and flows. I initially struggled with understanding my value and worth which I cheated myself financially. I undervalued what I brought without accounting for my lived experience and education combined. When you aren’t clear on that, you’ll attract clients who also will not see your value.

Over the years, I’ve had my business in a full or part time capacity but I’ve never stopped. I’ve learned the importance of surrounding yourself with others who can offer support so you can focus on what you are good at—you can’t do everything all the time. As much as the grind is important and working hard to make your dreams a reality, you must take time to focus on building yourself.

You can’t grow stagnant and you must keep learning. Self-care both individually and in community is necessary. It’s important to take time to relax and rest. I remember pushing myself so hard that my health suffered. If you aren’t well, your business suffers. Learning to prioritize is paramount. Relationships are important and neglecting those that bring you life only hurts you.

I’ve learned so much because of the lessons I gained over the years. Your mistakes are lessons. Use them as a foundation to grow and bless others.

Lauren Carroll

In my industry of real estate, my biggest challenge would be where I operate, as potential clients often associate experience with age. As a young entrepreneur, it was a challenge to prove myself as an expert in my market.

Typically in this field, they say it takes seven years to get your business up and running. Of course, this is different for everyone. However, in Real Estate you do have to hustle and find different avenues in which you can generate revenue until you are off the ground. One takeaway from my experiences is that persistence and consistency are essential for new business owners.

Lauren Cohen

AN ANOMALY IN THE LEGAL AND REAL ESTATE WORLD!

Lauren Cohen is recognized as a premier International Legal Expert and Global Expansion Strategist. She operates several international companies focused on delivering full-service solutions for business owners.

She helps expand their global impact by facilitating the logistics of moving businesses and their owners across the country and around the globe. Her superpowers rest in anticipating challenges before they happen to ensure a painless and efficient transition and build sound, goal-oriented business strategies — legally, structurally, and physically. She takes away the worry and the sense of overwhelm away so her clients can stay in their lane, focus on building their business and achieve their version of the American Dream.

After her husband’s deportation on the return trip from their honeymoon, she was devastated. Although the marriage was not meant to be, the turn of events was traumatic and life-changing. She knew she had to make some changes and find a way to have a more significant impact on others to help them avoid suffering a similar plight – or worse. So, she turned to the ever-changing and dynamic world of immigration and international law to help others avoid a similar fate.

As a Canadian immigrant, Lauren received her U.S. green card in 2007 and started her own business in 2008. She gave birth to her son, Zevi, two years later, at the age of 43. Being a single working mother and entrepreneur was challenging. Lauren initially struggled in her career path, especially when balancing her two hectic work and home lives.

Lauren battled with ongoing pre-conceived notions about women in the business field and not having the right to have a “seat at the table” while developing her own. But, with the help and advice of trusted advisors and her determined and gutsy approach to life, Lauren managed to refocus her energy to become the successful business owner and single working mother she is today.

Since its founding, she has transformed her company, e-Council Inc., from a one-woman-operated organization to a small but thriving business. Her expertise as the founder of e-Council Inc. is in advising business owners, entrepreneurs, and investors on immigrating to the U.S. and helping them develop business plans based on visa processes and gaining access to foreign capital. She has since expanded her expertise into other areas of business and advisory services.

In 2017, Lauren founded “Find My Silver Lining,” a 501(c)(3) organization that inspires single mothers, working parents, and “mompreneurs” to focus on the bright side as they strive to lead fulfilling lives. Lauren offers strategic guidance and legal advice to simplify complex business matters. She aims to help her clients develop a business plan, find a work/life balance, and discover their business. She also helps others develop and grow their non-profit entities as they strive to expand their reach and impact.

Lauren since has developed her signature program, “How to Immigrate Through Real Estate,” which exemplifies her years of expertise in moving or investing into the U.S. and international markets. She also has sponsored numerous coaching programs dedicated to teaching women how to invest in real estate worldwide.

She has also created a program where she helps investors establish a path towards a visa through various business models, has partnered with multiple Canadian and American law firms, and maintains active law and real estate licenses. Her mastery lies in building top-tier “power teams” for each client based on her intrinsic understanding of the scope of professional expertise needed for each situation to protect assets, minimize risk with cross-border expansion, and ultimately achieve the client’s short- and long-term goals.

Although her list of accreditations is long, Lauren utilizes the specialized expertise of various vetted professional partners to guide each unique situation on a path to seamless success.

When faced with challenges, Lauren has persevered and thrived time and again. She has continued to create unparalleled international alliances through personal and professional obstacles to offer her clients borderless, quality, conscientious service.

Indeed, the economic and other worldwide challenges faced in 2020 saw Lauren overcome adversity and continue to expand and enhance relationships, develop new partnerships, and teach others how to access funding and strategies for business and investment opportunities. She equally applies her unwavering tenacity to represent her clients’ interests. Lauren’s satisfaction comes from the personal changes she can actualize for her clients through her turnkey suite of services.

In light of the current COVID19 crisis, Lauren pivoted her business once again. She now offers a wide range of services related to business continuity, the coordination of funding solutions, and pivoting strategies for business owners across North America from governmental and private resources.

Having experienced the challenges of immigrating first-hand, Lauren is passionate about helping others – citizens and immigrants alike – to successfully expand domestically and globally by protecting the soul of their businesses so they can invest, live, work, and play anywhere in the world.

How Leaders Overcome Difficulties on Their Way to the Top

Being a leader does not mean that you will consistently achieve the desired outcome. Being a leader means that when you don’t accomplish that goal, you have learned from your mistakes and, most importantly, improved from that moment onward.

All leaders in any professional field are going to encounter difficulties. Whether it is in the industry, you have chosen or your personal life, it is inevitable. There are many skills all leaders must be equipped with when confronting difficult situations. But I believe these to be the main ones:

The skill of Confidence:

If you don’t believe in yourself and your service, no one will do it for you. It is of the utmost importance that you be confident in what you are doing because confidence alone can open various opportunities for you even when undergoing a difficult situation. Don’t be afraid to take the next step in your career because it may be difficult. Do it, and do it with confidence!

The skill of Communication:

Nowadays, we communicate in so many ways – e-mail, text, phone – it’s hard to tell when nobody is communicating something anymore. When you do, it’s essential to know your audience, but most importantly, to be respectful. I cannot tell you how many times a person has been rude intentionally and even unintentionally. When confronting challenging situations, never respond out of anger. Take a second to cool down, and remember, you are always talking to another person. Be kind to one another, and don’t burn bridges unnecessarily.

The skill of Balance:

Having a work/life balance is crucial for mental health and emotional connection. Spending quality time with your family and friends (and your dog) is essential. Don’t ignore these emotional connections in your daily struggles because they will be your support system through thick and thin whenever you need them.

The skill of Prioritization:

You will have many instances where you are juggling numerous things at once, and perhaps all within the same deadline. Setting a list of tasks and events you prioritize and moving things around will save you from having a mental breakdown. Don’t be afraid to say, “no, I can’t meet with you on Thursday, but I can meet with you next Tuesday.” No one expects you to be available 24/7. You’re only human – don’t put that much pressure on yourself. But, be reliable and be punctual.

The list can go on and on about things leaders can do to overcome difficult situations on their way to the top, but these, I believe, are the most noteworthy.

Michelle Diamond

Starting my businesses was not hard because I got a lot of advice from others who were successful in my field. However, navigating and managing the ups and downs during the years was the challenging part.

The ups and downs did not always necessarily correlate with the economy or external factors. Sometimes it was partnerships that had to end and other times, pivoting to new territories, and expanding or ‘fine-tuning’ my target customers and customer base.

However, through it all, I understand that embracing and understanding change, along with updating my mindset to make room for it, has been the key to success.

Logan Mallory

One challenge that many people face when they become a business owner is learning how to guide their team to become great leaders. The best way to build leadership is to give people opportunities to lead. Provide guidelines and consult, but don’t take a directive approach all the time.

Of course, you need to manage when there are performance or attendance or handbook issues, but otherwise you should act like a coach. Let your team members test their limits, try new things, and fail without being punished.

Mark Pierce

One way to overcome difficult times as a business leader is to improve your emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence can help leaders approach challenges from a more nuanced perspective and use that nuance to find better ways to resolve the issue.

Emotional intelligence helps people not only better understand the emotions and feelings of others, but also control their own emotions and emotional responses to situations. This can help to defuse tense situations, find ways to connect with people to resolve challenges, and in general stay more in control of a situation.

Marla Cormier

I never wanted to be my own boss. I grew up watching my parents slave away to make their own business successful, and even after all of their hard work and dedication, after 13 years, they had to declare bankruptcy and close.

That entire experience made me think that owning a business was far more work than it was worth. My parents were honest, hardworking people so if they couldn’t make it work, what chance would I have? Many years later I met my husband, a serial entrepreneur who had started his first successful business at age 17. For him, owning his own business was the only option and he started encouraging me to carve out my own path.

At first I thought he was just being nice, you know, telling the new girlfriend how capable she is and taking an interest in her passions. But he never let up. In fact, after we got married he only encouraged me more. Then one day I realized that if I did start my own business, I’d be able to work on all of the things I love without all of the things I don’t. It took a few years but eventually I created my own training company.

I’d love to say that I was a huge success right out of the gate, but like most success stories, there came some huge failures first. My first failure was one of timing. I was selling escape room learning, highly engaging mobile escape room experiences that I would build and host on-site for clients in a training or conference room. It was the most fun training I’d ever developed and the results were remarkable with participants remembering and using what they’d learned months after they attended.

It as a great vehicle for participants to learn essential skills from time management to communication, and collaboration to listening. Unfortunately, I was ramping up right when COVID came on the scene. Within a week, my business model was irrelevant. Businesses were going into lock down and the idea of putting employees in a room together without social distancing was unthinkable. Almost overnight my fledgling business was on the verge of demise.

Since COVID was quickly becoming a long-term concern, I knew I had to make a change if I was going to keep my business going. I decided to abandon the escape room training model and instead, develop virtual training that allowed employees to learn from wherever they were. At a time when companies weren’t sure how to manage return to office, training that could be done virtually was a good solution. I expanded my content to include all the previous topics and many new ones in an effort to capture as many clients as possible.

That brings me to my second failure. I’m a people person so meeting new people and maintaining relationships comes easy to me. Everyone says that should make me good at sales. Well, it didn’t. I had no trouble making contacts and opening up conversations about my services and the benefits to my potential clients, but when it came down to talking money, I got nervous.

In those early days, I didn’t know my own worth and because of that, couldn’t speak to pricing with confidence. Instead of closing contracts in one conversation, it would take me three or more. Rather than being able to adjust offerings and pricing on the fly, I would need to regroup and go back with a new package and price for services. It was exhausting and ultimately had me leaving money on the table while creating a lot of extra stress.

I started to worry that business ownership wasn’t for me but I just wasn’t ready to give up. Afterall, I’d navigated COVID by changing up my offerings and switched from escape room learning to virtual delivery for various topics including leadership and customer service training. I had a small but loyal client base and I really wanted to believe that I was only steps away from figuring out the key element that would take me from surviving to successful.

And then, after a couple years of struggling against my own nature, I realized that I could be hugely successful if I changed my business model. What if I stopped trying to be all things to all people and just focused on my greatest passion, developing emerging leaders? That would eliminate all the packaging and repackaging of services which took up a lot of time and created a lot of anxiety. What if I put my pricing right on my website so I didn’t have to mix and match calculations on the fly? I would probably be able to close more deals more quickly and eliminate all of the anxiety around money.

So that’s what I did. I built a program for emerging leaders and outlined it on my website. And unlike other training companies, I posted my pricing right there for everyone to see. As soon as I made the shift, a giant weight was lifted and I was freed up to do what I’m great at, telling potential clients about my services. It’s amazing the impact this has had on my outlook and how it’s given me the confidence to sell now that price is essentially off the table (or, on the website as it were). I have better discussions with potential clients and close more contracts, most within one call, than I ever could have imagined.

The truth is, deep down I had always wanted to be my own boss. I grew up thinking that I’d take over my parent’s business so when it closed, I was devastated. I somehow took that experience and generalized it, deciding that I couldn’t run my own business. I had so much fear about business ownership that it held me back from dreaming big. That’s the biggest failure I had to overcome. I’d convinced myself that working for someone else, collecting titles, was the safer route.

Thankfully, I married a man who dreams big enough for both of us and eventually, with his support, and his constant push to help me see things differently, I decided to put fear aside and focus on my own happiness and fulfillment. Because I did, and because of my failures, I now have a business I’m proud of, that makes a difference in the lives of employees and in their abilities to grow their careers. I get to do what I love every single day.

Peter Ord

I’ll focus on three major difficulties that I have faced during my journey as the CEO of GuideCX and those are:

1. Creating a new software category (Client Onboarding)

Those who have successfully created new software categories know that a great deal of patience and intuition is required to be successful. Because your product is so new and innovative, you don’t have prospects seeking you out yet. We’ve had to build a strong outbound selling motion to overcome this.

2. Staying no.1 in our new category

It’s one thing to create a category, but it’s another thing to lead it. We are grateful that competitors have popped up. They have helped us feel validated, spread awareness for the problem that GuideCX solves for, and migrate our sales motion into a competitive sales process versus an education-based sales process. These are all things that are needed in order to help our company and category grow.

3. Grow our team

I’m a big believer that the first 50 employees define the long term trajectory of your culture and brand. I’m thankful we were patient in the early days by not just hiring people that would be great to “work with” but holding out for people that are great to “be with” and “work with” as well.

Shaun Connell

I built a small media company in 2014 that went from 0-to-1m per month in one year. I was only 25-years-old, so it was quite a ride. My greatest challenge, hands down, was learning how to build a reliable staff fast enough to keep up with growth.

Up until that point, I’d never hired more than one freelance writer at a time, and suddenly I needed writers, editors, a CTO, COO, etc.

I learned to integrate a simple strategy that worked very well for my situation: hire fast, fire fast. It was a brutal year, but one I’ll remember forever.

I sold that business a year later. I also still build small passion projects for fun, especially for investors. But I’m not looking to recreate anything on that scale.

Brianna Socci

As a startup founder, you face a lot of challenges during your journey. One of the things I’ve had to learn along the way is being able to bounce back and grow from the failures. Entrepreneurship is a long, bumpy road, and you can’t let the hard times dictate your attitude to advance. Move quickly, fail fast, learn from the experience and do it better the next time.

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The post 53 Stories of Successful Entrepreneurs From USA that Will Inspire You on Your Journey first appeared on Tekrati and is written by Jed Morley

Various Entrepreneurs From Around The World Tell Stories Behind Their Success & Accomplishments

Jerome Knyszewski — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 21:37:09 +0000

Various Entrepreneurs From Around The World Tell Stories Behind Their Success & Accomplishments

Various Entrepreneurs From Around The World Tell Stories Behind Their Success & Accomplishments

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Success is a process, not an event. To do any great task, you must first begin from somewhere. This could be the start of a new idea, a new road, a new approach, or a new business. In our everyday life, we frequently end up focusing on achieving what others consider to be a success rather than returning to our original goal or purpose. In this interview series, we spoke with a variety of entrepreneurs and leaders from around the world to learn how some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and leaders faced adversity and succeeded.

“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” Arthur Ashe

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.

The question we asked:

Can you tell us the difficulties that you faced on your journey to becoming an entrepreneur/CEO?

Sweet Ha

First is the income threshold. Many bosses are the backbone of the company before starting a business. They are highly appreciated by the boss and are naturally worth a lot. However, due to various reasons in the early stage of the business, after a year of hard work, the income obtained is far less than that of part-time jobs. “This vast income gap is a cruel reality that every early-stage entrepreneur must face and accept.

Second, family ties. The impact of the decline in income will gradually spread to the family. In addition, entrepreneurs work day and night without taking into account the “internal affairs” of the family. At this time, the family’s resistance tends to increase day by day. At this time, entrepreneurs need to withstand the pressure and work hard. Disagree, keep going.

Third, lead the hurdle. There is an essential difference between management and leadership. Entrepreneurs must have specific management skills and strong leadership skills to lead the team in the right direction, continuously create benefits for the company, and benefit team members. More importantly, entrepreneurs can make mistakes in management, but they must not make leadership mistakes; otherwise, the company may encounter danger.

Fourth is the human bond. In the early stage of starting a business, entrepreneurs will encounter setbacks and blow in various aspects, especially criticisms from others.

Valentine Okoronkwo

Family
One big difficulty I faced on my journey to become an entrepreneur was pressure from my family to stick to a 9-5 job and not venture into entrepreneurship.

My family never wanted me to become an entrepreneur. They got really depressed and disappointed when I quit my job. This got to me as well. It affected my productivity and also affected my belief in myself.

I noticed it was getting to me, so I had to avoid communication with them for a while to focus on making my business work. I made sure I put in work every day to accomplish my goals to my dream a reality.

Till today, though I earn 10x what I earned in my last job, my parents still encourage me to get a job and still send me job opportunities and offers. However, I am happy they have gotten the fact that this is what I want to do.

But to be honest, it’s just my mother that is happy with the path I chose to take. My father is still disappointed with me because I disobeyed him and went against all the plans he had made for me. So this is a difficulty I still struggle with today.

The thing I have learned from this is that: against all adversity or motivation you have, just to do something every day, no matter how small, that can take you closer to your goals. The action you put in every day will bring results, and those little results or wins will help you believe that you can actualize your dreams, which will also motivate you to put in more work.

Action => Inspiration => Motivation

Mapesho Mukanga

Running a platform that is centered on creating content which inspires people to improve their lives is always difficult because each person is going through something different but the best way to stay original and authentic is to use your own experience as a map to serve as inspiration for others.

Putting yourself out their in front of others is always going to be challenging but when you think about the lives you get to impact, it becomes much easier for any individual to feel the freedom to speak freely.

Nate Tsang

The biggest challenge in running your own business is in hiring. You first have the immense difficulty of finding the right person for your specific job.

You’ll find many great marketers out there, for example, but are they informed and experienced enough to market your business in your niche to your specific buyer personas?

I recommend working with a hiring expert who knows your field. It’s an expense, but it also saves you a great deal of time in sourcing candidates. And they can teach you enough about the process to where you can run it more independently in the future. But building those initial skills takes time and expertise.

From there, you also have to give your new hires the right responsibilities. A lot of entrepreneurs I know (myself included, admittedly) have trouble with delegation at first.

They’re accustomed to doing everything themselves and only want to delegate the tasks they have little to no experience in. Recognizing that you’re not the best person for this task—at least in the long-term—takes some self-reflection and involves making tough decisions. But that’s what being a business leader is all about, and if you trust your talent they tend to thrive more than they fail.

Alex Bryce

When I reflect on my journey, I believe the biggest challenge has been making the right decisions. As a business owner, you will be responsible for making all of your company’s major and minor decisions on your own.

The burden of making decisions is real and unavoidable. One of the common challenges I believe every entrepreneur faces are making decisions on their own while being conscious that making the wrong decision can result in losses. However, I believe that experience improves your ability to make important decisions.

Another obstacle for me, I believe, was pivoting my business during the pandemic. But it taught me one important lesson: everything works out in the end.

Aquif Shaikh

The difficulty I had to face while launching my own business was obtaining funds, securing finance is one of the most difficult tasks for new entrepreneurs. Raising funds and obtaining loans was a difficult undertaking for me.

Even the most experienced entrepreneur will have difficulty obtaining financing at first because many capitalists are unwilling to participate in new enterprises.

However, this is only a temporary setback because, if the business idea is innovative, fresh, and compelling, getting an investor to provide startup funding is not a difficult undertaking. As a result, as an entrepreneur, I had a well-thought-out strategy and business model to present to investors and banks to persuade them that their money was being invested wisely.

Meera Watts

Our lives were turned upside-down by the pandemic. We changed the way we used to approach challenging situations in the past.

We had to use a variety of methods to teach our students as teachers. We concentrated on offering them online yoga courses. We emphasized tutorials, live sessions, and even fun activities to encourage students to practice yoga at home.

I’m quite pleased with how things are going right now because my learners are enjoying their classes and learning something new every day.

Baidhurya Mani

I am Baidhurya Mani, and one of the greatest challenges I have faced towards becoming the CEO of my own company was whether or not I should pursue this lifelong dream.

My biggest enemy was no other than myself. I spent a lot of sleepless nights riddled with anxiety during the week before launching my company. You see, my business is far from the usual, and it will either be a hit or a miss. I was so full of self-doubt, but I am incredibly grateful for all the support I got from my family, friends, and even my previous boss.

I believe in the theory that to overcome this, you have to be careful with the stories you tell yourself. You should stop the self-loathing and start telling yourself that everything will be fine even if you take a giant leap of faith.

One thing I would always tell myself every time things don’t go as planned is that “I stumble, and I rise.” It’s a tremendous mindful practice to keep you going. You have to repeat this to yourself even in the minor errors or mishaps that occur throughout your day so that it doesn’t snowball into heated anger and frustration, which will not help you at all.

Through this, I earned the confidence, and now, I am in my 6th year of running my own company. A dream I never thought would come true.

Smita Das Jain

After 14+ years in leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies, last year I decided to pivot my career to transform my passion of mentoring people to become the best version of themselves into a professional pursuit for coaching, and founded the ‘Empower Yourself’ Coaching Program-a customised set of personal clarity and executive performance enhancement coaching interventions.

The first challenge was the resistance that I encountered from my well-wishers who dissuaded me from leaving a stable job for an uncertain future. It took a lot of willpower, and not insignificant time, to listen to my inner voice and move ahead on the path that my heart was set on.

Then opening my business while simultaneously undertaking three certification programs as opposed to the usual norm of starting a business after completing your certifications was a leap of faith that entailed straddling different time zones and plenty of workload. My time management skills held me in good stead here.

Then came the challenge of a successful Go-to-Market. Given my background, Executives and leaders were more willing to hire me as one of their team than entrust me the task of coaching them or their employees. I decided to focus on Life Coaching to start with and put Executive Coaching on the backburner.

Having a structured yet productive day is a constant challenge for an entrepreneur who is her own boss and works her own hours. So far, I have managed it well by ensuring that I open my laptop at the same time every morning as when I worked for someone else (even though the work hours stretch much longer sometimes), and planning my key priorities for each day of the week, a week in advance.

Discipline, Patience and Consistency has been my mantra to overcome any challenges that I encountered in my business. With less than a year and close to 150 coaching hours, webinars, and live learning sessions, Empower Yourself has positively impacted the lives of many working professionals ranging from entry-level to the topmost hierarchy, I can say that this mantra has worked for me.

I enjoy doing what I do, have never been happier and earn more than what I used to do in my corporate role. Success is not called success unless it entails overcoming challenges.

Adam Jacobs

First, entrepreneurship could be a journey — but often times, it’s a rollercoaster. A journey indicates that there is an end, but in entrepreneurship, that’s not the case. There are highs, lows, ups, downs, twists, turns and then the process repeats itself.

There are so many obstacles you have to overcome, such as the bravery to go ahead and pursue your goals, especially when people tell you that you don’t necessarily have what it takes or that you won’t succeed. The first obstacle is to have a reasonably good idea, and many struggles with this.

Saying you are going to create the next Netflix with no money, no concrete idea on how to make it happen, and without a team to back you up.. this is no surprise, but man, that’s not happening.

The second most pressing obstacle I’ve had is to secure funding or capital. Followed by finding a team: Either in the form of partners, staff or both. Once you’ve got some start-up cash, a plan on how you are going to tackle it, and then a team.

Now take this: People will always be your biggest obstacle – your customers, your staff, your stakeholders. You will have to balance yourself with your staff, staff will have conflicts with you, with each other and even with your customers.

Difficult customers can drain your energy and your cash, and learning to manage them quickly and well will be one of the biggest obstacles that you will have to tackle and need to revisit regularly.

Going back to entrepreneurship being a journey and a rollercoaster — I am sure of one thing: obstacles, big or small, are just bumps on the road to goals – be resilient, be persistent. Know when to zig, know when to zag, when obstacles come up, run through them, over them, and know when to avoid them altogether. Obstacles could be big, they could be small, but just believe that you’re on a monster truck to conquer them all.

Craig Schulze

My name is Craig Schulze and I have been in business and an entrepreneur for over 20 years.

In short I left home at 15, been financially independent since 17, fired my boss at 21 to follow my dreams and passion.

Started a fitness club which led to be 5 and 22 franchises. I have built business online, been in coaching and consulting throughout the last decade.

I am an investor. Two of my biggest challenges. One was the lessons learned throughout the global financial crisis.

The second was my wife and I losing our first son stillborn which inspired me to build a brand around peoples “One Shot” at life.

I have travelled the world and been to over 120 different cities and gains huge perspective from that experience.

Ashley Bellino

As an advocate for mindful modern living, I launched home decor and styling brand, Stoned Crystals, in an attempt to re-position and redefine the role of crystals in modern society with a focus on ethically sourced a-grade crystals that are used as functional pieces of art. I believe we sit on the knife’s edge of spirituality and design offering decor, furniture and jewellery made from crystal.

Our physical retail store endured 262 days of closure during the pandemic in one of the worlds most locked down cities, Melbourne. Despite this, we were able to increase sales thanks to our virtual live-sales model. To say the retail landscape has changed in the last few years is an understatement.

The global pandemic in particular forced businesses to diversify their business model. Thankfully, we were ahead of the curve in establishing a very successful virtual live sales model. Whether our bricks & mortar location is open or not, we’ve been able to maintain and actually increase our sales through online shopping. And, with social media impacting the way consumers interact with brands, we were able to take advantage of this evolution and create the next generation in e-commerce.

Stoned Crystals further leveraged the virtual live shopping on social media by developing an App that allows for an uninterrupted shopping experience for the customer, while giving control back to the brand. The result is a less static and more immersive experience that allows for a more authentic and personalised shopping experience.

The concept of selling over live video was established with my partner, Jeremy LeBard, in 2017. We have since taken those learning and tuned them into their own Omnichannel App and plan to make this available to like-minded brands. We essentially redefined the bricks & mortar store through an innovative live sales model that turns our space into a virtual showroom.

Our customers can tune in from anywhere in the world and receive VIP service from our Crystal Concierge team who offer styling advice as well as mindfulness and intention setting tips. In a declining physical retail world we were able to transform the intrinsic value of a physical space into the online world. Our live sale business model alongside a message of mindfulness and hope has generated great interest and found itself a very pertinent strategy that saw us continue to take flights, even in the face of adversity during a global pandemic.

Bree Stedman

The biggest obstacle I faced in my journey towards being an entrepreneur was my own internal insecurities – particularly around feeling like a fake and a fraud. That devil on my shoulder consistently told me I wasn’t good enough, despite my accomplishments.

The second part of this difficulty was finding someone who could help me to irradicate them without having to explore the WHY….. as an ambitious entrepreneur, I already knew the value of Personal Development and growth, however didn’t ‘have time’ to spend hours on hours exploring all of the possible reasons why I felt like I did. And I didn’t want to have to ‘keep working’ on myself. I just wanted a resolution that worked with who I was as a woman, that could get to the root of these insecurities, so I could move forward.

Acknowledging and working on these saboteurs have helped me to confidently build a business while authentically being myself to the point where I now facilitate the training of others in an International company.

J.D. Drayton

After running a locally based branding agency in Melbourne, Australia, I too, was forced to adapt during the pandemic in early 2020.

90% of my clients cancelled their contracts because suddenly we were all stuck in lockdowns (in the city that ended up spending the most days in lockdown, 260 days within 18-months).

I couldn’t survive during the lockdown, so I closed my business. Overnight, I lost all my income! Days later, I launched my coaching and online education business while also launching a new online-based branding agency to serve online-based female CEOs.

The online world was thriving during the pandemic, but I had no idea what I was doing at first. Traditional marketing was not the same as online marketing. Yes, it was similar in some ways, but it was different. It pushed me to think outside the square, but it was not easy, after 20 years doing traditional marketing and seeing clients in-person.

I invested all my savings into online courses and business coaches. Slowly, I started to work it out and to transition online. Transitioning was difficult, as I attempted to translate everything that I had known to the online space.

I was either going to swim or sink, and for a long time, I was sinking fast! I felt hopeless. Defeated. And very lonely, now working from home, without that in-person interaction with clients.

I missed the human-to-human connections, but eventually, I choose to swim as a tiny fish among some big sharks. I became obsessed with self development and online learning and turned to the big names such as Amy Porterfield, James Wedmore, Lewis Howes, Jenna Kutcher, Jasmine Star and Rachel Pedersen.

Marty Spargo

With the changing marker conditions that involves increase in competition within several industries, our yearly sales massively declined in comparison to the past years. It was indeed a tough time for the business and almost left us bankrupt.

But we didn’t allow this setback to stop us, we formulated a strategy that could help us get our numbers back up again and with everything we’ve got, we rose up to most of the competition and even led the market for some time.

Toby Schulz

As a young entrepreneur, co-founding a house cleaning business with my brother when I was 21 and he was 26, the biggest challenge I faced was convincing others around me of the goal I was working towards.

Explaining to family and friends that I had to say no to a lot of plans was not easy or readily accepted. I had to make many sacrifices on the personal front to start a successful business.

When you rely on self-motivation to get an entire business off the ground, if you don’t make the time to do something, it won’t happen.

It was a learning curve to figure out where to spend my time, and how to handle things that I’m not the best at, yet need to be done.

Bronwen Sciortino

I am an International Author & Simplicity Expert.

Having experienced mental health issues after suffering from burnout, and a complete breakdown as a result, I wrote my first book during my recovery which received international critical acclaim and 5-star awards.

During my recovery, I learned a lot about the role that stress and exhaustion play in our lives, and the way that we accept them as a normal way of living. As I pieced my life back together, I made the choice to find the simplest steps for me to move forwards in a way that supported both myself and those with whom I was working.

With burnout on the rise all around the world, this saw me create a global business teaching people there’s a very different way to live so they can tailor-make the life that allows them to lead happy, rewarding AND successful lives.

From burnout to global business happened within 3 years.

There’s nothing normal about being constantly stressed and exhausted AND there are simple and easy ways for people to do things a little bit differently. Everyone deserves the opportunity to create their own life, in the way that is absolutely perfect for them.

Because I live my life governed by simplicity principles I have not been affected by the chaos being experienced around the world and I have been able to easily adapt and quickly move forward in a different way.

Women, in particular, are carrying the load and research conducted pre-COVID showed that they were suffering from burnout more than men. COVID has only exacerbated these statistics.

All three of my books provide individuals with tools and activities that they can apply to their own lives, so they can find their own answers and move forwards on the pathway that is right for them.

I recently launched an online platform to assist busy, professional women to reduce stress and beat burnout. I launched this program (and continue to run it) at a 96% discount so that as many women as possible can access it in these tough times. I’m currently building mini-programs around self-care, stress and energy management so that people can access the information they need to move forwards in bite-sized pieces.

I’m also currently building new online mini-programs that help people to tackle their stress and improve their health and wellbeing in a bite-sized way.

I work with people globally through my books, corporate programs, leadership development programs, conference platforms, retreats , professional mentoring and in the online environment. I share practical and easily implemented steps and inspire individuals to simplify their lives.

I also guest blog regularly for membership platforms around the globe, have been featured on the TODAY Show, Ticker TV, James Miller Lifeology Show and The Author Show and contribute regularly to major online publications such as HuffPost and Thrive Global (Arianna Huffington’s new platform).

I am also frequently asked to be interviewed through global radio, podcasts, vlogs, YouTube, Facebook Live, print media and blogs.

Elley Hudson

The first difficulty I faced on my journey to becoming an entrepreneur occurred when I was 17. I had dreams of breaking into the real estate industry, but I was turned away for being too young. However, I was determined to prove myself, so I worked as a property management assistant for the next 2 years. My persistence paid off and I eventually landed a career as a real estate sales agent.

Unfortunately, that’s when I faced my next challenge, as I quickly discovered the position had a quick turnaround of relationships. As someone who loves to maintain close connections, I was left feeling dejected and depressed. This, and the ridiculous pressure caused by the GFC, led to me leaving my position. Instead, I returned to my roots and spearheaded the company’s property management division.

Soon after, a new difficulty arose with my superannuation. Long story short, I left the company, made my way to Townsville and became the co-owner of a local agency. However, their staff were poorly trained, and their owners were losing money. The worst part was that despite my position, I was helpless to change things. At this point, I started to believe the difficulties would get the best of me and I was ready to give up.

Thankfully, I remained strong and told myself that if I’m having an issue, I should do something about it. All I wanted was a job that allowed me to create great relationships and work in an environment with well-trained staff. I figured the best way to do that wasn’t to rely on finding the right agency but to become an entrepreneur and create it myself. After all, only you can make your dreams come true.

Ellie Pietsch

With a marriage imploding, an 18 month old in and out of daycare – leaving a ‘safe’ job halfway through a global pandemic, to join a team of business owners whose model involved face-to-face delivery seemed like a stupid decision on paper.

But deep down, I knew it was the right time for me to step out of the shadows and into my own light. Pivoting an entire delivery model dependent on building meaningful and trusting relationships into a virtual space virtually overnight seemed crazy, but with a deep commitment to our purpose – helping leaders and teams achieve high performance – and a conviction to live our trademark as colleagues – go the extra yard- , we achieved the unthinkable.

Our business grew 25% during the pandemic, recruiting new team members and building our expertise. And I became the person I always wanted to be. A people-focused, outcome driven business leader who helps leaders and teams improve their performance.

Connor Ondriska

Finding product-market fit was the largest challenge I had. Prior to launching SpanishVIP, I dabbled in some different business models that worked but did not easily scale with my skillset.

This journey, which is quite normal for most entrepreneurs, entailed significant testing and analysis to determine where to focus my energy.

It’s also incredibly important to be a great leader. If you want to do something truly innovative, you will need many smart people to build towards that goal. Understanding how to attract and work with a talented team was something that I struggled with. Studying leadership has and will continue to be of immense value.

Victor Fredung

AI and ML were relatively new concepts when I got into the industry ten years ago and here I am today, CEO of Shufti Pro, an award-winning AI-driven company that seeks innovation and has 5 international offices.

The way to becoming a CEO of a company is absolutely not easy. It may look like a piece of cake from the outside but when you really get into this game, you realize that there is no such thing as “time-limit,” you have to work day in and out to turn your passion into reality. The same happened to me.

Talking about the difficulties, I had my fair share of challenges along the way. The biggest challenge that came my way when I started out was to make my business flourish between the big giants that were already associated with the industry. To make your space in an already packed room is difficult of course, but I believed in resilience and trusted my team that soon we will be giving them competition, and boom, here we are. A company serving in 230+ countries and territories.

Another challenge that I encountered was my belief in the thinking that I can get everything done single-handedly. I was of the view that only a few teammates would suffice for my company. However, this is not the case. One cannot be the expert on everything and you do need a team of highly skilled people in every department to ensure higher levels of productivity. I am glad that I understood it on time and saved my company from becoming a victim of this thought.

In the end, I would like to say that it’s like to be living in a fool’s paradise if you think that you are headed on a journey of becoming a CEO and would not encounter any challenge. Or you have a smooth path looking your way. No, it does not happen in real life. Challenges are a part of every entrepreneur’s journey. CEO’s/entreprenuers must take these challenges as a stepping stone and motivate themselves to keep doing more and better

Paul Peros

I spent over 10 years in management consulting being part of GEA (a “pre-McKinseyan”) strategy boutique in Milano, mainly working on new product and brand development and engaging with global leaders in numerous consumer product categories.

This is where I realised that the majority of the business leaders and models are working in the same way, bringing the same old solution to a problem. I believe this was one of the biggest challenges I faced at the beginning as well – to develop critical thinking skills in order to bring a true and meaningful innovation, one that will address the real concerns of consumers.

Many years of experience has taught me that you need to be adaptive, resilient, always evolving, and going with your instinct, especially during the COVID-19 time. A true entrepreneur should have the courage to see things as they are, the vision to organise resources beyond the way things were done before, and solidarity to trust in one’s and our colleagues’ abilities to tackle challenges.

This critical thinking allowed me to be a true disrupter as a CEO in the beauty tech world. I have been pushing the industry and growing brands from start-ups to companies with more than $1Bilion annual revenue. I am now at the helm of RÉDUIT and our innovative thinking is pushing the high-tech beauty industry further to find the most advanced solutions to skincare needs.

We have merged the laws of physics with beauty to create the world’s only smart and customizable skincare innovation – BOOST. This device and its accompanying app, customize your favorite skincare products, ensuring your skin receives the actives it needs most and provides four times more absorption than fingers alone, to give five times better results.

We launched via Kickstarter and in less than one day secured more than $60,000 in pledges, which is a true testament to how innovative and desirable our solutions are.

Indiana Gregg

Indiana Gregg is the founder and CEO of WeDo, a new app that simplifies work for small business owners, gig workers and freelancers. In Indy’s app, users can connect, make and receive payment and network within their community. Indy created the app during the pandemic and the Great Recession.

You can learn more about the app by going to www.getwedo.today. Here’s what Indy has to say about some of the difficulties she faced on her journey to becoming an entrepreneur / CEO.

“Entrepreneurship isn’t ever easy. It takes grit and belief. When I first started out, probably the biggest challenge was being a woman in tech. It was very difficult. You’d be the only woman in the room talking about a build, and the guys would act like you should be out getting them some coffee. Even now, as the CEO of a fintech, I’m told that I won’t be needed on a tech call even if I’m the only technical person in the conference call.

The second most difficult thing was raising capital on those early rounds. Again, a lot of investors are still skeptical about investing in a female led tech company. Only 2% of VC investment goes to female led companies and even with an outstanding team, a track record of success and innovative scalable fintech, it can still be difficult.

So, from an emotional point of view, that can be very frustrating. I’ve learned that persistence wins over the years and that if you want to make it happen, you will find a way to get through those barriers. Another difficulty was being too early to market, learning that timing is everything and understanding that sometimes you have to keep working on something until the market is ready and the time is right and that the myth of ‘fail fast’ doesn’t always apply.

I think at the beginning, new founders and entrepreneurs are learning as they go, so over time with years of practice in building companies, you learn to be intuitive to the point where you know what your business needs next. This doesn’t always come naturally, so I had to go through a few failures before I had my “overnight success”.

Some people think there’s luck involved in it, I’m telling you, you make your own luck. Overall, I wouldn’t trade my failures for anything. Knowing that you put something out there and learned from your mistakes always leads you to your next success. In leadership, I’ve learned to gather the best people on the planet who align with the mission of the company. That wasn’t always the case with my first couple startups.

You live, you learn. I have a funnel of ideas and a quality filter now that I didn’t have when I started out, so I only create things that I believe will leave the world a better place and help millions of people.

Rafał Młodzki

It was a challenge to stay ahead of the crowd. My brothers and I decided to start a business during our studies. I broke away from the typical way of studying – corporate job – next career ladder. Several people discouraged me and told me it wouldn’t work.

They said we have no experience so that we won’t succeed. It caused me to doubt my ideas, and I was on the verge of resigning.

However, thanks to the support of my friends and family, I was able to survive that social pressure. The experience taught me resilience. Now I trust myself and stand by my decisions. I discuss critiques with people I trust and do not worry about others’ opinions.

Tomek Młodzki

My journey to becoming an entrepreneur required one big sacrifice. In my twenties, I was studying law. You can imagine that this is not a simple field of study and consumed most of my time. Simultaneously, I wanted to pursue my passion – my first online product, Fiszkoteka.

The idea was simple – my website offered customizable flashcards to learn English and other languages for free. Together with my brothers, I used flashcards to study when we were kids, so I transformed them into the online world!

Fiszkoteka was getting better and better, and I realized I would have to sacrifice something – a secure, respected job as a lawyer or what I really love doing. I don’t believe in the efficiency of partial engagement. You do or do not.

Fiszkoteka’s small successes and listening to the voice of my heart made me choose to abandon the law. At first, I felt guilty, but then I realized that it was the right decision with time.

Johannes Larsson

One of the biggest difficulties in my career was when I had to start over from scratch after months of working hard on my first business. I ran several websites that relied on ads to generate revenue, and it took half a year of hard work and not getting paid to finally make a consistent albeit modest amount of income.

I was happy that my work was finally starting to pay off, but things quickly derailed when my advertising account got banned for reasons I still don’t know. Not only did this prevent me from accessing my earnings; it also got my websites blacklisted.

Fortunately, the skills and experience I had already gained let me start over and work up to the same income in a relatively short time frame. I also decided to change my business model to something more stable to avoid the possibility of getting banned again.

The main thing that got me through this hurdle was the knowledge that I had already succeeded before. I knew that if I worked hard and used what I learned to my advantage, I could build something better that would last for the long term. Today, I’m happy to say that I was right.

Christiaan Huynen

Proactive management. Even before a problem arises, I acknowledge the threat and attend to it immediately. Prevention is certainly better than fixing a wide-scale damage in the future.

As a leader, I stay on top of the game through assessing possible difficulties that may be perilous to the business. For example, if a trend on tech is booming, I analyze its connection or relevance to my company. The visionary in me seizes that opportunity to either advance or protect my business from its effects.

Jake Smith

The biggest challenge I faced in establishing Absolute Reg was self-doubt amid uncertainty. As a new entrepreneur, I was anxious to make business decisions outside my comfort zone. However, to be a CEO, I need to conquer the fear of apprehension and teach myself when to take a risk.

Success requires a high level of critical thinking skills. Most often, this aspect is what most business-minded people fail to develop. The ability to decipher calculated risks from foolish ones makes an excellent CEO. Only those who possess such immense skill to discern situations worth risking make it to the optimum peak of their careers.

On my journey to becoming a CEO, I trained to be resourceful and mindful with all my decisions as I am my company’s brain. My command is powerful since I have the final say in every transaction we make. One wrong judgment about when to take risks can put my business at stake.

Lucky enough, I have persevered and treated every downfall as a lesson to progress. I have defeated my fear of the unknown and become the successful person I am today.

Nanditha Vijayaraghavan

The biggest challenge I’ve faced in my executive journey so far has been more internal than external.

I’ve had to frequently challenge myself to step out of my comfort zone, as often as I could, dipping my toes into roles that weren’t fully within my job description, and essentially working the role/position ahead of me.

David Bowen

The main difficulty I faced, is feeling like I had to do everything. There is a lot of competition out there, and often, it feels as though you have to be on top of every single opportunity in order to succeed. Especially because everything is so fast-paced nowadays, and people expect your business to cater to absolutely everything.

However, I learned that it’s best to prioritize and focus your efforts on a smaller niche, and to then build a strong management team to help you keep everything on track! That’s certainly how I ended up developing my own business, and not only did it make things easier, it built a more reliable target audience too.

Daniel Foley

The most difficult thing I found managing was maintaining a healthy work-life balance:

When I launched my business, I could not afford to take breaks. Running a business added to the burden of achieving a work-life balance. Unfortunately, all entrepreneurs are subjected to this strain.

This is because when you started working on your own business, you were only busy during office hours, but once you started working on your own business, there was no clock to regulate.

You are always working without regard for the time of day, and family time is lost, but in order to achieve something, you must make many sacrifices, and things are now in a better place.

James Dyble

Time is frequently one of the most difficult challenges I had to overcome when ascending the echelons. There is frequently the perception that there is not enough time to perform the necessary activities for growth, and this was often the case for me.

As a result, delegation was one of the most critical skills I developed early in my career. Delegation allows for more time to work on the most important tasks and allows for more to be accomplished in the short and long term.

Anthony Mixides

When I first started my business, I experienced a variety of problems. Different difficulties and possibilities need different answers as a firm expands, and what succeeded a year ago may no longer be the ideal approach.

All too frequently, avoidable errors convert what could be a fantastic company into a flop. If your organization is to keep expanding and thriving, you must recognize and overcome the usual problems connected with expansion.

Importantly, you must guarantee that the actions you do today do not cause new problems in the future. Effective leadership will assist you in making the most of the opportunities available to you, resulting in long-term progress.

I believe, confronts a variety of hazards, including insolvency, financial risk, competitive risk, environmental risk, reputational risk, and economic risk. So, in response to the query, I worked on team building to avoid such a danger because a team is the pillar of any company, and I understand that I am not the best to face any difficulty.

We needed experts in specific fields such as financial or demand planning, and I don’t believe an entrepreneur can do everything or be the best in every field, so I worked on team building as a strategy to avoid business difficulties.

Gilles Bertaux

When Livestorm was launched back in 2016, we had a few challenges to face: our brand awareness was non-existent, many large competitors were already present in the market and our SEO traffic was weak as we had just launched the website.

We built an early website targeting specific keywords and created a lot of content around our chosen topic. But when it came to prospects further down the buying process, we didn’t have any content to attract them to our website. In January 2018, we came up with the idea to create comparison pages on our website to address that problem.

Our objective was to present Livestorm as an alternative to our main competitors, in a tone that was as neutral as possible.

This project was a success: the comparison pages generated 6% of Livestorm’s organic traffic and they generated links from over 130 referring domains.

Also, we realized that there were quite a few people asking for advice on the Quora platform on how to organise webinars. I took the time to give very detailed answers, which brought credibility to my profile and made Livestorm known by providing answers to some people’s challenges or needs. In addition, these answers were upvoted and he had more visibility on the platform.

However, after a while, a lot of people started to adopt this technique/hack and it was not really useful anymore. Also, Quora is not used much anymore, but it was something that worked quite well in the beginning of Livestorm to give credibility/visibility, and it was a free technique.

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The post Various Entrepreneurs From Around The World Tell Stories Behind Their Success & Accomplishments first appeared on Tekrati and is written by Jerome Knyszewski

Entrepreneurs Discuss the Top Unexpected Business Challenges They Have Faced

Jed Morley — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 10:43:24 +0000

Entrepreneurs Discuss the Top Unexpected Business Challenges They Have Faced

Entrepreneurs Discuss the Top Unexpected Business Challenges They Have Faced

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

How 20 entrepreneurs in the United States Adapted To Changing Market Conditions During The Pandemic

Jed Morley — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 08:53:59 +0000

How 20 entrepreneurs in the United States Adapted To Changing Market Conditions During The Pandemic

How 20 entrepreneurs in the United States Adapted To Changing Market Conditions During The Pandemic

The Covid-19 outbreak wreaked havoc on the commercial sector, forcing several enterprises to close or file for bankruptcy. Thankfully, some people made it out alive and even stronger. Many business owners quickly adapted to the pandemic situation by converting to a digital office. Some pivot only to improve the corporate culture and flexible working paradigm, while others offer any new product line.

In this series of interviews, we spoke with 20 business owners and leaders in the United States to see how the epidemic prompted them to pivot and adapt to new market conditions.

INTERVIEW HOST

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

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?

Paul Moody

We amplified our content strategy to educate customers about the nuances and different aspects of moving. This included helpful tips, analysis, and informative guides. It’s fair to say that we pivoted in this direction to serve our audience better. We had to adapt because the last two years have been pretty tough for us.

As a company that reviews moving companies across the country, we noticed reduced traction because people were less interested in moving. In response to this, we decided to create better content in a bid to keep the audience engaged and fill them with a sense that we care for their needs.

Logan Mallory

The biggest challenge we faced was ensuring that we retained employees during times of change and uncertainty.

The way that we did this was by doubling down on the employee experience and employee engagement. With the Great Resignation looming, ensuring employees are happy and engaged is the secret to helping a business thrive by keeping turnover rates low and morale high.

A company’s performance overall can be tied back to one factor – and that’s employee engagement, for better or for worse. Increased employee engagement leads to happier employees, which in turn leads to a better customer experience, which means that we have happier customers as well, and happy customers remain loyal and become long-term clients.

Mark Pierce

The biggest challenge we faced was constantly evolving market conditions. We pivoted to adapt to the changing market conditions by re-focusing our efforts on services geared towards entrepreneurs.

We’ve seen an increase in entrepreneurship driven by the Great Resignation, so we’re more actively promoting our business formation services, and added a more robust offering geared towards entrepreneurs.

Tom Schaefer

I would say the greatest unexpected challenge is exactly that: dealing with the unexpected. In business, you can very easily fall into a mode of doing business as usual, where you expect the jobs and orders to come in just as they always have.

You get comfortable to the point that you can’t imagine the work not being there. It seems like a safe assumption until something like COVID comes along to disrupt that. The warning to new entrepreneurs would be to avoid being one-dimensional. Be able to work in multiple business sectors and keep a good variety of companies or products that you do business with.

If a certain area or sector has a lull or even completely disappears, have a contingency plan where you can swing your efforts into other areas.

Thomas Samuels

As a full-service trade show and exhibition company, we provide exhibit rentals and management services to a large number of clients all over the country. When the pandemic began, we had to quickly adapt to protect our clients, their customers, and their livelihoods by offering high-quality personal protective equipment (PPE) for our display booths and demo stations.

With venues having to adjust their events and safety precautions—sometimes without much notice—it was also important for us to ensure fast turnaround times for these new products in small and large quantities alike. We began to offer protective additions such as sanitizing stations, sneeze guards, and clear barriers, all of which help to keep our clients (and their employees) safe. Additionally, we began to print custom face masks and floor decals, incorporating our clients’ logos and branding into their public health protocols.

To account for the uptick in open air trade shows, we began to offer new outdoor curbside signs and flags, hanging banners, and weather-resistant tents, ensuring that our clients’ outdoor exhibits are just as impressive as their indoor booths. These new signs, displays, and safety products encourage social distance and physical separation, keeping customers protected and ensuring that trade shows can continue safely.

Brian Nagele

One of the most challenging tasks I faced as an upcoming digital marketer was staying relevant. Technology has infiltrated nearly every industry, and it’s accelerated the fluidity of customer behavior.

Print ads worked well for specific demographics, but they were no longer a leading tactic for marketers by the 2020s. Being an entrepreneur pushes you to be creative and always think one step ahead of your competitors.

Ultimately, my team spent countless hours not only strategizing for existing marketing clients but looking for new ways to keep scouting prospects for our startups in such a face-paced landscape.

That dry spell taught me that if I wanted to expand my client base, I’d have to meet people at their level and develop the agility to maintain their attention. Through humanized marketing – curating a social media presence and engaging within niche consumer groups – I was able to scale multiple businesses to multi-figure brands that sold for their value. If you’re looking to be a successful marketer, you have to run at the pace of your audience (or faster).

Stephen Light

A mission statement is why you start a business in the first place and is what keeps you energized and passionate. What I didn’t expect was how easily the myriad of moving parts involved in starting and running a business can get in the way of that initial spark, and how much work goes into continually recommitting and reminding yourself of why you began.

Entrepreneurs wear a million different hats and make a thousand decisions a day, and it can really bog you down. Continually recommitting to your mission is difficult but necessary, and entirely worth it. Schedule a specific time with your team to regularly reassess your mission statement and to take stock of anything that doesn’t align.

Scott Spivack

For instance, we’ve added an ‘Accessibility Adjustments’ feature on our website that adjusts the interface as per the user preferences. As a medical financing company, we get customers facing all kinds of health problems and physical disabilities.

With this feature, we were able to smoothen their experience. Here’s how it works: If a particular user selects ‘Seizure Safe Profile’, our website automatically eliminates flashes and reduces color. Similarly, if someone selects ‘Cognitive Disability Profile’, our website assists with reading and focusing. This has helped us earn the trust of users and build loyalty during the challenging times of the pandemic.

Marliis Reinkort

The greatest challenge that has faced my business so far, was definitely Covid-19, and as we know now, changed the world for everyone. I’m the CEO of Code Galaxy, which offers online coding courses to kids of all ages.

We teach kids coding, design and other technology subjects and skills in a virtual classroom. However, before the pandemic started in March 2020, we were a fully in-person coding school, about to open up a new location in Austin, Texas. Once the pandemic started, we were forced to close our in-person locations for an unknown amount of time, so we decided to make a pivot and transfer our business from in person to fully online.

Since our curriculum was already online and we had a good amount of courses available for kids, the transition ended up being easier than we initially expected. We had to create online scheduling systems, find a virtual classroom platform to run the classes, retrain our teachers and completely change our marketing strategy.

It was definitely a challenge but now that we have fully made the switch, we are actually very grateful that we were forced to pivot the business model, since now we get to work with students all over the world as well as with schools across the U.S. to provide their coding electives and after school programs. It’s a more accessible, flexible and financially viable business model.

Learning from this experience, what I would like to warn all entrepreneurs about is that never get too comfortable with your current business model and always look for new trends and options to diversify your business. And once the change has to be made, in a situation like the pandemic was, even if you’re not ready, be open-minded and try to find solutions that can turn around your business quickly. Don’t wait and just start testing and experimenting to find out what works. The more you try, the higher your chances of success.

Ryan Reed

CHALLENGE 1
The home improvement sector is currently experiencing the most severe labor shortage in its history. Failure to break the labor code will stifle growth, profit, and cash flow. Some businesses can perish due to their incapacity to deal with the issue.

The second option is to “survive” rather than “thrive,” with an insufficient profit to compensate for the risk and work necessary to produce a little net pre-tax profit. As a result, many businesses are sacrificing potential earnings to develop and strengthen their businesses while also providing stability for themselves and their families.

CHALLENGE 2
Advertising, the web, exhibitions, events, and self-developed leads, such as canvassing, have all seen an increase in lead development costs. This, along with backlog and cash flow issues, reduces profitability and restricts expansion.

It’s vital to have a well-thought-out strategy for dealing with these challenges. It also needs to be consistent with a plan to make your company stable and capable of weathering unanticipated changes, which can come from a variety of sources: a lack of financing, changes in the current economy, high turnover, the cost or effectiveness of the lead generation sources you use, and so on.

CHALLENGE 3
The expense of acquiring, training, and sustaining employees rises for small businesses. The ease of finding a job due to Great Resignation, especially for persons with mediocre talents or bad experience, results in high turnover, borderline mediocrity, and increased personnel expenditures.

These three challenges can become quicksand for small, closely-held businesses. This nation’s expanding economy, consumer confidence, and disposable income produce a two-edged sword: the sparkle of higher revenue clouds judgment and lessens the caution required in concerns such as staffing shortages, mis-hires, and mishandled staff.

OVERCOMING CHALLENGE 1
To overcome challenge 1, you need to train your labor. You need a highly efficient training mechanism to train your workforce effectively. You may have to cut back on potential profit in order to retain your skilled workforce as it will be beneficial for you in long run.

OVERCOMING CHALLENGE 2
As the advertising cost has skyrocketed, you need to set aside a specific budget that should be solely used for marketing purposes. I know this will cut down significant portions of the profit but it will effectively generate many leads for your business and it’s a necessity for eventual growth and expansion of your business.

OVERCOMING CHALLENGE 3
Every business is suffering from a wave of great resignation. Coupled with challenge 1 you need to effectively manage your employees or it will put an end to your business. To tackle this provide your employees with good remuneration packages. Provide them with effective perks and benefits that are actually beneficial and provide value to your employees.

Sherrie High

One of the challenges about running a business is that you need to expect the unexpected! There will be unexpected expenses that you did not plan on for your business, slow periods where you may not get as much business as you thought you would, payment delays even supply increases.

Whatever it may be make sure you have the financial resources to keep your business afloat, a good budget plan which includes extra capital for these unexpected events.

Carolyn Barbarite

In business nothing ever goes exactly the way you had planned and as entrepreneurs you must be open-minded to change.

The most unexpected challenge that I faced with Javamelts Flavored Sugar is having to completely rebrand, reformulate and reintroduce Javamelts to the marketplace as a direct result of losing not only one manufacturing facility (co-packer) but the second one we had found.

This challenge, by far, was my most difficult because my original product was very labor-intensive to manufacture. I had to figure out a way, as fast as possible, to create a seamless, more efficient, better-for-you and packaged more conveniently product all at once. The trick for me was to PIVOT and not fight the situation. It was very important that I evaluate all of the pros and cons and go down the path of least resistance.

I simplified the ingredients, packaging and formulation to allow Javamelts to stay in the game. My advice to anyone who is faced with a tremendous problem or hurdle is not to resist the change that is inevitable. Gather the information, consult with a team of experts in that field as best as possible, ask for help and then make a sound, informative decision.

Most often than not the problem that you are having is meant for you so that you can learn so don’t be afraid to switch gears and prevail. The problems I had led me to creating better products, packaging and process overall.

Shira Truitt

Work/Life balance was my greatest, unexpected challenge with my business. After the newness of business wore off, no one wanted to hear about the business as much as I wanted to talk about it.

Moreover, I was spending extraordinary time working, but I was making extraordinary progress– and it was great! I was enjoying myself, my work, and my accomplishments.

I didn’t miss any of the big things, but my quality of life was diminished by the amount of work I was doing–even though I enjoyed it. I managed to overcome that by determining what, specifically, I would do if my business went as planned so that time and resources were not an issue. Then, I selected all the ideas that did not have a financial basis and that did not serve a dual purpose of helping me AND helping my business.

In that way, no change would be financially incentivized. Additionally, the changes that I choose to make would only impact me–not the business. I worked to implement those ideas by scheduling everything that was important to me and committed to keeping that schedule. That made time for things like a more meaningful prayer life, journaling, and exercise. I scheduled one night a month were work ends no later than 5:00 p.m. and I must do something I enjoy.

That lead to crafting, binge watching tv, and planning new opportunities. Additionally, I took classes at the local community college on everything from cooking to jewelry making and, even if I weren’t successful, I’d had a positive experience and raised the quality of my life for just those few hours.

That lead to meeting people with similar interests but from a different walk in life. I scheduled a monthly review of my activities so that I am intentional about maintaining this balance. The regimented nature of this decision took some time to get used to, but it has allowed me to be relevant in my community, meaningful time to reflect, a healthy lifestyle, and time to do the things I enjoy while my business continues to grow. As an entrepreneur, I could not ask for more.

Steve Silberberg

Marketing is a loathsome, never-ending Sisyphian task that not only drains my company’s finances at an unprecedented rate, but also drains my spirit and the amount of time I can devote to any and all other aspects of running my business.

It forces me to permanently assume the role of a repugnant, self-aggrandizing, narcissistic shyster in a desperate attempt at getting the fleeting attention of prospective clients through a dense fog of sales messages incessantly generated by unimaginably wealthy, over-capitalized business interests.

Devin Schumacher

The pandemic changes globally brought a new reality for the business and its own set of challenges. Pivoting during the pandemic is not just a concept for me but a reality we live with in the new normal of businesses.

Since our service is in digital marketing and transformation, I pivoted in this pandemic by onboarding new types of clients. I began developing campaigns for traditional companies that are new to digital marketing and diversifying our client base.

Alexa Allamano

Before the pandemic my answer would have been split between overcoming a store burglary and partnering with a flash-sale website that was a flop and left me with thousands of pieces of unsold inventory. However, the pandemic caused unexpected disruptions to my main sales channels – in-store retail, wholesale partnerships, and pop-up events.

My online sales had been the smallest growth area since establishing a storefront in 2014, but everything shifted to DTC during 2020. I shuttered my previous storefront and ended an unpleasant relationship with the lessor during covid lockdown, re-establishing in a new tiny storefront later that year.

Due to the size limit of the new space, I innovated Scan to Shop window shopping by merchandising my window display to be shoppable 24/7 with QR codes. Now my storefront drives business online and I am in-store by appointment (I also teach other store owners how to implement Scan to Shop).

Overcoming the disruption of a global pandemic requires flexibility, creative problem solving, and making hard choices on what best aligns with your business goals and values. Making those tough decisions centered around my ethics led my business to prosper in a way I couldn’t imagine before the pandemic. I gave up my dream store and created my dream life.

Kathleen Ahmmed

Speaking from personal experience, one of the biggest challenges that I faced at the start was overcoming the need to hire fast in order to fill empty positions in my business operations. This is because when you are first launching a business it can often feel like you are in a race with yourself to get things done and solve problems quickly.

However, when it comes to recruitment, this is a process that usually requires a lot of time and patience, because one wrong hire can often damage the reputation of your company by having a negative impact on employee morale, productivity, and collaboration, which ultimately leads to a toxic work culture.

And in my case, I was only able to see the effects of my hiring decisions much later in the startup process, as it was apparent that I failed to take into account other important factors like soft skills and cultural fit, with some of them either not meshing well with others, some lacking the necessary skills needed to communicate effectively with customers and others failing to collaborate with their team members in the field.

As such, I learned the importance of taking your time to do your due diligence and always hiring for intelligence, skills, and cultural fit first, because while it is easy to recruit people who are “good enough”, they can often end up being “detrimental” to your business progress down the road.

Ouriel Lemmel

The biggest challenge I faced when I started was that there was no model for my particular business. It was a new idea, and no one had really tried anything like an app to connect drivers with lawyers to help fight traffic tickets. So I did my research. I studied my market well and ensured my product is something people want and need.

Don’t stay in your own bubble. My partner is a very good check on that as we come from different backgrounds. I’m also fortunate to have great mentors, advisors, and friends that are super helpful. Most successful entrepreneurs I know didn’t wake up one morning and decide to become one, they’ve always had an entrepreneurial mindset. If you have a business idea or project, don’t be shy—try it.

Sam Cohen

The greatest, unexpected challenge was staying focused on business development. Sometimes the distractions are too heavy to resist. So I had to learn to manage my time properly. I will share how I did it and you can do the same too.

The solution is to reserve some time in your calendar for business development, and don’t let anything disturb you during those times. Also, you should try not to get too attached to any project because you will have to let go of all of them eventually.

Glen Bhimani

Marketing was my greatest initial and unexpected challenge.

Ultimately, it came down to an assumption I made. After spending years in the security industry as a guard, I realized most guards don’t care about the clients because they aren’t being taken care of by their employers.

That was when I started BPS Security. My company’s purpose is to provide a better security option at a lower price, so I developed an operations system that allows us to provide highly qualified guards who are well-paid so that they put their best effort into taking care of the customer. My assumption was that clients would find me because I had a website and was offering a better service at a lower price. That was a big mistake.

Because of that assumption, we spent several years without any clients at all: it’s a miracle we’re still standing. But when I finally realized we needed to work on our marketing and sales to actively let people know we are here, the business exploded! Even though it wasn’t all at once, it still exploded and today we’re one of the fastest growing security firms in the United States because of it.

I would love for new entrepreneurs to avoid my mistake: don’t assume people will come to you just because you’ve started your business. You need to find ways to actively attract clients.

Also, allow time for your marketing to kick in and begin working.
Our sales improved our clients drastically, but I had a business partner who would constantly argue for the first month that our marketing needed to be cut because it wasn’t bringing in new clients. I reminded him of exactly what I would tell new entrepreneurs: marketing isn’t a magic pill that works overnight.

Most of the time it doesn’t even begin to show serious results after two to four weeks. But marketing is a crucial part of building out your company’s reputation and improving your client base, and needs to be an essential part of your company at all times! Especially during difficult times.

These are a few of the very important things I learned and implemented that helped me overcome my marketing challenges:

Continue adjusting
The market is constantly changing, so you have to continually adjust as you go. One marketing campaign might not work super well, but another one might be incredibly effective. So keep trying different things and give them a few weeks to work before you cut them.

One of the ways we’ve developed such strong marketing is that we’ve continually revamped what we’re doing. Our website has changed multiple times in the last two years, and it has resulted in much higher leads and client acquisition every time we’ve changed it. So continually adjust your marketing and pursue what seems to work best after you’ve given it a few weeks to work.

Don’t expect immediate results
I know I mentioned this already, but understanding this is crucial. There are going to be marketing companies that tell you they can bring in hundreds of leads a month right from the start. They are frauds. Not because they can’t get leads, but because their leads are bad leads.

Good marketing requires time and effort, and as one of my mentors says, “great marketing has exponential growth.” Which means you might not see much right now, but it will grow and expand on itself if you keep at it diligently. Ours did, and now we’re getting regular news features and sometimes have more client requests than we have capacity to take on.

Be consistent
Marketing is a huge part of your reputation, so you need to make sure you have the same reputation everywhere. Your brand needs to be consistent, from your brochures, to your social media, to your website, to even how you answer the phone!

Building a consistent feel across every aspect of your company is a great way to work on your marketing, because it creates a more solid relationship between the company and the clients. If you look at your marketing assets and realize that your facebook page is completely different from your website, that’s a sign your marketing isn’t consistent and that your potential clients may not even know they’re looking at the same company.

Get feedback
Finally, getting feedback is one of the most important parts of marketing. Speak with your current clients to find out why they work with you and build that into your marketing. If you compete in the market on service or price alone, you’ll run yourself into the ground and won’t be able to compete with bigger companies. Find out what makes you unique and why your clients like working with you, then build your marketing on that feedback. When we began to do this, our marketing took a huge turn and began to show serious results.

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The post How 20 entrepreneurs in the United States Adapted To Changing Market Conditions During The Pandemic first appeared on Tekrati and is written by Jed Morley

20 Entrepreneurs From Europe & North America Interviewed On The Challenges They Encountered During The Pandemic

Jerome Knyszewski — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 06:55:05 +0000

20 Entrepreneurs From Europe & North America Interviewed On The Challenges They Encountered During The Pandemic

20 Entrepreneurs From Europe & North America Interviewed On The Challenges They Encountered During The Pandemic

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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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

Pivoting For Pandemic Success: How 26 American Entrepreneurs & Business Owners Adapted To Changing Market Conditions

Jed Morley — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 08:00:32 +0000

Pivoting For Pandemic Success: How 26 American Entrepreneurs & Business Owners Adapted To Changing Market Conditions

Pivoting For Pandemic Success: How 26 American Entrepreneurs & Business Owners Adapted To Changing Market Conditions

Many businesses have had to close as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, while others have had to adapt their operations. Many firms were prompted to pivot for pandemic success and adapt to changing market conditions as a result of the outbreak. We interviewed 26 company owners and entrepreneurs in the United States to understand more about the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on businesses and how it affected their operations.

INTERVIEW HOST

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

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?

Jessi Beyer

As a speaker, the pandemic could have sent my business crashing to the ground, but instead, a simple pivot from in-person presentations to virtual presentations allowed my revenue from speaking gigs to skyrocket during the second half of 2020 and beyond. While this pivot seems obvious, there were two key things I did that made this pivot as successful as it was.

First, I put some serious thought into how I could make virtual presentations as engaging as in-person ones. People were already sitting on Zoom all day, so I didn’t want them to just sit there and listen to me blab on for an hour.

Secondly, I sold bulk copies of my book to event and conference hosts that booked me to speak so that, firstly, attendees would have something they could physically touch and engage with after my virtual presentation, and secondly, the revenue from each virtual gig would be increased.

After so much time doing virtual presentations more frequently than in-person ones, I have to say that I like virtual ones more! They’re more accessible for attendees and less time consuming for me, and they allow me to speak at multiple events across all parts of the country in the span of a few short days.

Lucie Chavez

Here at Radaris, we had to pivot in a big way in order to keep everyone safe and secure, while also continuing with the forward momentum we had leading up to the pandemic. We seemed to have a communication issue between departments and different levels within the company. A specific team was very communicative with each other, but there was an issue in continuously relaying progress and specific updates to the rest of the team in a timely manner.

This caused some delays and confusion among different teams who were waiting on the other for a specific item or answer. We also struggled to figure out an effective communication line from the managerial team down to part-time employees and more junior-level employees.

We had to find a way to connect everyone for important communications and also figure out how we can relay messages to other parts of the company. It came down to finding the most effective programs for us and making sure everyone was on the right page. Once we found these platforms and put them into effect, we had an easier job in staying on the same page, but there was definitely a learning period.

We had to find out who would do what and how they could do it to be effective. I think we had to stumble a bit early on in order to find our way and make sure we are as effective at communicating virtually as we needed to be. After that, things were much easier for us!

Manville Chan

I founded The Story of Ramen in 2016 in San Francisco. We host ramen cooking classes as corporate team building events. We welcome company teams to our facility and make ramen as an offsite activity.

The majority of our customer base tech companies such as Uber, Facebook, Google and Salesforce which see great value in team-building activities for their employees. Prior to the pandemic, we hosted an average of 800-1,000 people per month.

We found our niche and market our business mainly via SEO traffic to our web site as well as positive word of mouth. Obviously with the pandemic, in-person events ended and all customers canceled their events in March 2020. By April 2020, we introduced virtual ramen cooking classes, which includes an instructor-led Zoom session and ramen kits delivered to our customers’ doorsteps.

It has become a hit as companies are desperately trying to find ways to motivate remote/work from home employees. When we first introduced virtual classes, we had a steep learning curve in knowing how to package and ship perishable food ingredients across the country and how to make the experience more interactive and engaging. We have learned and adapted very quickly mainly through feedback from our valued customers and simply making mistakes!

As the pandemic continued, we found ways to expand our business beyond the Bay Area as we host events all over the US and globally. We are also no longer limited to the capacity of the facility which seats 40-45 people. We frequently host nationwide corporate events with 100+ people.

Our virtual business grew from 150 guests in July 2020 to close 1,800 in December 2021. We recently launched an udon class that allows us to ship ingredient kits internationally; and we’re getting a lot of traction lately.

I do think that the stress brought by the pandemic actually helped us to think outside the box to grow our business, turning lemons into lemonade. Previously, we were in our comfort zone and we were too busy to innovate.

Rohan Kadam

Hello, I am a marketing consultant and an established entrepreneur. I run a successful Niche website called Biking Know How.

I would like to share how I quit my job as a banker at JP Morgan Chase and started my blogging business for less than $1000 and turned it into a successful business. I started my blog just as a hobby.

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. Some of the details on my blog are as follows.

Bikingknowhow.com is my third blog (I run 2 blogs currently, all in different niches. I sold my first blog) that I had started. And it today gets approximately 5,000 monthly unique visitors. I earn money through two Ad-Networks namely, Google AdSense and Media.net which show ads on my website. (I make a minimum of $200 per month with both ad networks combined).
I also partnered with Amazon via an affiliate partnership, and I promote the products and services of Amazon on my website (I make approximately $100 per month) by promoting products on my blog.

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 platforms like Udemy and Udacity to enroll in the courses. I started voraciously reading blogs and success stories of food bloggers. This helped me get creative and experiment with the growth strategy of my blog.

Peter Ord

“The pre-pandemic world looks much different than our current times. With more employees working remotely or within a hybrid-like environment than ever before, we wanted to ensure that we adjusted our product, GuideCX, to meet the needs of business professionals everywhere, no matter what their workspace looks like.

It is critical for internal and external teams to be on the same page right from the beginning in order to achieve long-term success – and that begins with the client onboarding process.

We recently introduced a tool that we had been working on for years called the Navigator Reporting Engine because we recognized the need for teams to be able to understand each component of a project and the bigger picture of how it all intertwines, whether they are working side by side or across the world from one another.

The Engine offers never-before-seen metrics including forecasting revenues and the ability to meet deadlines, creating a strong foundation for projects and continued growth.”

Ian Sells

We know how the pandemic has forced people to stay indoors and this has caused a huge spike not only in the number of people doing online shopping, but even the time they spent doing so. Surveys also found that many people do so on their phones more than on their computers.

To meet this customer behavior and make the most out of the influx of people doing online shopping, we decided to launch an app for both iPhone and Android users. This makes it a lot easier for them to shop and save money.

Eddie Bye

I’m Eddie. Founder of Physio Flex Pro. As a business owner during the pandemic, I either had to give up and stop doing business or continue. Fortunately, I was able to make my joint supplement business profitable. I want to share the realization that I had.

As well as the challenges faced and lessons learned along the way The biggest lesson that I’d learnt during this whole crisis is that you get a chance to improve your life when a huge problem comes. Some of us are entitled. We want things to be given to us. We don’t want to work, we don’t want to suffer, we just want the good things in life despite our character not deserving it.

And so tragedy happens and we find ourselves whining. It’s important to understand that an entrepreneurial life without crisis is not possible. You’re going to encounter one if you play this game long enough. Knowing this, we understand that it’s useless to want something that is impossible.

Furthermore, I realized that in order to solve a business problem, you need to improve as an entrepreneur. The best solution that I found during the pandemic was by changing myself initially and letting it reflect on my business. I consider it a blessing considering that I make money the more I improve myself. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Lauren Gast

Chief Marketing Officer on Pivoting in the Face of a Pandemic Because truck drivers are a part of one of America’s Essential Industries, pivoting in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic was of the utmost importance. Before the pandemic, our training required our instructors and students to be in close contact with each other constantly.

After COVID numbers began to rise, and supply chain shortages became more prevalent, we knew that stopping classes altogether was not an option. To create a safe CDL training environment for our students and staff so we could continue training, we developed a comprehensive pandemic protocol. In accordance with CDC guidelines, we instructed our trainees to postpone their training if they had recently been exposed to the virus or were experiencing flu-like symptoms.

We also published extensive sanitation and social distancing guidelines, requiring that our trainees wash their hands often and keep their masks on during in-cab training and testing. —Lauren Gast, Chief Marketing Officer at Truck Driver Institute, a truck driving school with eleven campuses across the United States

Brice Gump

The onset of the pandemic brought a shock to the system of many companies including ours. It is no secret that marketing services become a secondary concern for several businesses but as a business leader it has always been my priority to never remain stationary when faced with a crisis and to keep it ongoing.

The one thing that I did was constantly stay engaged with my existing clients and even network more than usual on my social media platforms to increase engagement and spread greater brand awareness. We started posting testimonials on our website to show potential clients a more realistic aspect of the services provided.

Constant engagement helped me gain more clients than I thought I would in these turbulent times and we even increased our brand awareness through this. we had to return clients as well. It wasn’t all sunshine and happiness for us, we faced serval setbacks with communication and workflow being hindered due to the transition from physical to remote/ hybrid work. But with a great team and the use of efficient crisis management, we learned to adapt and supported each other to adjust to the new norms.

Richard Lubicky

Ever since the pandemic, the whole world has been transforming, whether our lifestyle or business! Majorly, a lot of businesses have had serious impacts!

Since such changes have Vern accounted as the new normal, businesses have to alter and align their business goals and vision to grab opportunities at the right time to gain competitive advantage.

Considering such a situation and changes, I also altered some of my Cybersecurity SaaS business elements to become a leader in the market. Since people had to wait in long queues in government offices to find vital information, we advanced our reach and provided them with that information within a fraction of seconds!

Most of our services are introduced as free services to help our clients test the deep waters! We added client reports and background checks as our revenue-generating streams. This was largely possible due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Paul Baterina

The pandemic presented unique challenges for businesses all across the board. Sleep Advisor was fortunate in that the bulk of our workforce (our marketers, developers and bloggers to name a few) already worked remotely before Covid-19, so all we needed to do was modify our work model to a remote environment for everyone who works in our headquarters (myself included) in Austin, Texas.

The pandemic gave us an opportunity to use alternative digital platforms to intensify our planning phases for our digital marketing campaigns and collaborate remotely simultaneously. For example, we shifted all our work communications and physical operations over to Slack and Microsoft Teams so we could utilize video calls and digital channels for specific work departments and projects.

My team and I at HQ had lots of days where our digital platforms didn’t sync up the way we hoped and where we experienced difficulties with performing certain tasks timeously. For example, we often struggled to stay on schedule with filming our YouTube demonstration videos due to some of our main vloggers contracting Covid-19 and needing to stay in quarantine and recover at different stages of 2021.

With that said, we did our best to keep the lines of communication open, express empathy and support those of us who couldn’t cope as well with our workload and physical health during the pandemic. We’re still learning and constantly finding new ways not only to survive during these trying times, but to thrive as well.

Kim Marie Branch-Pettid

The pandemic was a shock to all of us and we had to make some quick changes to adjust to the state of the world and do whatever we could to stay afloat. It was especially important to me to ensure that all my members and staff felt supported and had the resources necessary to succeed in spite of the times.

To offset barriers to connection in the pandemic, I invested in LeTip Wired, a new proprietary software and mobile app that helps members electronically track existing business networks and recruit new members. Introducing LeTip Wired certainly helped my team feel like they belong to a nationwide community and ultimately ensured many small businesses wouldn’t have to close their doors.

As a result, between 2020 and 2021 we were able to invite more guests and had a 60% join rate. Thanks to a recent LeTip membership survey, I also discovered that many of LeTip’s members across the US also made individual changes to their businesses in order to adapt to the rapidly changing market conditions.

For example, Jack Watkinson is a member of LeTip of Somerset Hills representing the I.T. category for the Somerset Hills Chapter in New Jersey with a company called Outsource My I.T. He reported that in 2020 he used more online methods of service, added new products, and services to his catalog, hired new employees while retaining most of his employees.

Similarly, Chief Executive Officer at H3 Systems and member of LeTip of Napa, CA, Donald Hartung reported that to offset business slowing down he used more online methods of service and adjust because of supply chain issues as well.

About LeTip International: LeTip International, Inc., the world’s largest privately-owned business leads organization, is a networking organization made up of members held to the highest caliber of professionalism and achievement, all of whom strive to do business with one another.

Founded in 1978, LeTip has more than 250 chapters throughout the USA and Canada and is credited with hundreds of thousands of business referrals per year. Setting the standard for referral organizations, LeTip members are known throughout the B2B referral industry for their dedication to helping each other grow their businesses. Join a chapter or start your own at letip.com.

Nathan Hughes

Due to the pandemic and its subsequent restrictions, both small and large businesses have suffered. As a marketing firm, we had barred traditional methods to market products and services. Traditional PR strategies were no longer functional. At the right moment, digital platforms came in as aid for us.

Digital Marketing and PR strategies, including backlinks, SEO (On-page and Off-page), social media, and email marketing, were some of the best strategies that helped our firm soar high from this pandemic.

Adit Jain

The pandemic brought with it a lot of uncertainty for companies and people alike. Back then, we had not secured our series fundings, and we were operating with a smaller fund. We’ve always strived to be as transparent as possible with our team. So, following that same principle, we conducted town hall meetings and apprised each member of Leena AI of the situation regarding our finances.

Every member of our team was on board, and in fact, delivered 200% more than what we expected. Their perseverance reflected their dedication and motivation towards the company. Soon after, we secured our Series A funding, followed by Series B in the second consecutive year, and things started to get back on track.

For us at Leena AI, the pandemic really helped us grow as a company, both internally and externally. This adaptation to Covid brought in new ideas – we were introspective on what we learnt as a company, and utilized that to build solutions for enterprises that were facing issues brought on during the pandemic.

We introduced a number of products, such as the Covid-19 Workplace Response Suite, which assists organizations facilitate a safer return to the workplace, by helping them track and maintain employee vaccination records, employee health statuses, employee rostering, and even booking vaccination slots. In addition to this, during the pandemic we were approached by a number of healthcare providers for their requirements of a similar product.

One to track systems for vaccination statuses for both patients and staff, send reminders to patients about their second or booster doses, conduct Covid tests, and so on. We also came up with Work-From-Home surveys for employees to keep a check on their wellbeing, both mental and physical. In my opinion, Leena AI took the pandemic head-first and came out stronger, larger, and better than ever.

We pooled in all our resources, gave it a 100% and assisted millions of employees around the world cope with the pandemic.

Edith Pearce

As a law firm involved with personal injury cases, we constantly have paperwork our clients must sign. Some of these documents include fee agreements, medical authorizations, and settlement agreements.

This often meant the client would have to come into our office to sign various paperwork during their case. When the pandemic hit, we began using DocuSign to provide clients the ability to electronically sign documents.

The DocuSign electronic signature solution in the United States complies with the definition of an electronic signature under the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce (ESIGN) Act and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA).

This has allowed our clients to sign all of their documents in the comfort of their own homes. While we have also adopted other tools such as video conferencing software, DocuSign will probably be the most important remote working tool for our firm in 2021.

Michael Dean

The biggest way my company had to adapt during the pandemic was in our online presence. With consumers stuck at home, it meant they were spending way more time on their devices. In order to continue growing as a business and obtaining a bigger audience, we had to start optimizing our business site for mobile use, and developing more of a presence on social media.

New businesses are popping up online everyday, so prioritizing your business’ online presence is crucial. As a content-based business, website traffic is currency, and the only way to secure consistent traffic is to lean into the current global digital landscape.

Tennille Thomas

I adapted to changing market conditions by doing things in reverse by creating a brand new business model that was a continuum of my current model. My business model was to create a living canvas if you will; whereby my products had to become services and my services became products.

This would spark innovation for the continual creation of products and services born out of the services and products I currently offer. In other words, my industry encompasses e-commerce, health/beauty, from the realm of natural skin care. I had to find a way to combine all those elements without losing the voice of my brand.

Please understand that your brand is your voice visually. It will speak for you before you show up. It is imperative for the message of your brand to be clear and concise so that people can identify it and engage with it no matter the platform(s) being utilized to represent it. By introducing new services and products out of your current offerings you will not compromise your brand identity.

For example, one of my products is a luxury hand oil. I made this oil come to life for my customers by way of a demonstration video in real time. This not only increased engagement by making them feel a part of the product but encouraged sales in real time. In addition, I created a service that is video on demand for those who truly desired this type of educational engagement by way of a subscription. It provides a platform for them to be able to watch how to use these products and services at their leisure.

Lastly, providing them an opportunity to engage with me directly. As a result of that direct engagement, opportunities have been afforded to those that are active on my platform. Such as participation in helping to create a product. If I use that product their contribution is recognized, they are given perks and directly become a part of my specialized engagement team.

As an entrepreneur you have to be innovative, creative, and inventive to separate yourself from the masses with never compromising your customer base. You do this by employing hi-touch.

You will not only create multiple streams of income for yourself but be able to continuously create avenues of opportunities and one of a kind experiences for your customers. Who would of thought that all of this would derive from a product that turned into a service sparked by innovation through the service that would create a product everlasting.

Darren Lopez

“We adapted our business plan in two different ways. First, we added product lines that we thought people in the new normal would find appealing, including a new adult beverage we call Milli. We also added additional immune and health-related products including our Be-OnGuard series targeted toward people that want to “be on guard” against viruses and bacteria.

In addition, we adapted our distribution strategies and started focusing on streamlining and simplifying the sales process with an enhanced emphasis on direct sales and a new aggressive Amazon strategy.”

Carter Reum

When we look at the pandemic and its effects on companies across the globe, it’s important to also look for some of the positives that have come from such an unexpected situation. Many companies have made huge pivots; yet this has also encouraged those businesses to become more innovative, creative, and open to taking well-calculated risks.

Some employees are finding that they can be more productive even when working remotely. Of course, many companies have found the pandemic conditions to be challenging, but just as many are also finding newfound strength and exponential growth. Specifically, we’ve seen that wellness and mental well-being are now unprecedented opportunities for innovation and investment.

Greg Gillman

Being a leader during a pandemic will put your leadership skills to the test–most importantly empathy and flexibility. With the ever-changing rules surrounding the pandemic comes a lack of structure or even an office, which can potentially lead to feelings of isolation, lack of motivation, disruptions to processes, and even workplace conflict.

During these uncertain times, you can’t lead with certainty, which can be a challenge to leaders stuck in their ways. Pay close attention to your employees and their performance, and be sure to be sympathetic to their needs and pivot when and where necessary to ensure optimal success.

Ryan Rottman

Functioning effectively as a leader or an entrepreneur during a pandemic is only viable if you can be flexible and understand how and when to pivot. This means encouraging innovative thinking and really listening to all the ideas your team brings to the table – big or small.

Playing it safe in uncertain times might seem appealing, but it’s important to take risks in order to yield results. Additionally, as some business environments slow down to accommodate changes, use this opportunity to brainstorm and plan for your next big move!

Becky Brown

As a blogging business, we noticed a big increase in traffic as the pandemic grew but our audience’s demands grew as well. Producing content was no longer enough to convert our audience as they were looking for more concrete ways to engage with our business. What we did to adapt was we built a new webpage that shows limited-time shopping deals where our customers can quickly and easily buy their favorite products at a discount.

All we had to do was keep the page up-to-date and running, and our customers were more than happy with the feature. This approach helped us turn a simple shopping blog into something more than that, and we are looking forward to adding even more fun features like this in the future.

Megan Sumrell

“The pandemic definitely brought many opportunities to add a digital focus to my business. Prior to the pandemic, my planners were all physical planners and much of my training was conducted live or in person. The pandemic caused people to really lean into technology and leverage digital assets more.

I created a digital version of my planner for tablets along with launching an app in the app stores to make training readily available via mobile devices. Now, my customers are able to participate in training events from their phones at their convenience instead of from their office at set times.”

Nick Collins

When the pandemic began, my clients in many parts of the country faced shut-down mandates issued by state governments struggling to slow the spread of the novel Coronavirus. Using this time to pivot again, I relaunched my company as Sartoris Digital to offer my clients an expanded and inclusive menu of services.

I previously had worked with big pharma, major airlines, telecommunications, finance, and sporting goods brands, which has given me a diverse set of skills to bring to my growing digital marketing firm. However, when the pandemic hit, I realized that many small businesses could benefit from my services, so he re-launched my offering (previously Sartoris Technologies), to include services that are better suited for small businesses, including better price points and a more tailored, hands-on experience.

James Parsons

It’s crazy that people thought the importance of content would have decreased many years ago, but it has only risen in importance. Even during the pandemic, content continued its dominance and has been so important for online companies if they want to secure their position in the market.

It’s vital for businesses to have unique, quality content on their website for a variety of reasons. It stands out to potential clients, it helps them rank better on Google, it can be used across their entire marketing strategy, and it can even impact their PR campaigns.

We saw the demand for quality, on-time content when the pandemic hit and we worked hard to find writers who could join our team and become an asset. That’s the biggest thing we had to do when the pandemic hit and we were swamped with work: hire more quality writers so we could keep up with orders, but also cement our place in the industry because of the quality we deliver.

Finding writers to fit our team wasn’t easy, but that was helped by the fact that more people were working from home and open to working remotely. It took time to make a plan and execute it, but we did it and were able to pivot to this new demand.

Gabriel Dungan

We didn’t introduce any pandemic-specific products or services, but we did use the sudden shift to increased online shopping as an opportunity to really personalize our social media engagement.

We started using customer testimonials and reviews in more marketing campaigns in an attempt to create more unique and personal consumer engagement. With digital engagement becoming the most important part of marketing, we used that as a chance to really invest time and money into creating high quality content on all channels, including TikTok and Instagram.

If you are a business leader and you’re not prioritizing your business’ social media channels, you are going to miss out on tons of possible conversions and traffic.

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The post Pivoting For Pandemic Success: How 26 American Entrepreneurs & Business Owners Adapted To Changing Market Conditions first appeared on Tekrati and is written by Jed Morley

26 Entrepreneurs From All Over The World Share Their Experiences On Pivoting During The Pandemic

Jerome Knyszewski — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 04:13:42 +0000

26 Entrepreneurs From All Over The World Share Their Experiences On Pivoting During The Pandemic

26 Entrepreneurs From All Over The World Share Their Experiences On Pivoting During The Pandemic

Many businesses struggled throughout the epidemic, and while some were forced to close their doors permanently, others were able to effectively traverse these turbulent times by pivoting their product and service offerings to adapt and grow. Many business owners had to take a radical new approach, figuring out how to fast adjust in order to confront the pandemic’s issues head-on. In this interview series, we spoke with 26 business owners and executives from all over the world to see how some of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs and leaders overcome challenges during the pandemic.

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.

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?

Yeremia Poco

As a small online business that offers animated commercials, when the pandemic hit, almost all of our clients dropped their projects. They are hesitant to spend money on an unpredictable future, and a lot of businesses are in ‘wait and see’ mode.

We had to rack our brains looking for a quick solution, and we decided to offer smaller/cheaper services to lure the market. Thankfully, with lower entry points, businesses are willing to invest in our service again. This strategy worked for us, at least for a year. When the market slowly went back to normal, we went back to our normal pricing at the end of 2021 – now.

Maria Alfano

Our business was always online, so pivoting was not difficult. What became challenging was finding a product that customers needed or wanted during the pandemic. We all know about the toilet paper shortage at the start of the pandemic. Suddenly, there were thousands of people rushing to sell essentials like toilet paper, soaps, and masks.

We headed in a slightly different direction. If you are going to make it in business, you need to lead, not follow. Our focus became one of helping others adjust to a life restricted to their home environment. We decided to help them make their space more inviting, more comfortable, and more appealing.

We launched several new products that would help their home bathroom give them the feeling of being at the spa. Those folks that were accustomed to enjoying a spa day could now enjoy it in the comfort of their own homes. The pandemic put enough stress on mental health, so we thought our new products would give them a way to relieve some of that stress and give them a little sense of peace.

Julie Stobbe

The pandemic gave me time at my desk. I work in clients’ homes, working 40 hours a week at my desk was my first pivot. Sitting at a desk for extended periods was a big change from the physically active work of decluttering and organizing homes.

I built into my new schedule transitions to help me mentally prepare for starting work, lunch breaks and leaving the workday behind. I had some products and services that had not been marketed well and a product I had wanted to develop an online course. Being able to pivot and focus solely on these 2 areas of my business let me grow my services as well as my skills.

I built another website to host my new courses, Create an Organized Home. A step-by-step course with videos, worksheets and resources to guide a person to create a home to suit their personality and lifestyle. This new website solved the other problem, marketing existing services.

Now I had a platform for my 9-week coaching course From Clutter to Freedom. The new website meant I had an easy link to use on social media for marketing and blogging.

The pandemic forced a mindset change, you needed the ability to see an opportunity to do something new and take the risk instead of looking at the opportunities you no longer had available.

Anthony King

Last year, we completely modified our ways and implemented new practices that could assist our organization, which was an unexpected turn of events.

The switch from working in an office to working from home was the most significant change. It completely altered our approaches to problems, but it also resulted in conflicts and miscommunication.

My team was having a hard time adapting to this mode since it generated some communication barriers that could be readily overcome with face-to-face contact but were difficult to overcome remotely. When it comes to managing remote teams, I believe the major challenge is a lack of open communication and trust.

Because face-to-face communication is always a better approach to addressing problems quickly, the remote work made it difficult for us to grasp the problems everyone was experiencing at work. We gradually adjusted to this by adopting changes such as weekly meetings, feedback surveys, and flexible hours to help my team operate more efficiently and successfully.

We have started communicating openly with each other and responding quickly if an inconvenience arises. I’m extremely proud of how wonderfully everything came together, and we’re really pleased with how things turned out.

Kevin Mercier

Re-Engaging With Customers During the pandemic, it was vital for us to re-engage with our customers. As a result of the pandemic, the needs and wants of our customers had altered. For this reason, they had moved to a different stage in our sales pipeline compared to before.

Using our CRM, we targeted specific groups of customers that had fallen out of line with our business during this pandemic. We decided to focus more on building relationships with customers by keeping them updated and informed or by providing them with various resources.

Remaining in touch with your customers is an aspect that should never be overlooked, especially when there are little to no opportunities for individuals to visit the physical location of your business.

Mark Leslie

As a book industry consultant and writer/storyteller/publisher, I did a couple of things to re-adapt to the changing market conditions. Prior to the pandemic, I flew to a lot of conferences in North America, Europe, and the UK in order to talk about the business of writing and publishing.

With air travel and border crossings reduced, not to mention conferences being canceled or moved to online venues, I adjusted the means by which I can deliver the same value. I purchased better equipment for video and audio settings to engage in more powerful virtual presentations, and took the time to get certified as a virtual presenter with eSpeakers, one of the sites where I’m listed as a professional speaker.

I can now say yes to more speaking opportunities that are conducted virtually, because, from my home office, I may be able to fit in three or more different speaking engagements in a single weekend, whereas, in the previous physical-only scenario requiring travel, I’d have to fly across the country and be there for a single event.

The cost to the organizers is reduced significantly (they don’t have to pay to fly me and put me up in a hotel, for example), and I am able to satisfy more requests in a smaller time frame.

On the more creative storyteller side of my business, I doubled-down on my output of creative content on various social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to remain engaged with my readers and as a way to find new readers who found my content engaging and entertaining.

Prior to the pandemic, this type of engagement would happen at in person events, book signings and other related physical-world venues. My reduction in travel also allowed me more time and opportunity to produce more traditional content, and in 2020 and 2021, I released 15 books that I authored/edited, or co-authored in various formats (eBook, trade paperback, hardcover, audiobook). That’s not to mention the books that I released for other authors under my Stark Publishing imprint.

One significant shift to the book industry — and this was especially true near the beginning, in early to mid 2020, was that the growth of digital eBooks and audiobooks was the largest it has ever been since the original eBook boom between 2010 and 2015.

And that industry is only continuing to grow, leveraged more strategically by indie authors who are dominating a space that has been mostly ignored by the major publishers who are more interested in the business of shipping dead trees around through warehouses and bricks and mortar bookstores.

Jessica Kats

This was a very distressing time for us. But, we were luckily able to adapt to it by introducing remote learning. Through tools such as Zoom, Slack, and Trello, we were able to handle remote work very well.

Although there were some communication difficulties initially, we pushed through and came back stronger. I had regular video meetings with my team to ensure that we were all on the same page.

Additionally, creating a work schedule on Trello enables the employees to stay on track and be productive. I did not introduce any additional products. That’s because our main goal was to ensure that internal communication within the company was excellent and that all tasks were completed efficiently.

James Cashmore

As a lead generation agency we had to adapt quickly during the pandemic. After about 6 months into the pandemic, B2B businesses realised they weren’t going to make their targets so in response, we introduced a new ‘Pay what you can’ COVID-19 model.

This was something different to really help out businesses who were doing it tough. The clients that came through this process are now our strongest clients. For the day to day aspects of business, the pandemic has allowed me to work more efficiently. Before the pandemic I was traveling a lot e.g. day trips from Melbourne to Sydney for in person meetings.

I would only fit around 3-4 meetings a day and now can schedule in 20-25 meetings per day over video call. We don’t need to be in each other’s offices to get things done – we can work more efficiently using technology.

Elley Hudson

In the pandemic’s early days, I was worried that a large number of our tenants would lose their jobs or get sick, which would leave them unable to pay their rent. Instead of thinking too long and hard on the doom and gloom, we decided to adapt by creating a system that identified and verified tenants who were financially impacted by COVID.

We then contacted the owners of their properties and worked with them to reached mutually agreeable solutions without the need for the tribunal process. Until early January, we were able to keep things in the office relatively smooth.

However, COVID has now spread across Queensland and Townsville is facing the pandemic worse than it ever has before. Our first week back from the Christmas holidays was a particularly chaotic one and made us realise that we need to pivot the way we normally do things.

For example, we’re now trying to encourage less in-person appointments and more over-the-phone interactions. We’re also regularly disinfecting surfaces like desks and phones to minimise germs in our workspace and wearing masks when interacting with members of the community.

Chara Yadav

How did you adapt? Putting it bluntly, quickly, and painfully. We, or rather I, had to lay off our entire research and content team, abandon our office and outsource most of our business to a marketing agency.

It was a painful transformation, but if we hadn’t made the move from being office-based to using a remote team, my business wouldn’t have served the first twelve months and definitely wouldn’t be here today.

Did you introduce additional product lines or services? No, I stuck to my guns and doubled down on doing what we do best, and I honestly believe that by doing so it helped us to survive and grow in a time when so many other businesses and companies fell by the wayside.

Was it the right decision? It was for me and my business, and at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.

Maureen Farmer

On the heels of COVID-19, we at Westgate quickly panicked, assessed, and then acted. In less than nine months, we turned our business around, grew revenues, and built a sustainable digital business model that has tripled revenues in 18 months while bringing quality clients into the business.

• In April 2020, our global executive branding and career consulting business came to a grinding halt. The phone stopped ringing, and our email inbox became like a ghost town. Our small company of two full-time employees and 10 years of business we built from the ground up seemed to have evaporated overnight. The world seemingly had fallen asleep.

• The clincher? On April 20, a national organization scheduled to sign our contract for a coast-to-coast landmark deal emailed to say the budget had been cut.

They were moving into crisis management mode. Our pipeline was empty, and we needed to make payroll.

• I quickly began to worry that the investments we had made in marketing may be lost over the past 18 months, including a business rebranding that took months to plan and significant financial resources to execute.

• Heavily dependent on referral business, we understood this is not a sustainable business model.

To address this, we needed to get in front of our targeted markets, hone our messaging, and focus on our addressable international markets more effectively, which required a digital marketing strategy.

• Knowing what we needed was only the first step. How would we find the resources we needed from organizations we could trust?

• We needed to act quickly—Westgate works primarily in global markets, but we weren’t 100 percent digital. My team member and I invested days scouring our networks, LinkedIn, and websites looking for digital marketing resources. We spoke to dozens of firms, many of whom promised the world. We interviewed dozens of consultants.

• With an SEO consultant, a veteran marketing firm (more than 50 years in business!), and our focus on core services, we carved out a new niche and developed new products.

• Our 90-day plan has been downloaded nearly 2,000 times, and we remain at the top of the first page of Google for the search, “CEO 90-day plan,” helping us collect names of potential new clients (subscribers) through our email marketing platform.

• And we didn’t stop there.We knew the subscribers would be funneled into our weekly e-blast list, but we took it a step further. We created a process in which we conduct due diligence on every person that downloads our CEO 90-day plan with the help of LinkedIn. We study and analyze our audience to better serve their interests and needs.

• Instead of pulling back on marketing efforts, we ramped up even more. We knew that we wanted to be ready when the world found a new rhythm.

• We built a podcast titled, Get Hired Up! and invested time locating top leaders in multiple industries to further leverage our network and expertise.

• We continued to work with our own business and marketing coach to help us do what we help our clients with: Get crystal clear on our vision and continue to grow our brand, despite the daunting reality of the new world. Instead of foregoing speaking events, we took our E-Level to C-Level seminar online and continued to source future conferences to prepare for when the world opened back up. With this preparation, we are happy to say we are booked to speak at the Career Thought Leaders Symposium in Philadelphia in April of this year.

• Instead of sticking to one stream of business, we decided to branch out in product and audience.

• We built a program that mimics many of the same services in our original Career Navigator Program but is meant for a corporation. Instead of solely helping individuals, we knew we could serve corporations. We are thrilled to introduce our C-Suite Optimization Program.

Finally, instead of letting the tried-and-true assets built over ten years collect digital dust, we are launching an e-commerce store that will serve other career professionals in February of this year.

• In short, how did we adapt? We ramped up, pushed back on our imposter syndrome, and pushed toward an intentional, ambitious, and focused digital marketing strategy serving quality clients.

Joe Davies

When the pandemic hit, online services quickly began to see an influx in business and inquiries from companies who were shifting their focus. As an SEO company, we became much busier with potential clients inquiring about our services and comparing offerings from different agencies.

We decided that the ability to offer more packages would be a good idea so we could have something to fit more people’s needs. Some people were looking for more affordable packages, services that fit their specific industry, and different levels of volume.

We tweaked the packages we had to offer, created some new offerings, and even took advice from the people we were chatting with in order to make our services a fit for more people. It’s been an interesting journey and I’m proud of our ability to quickly pivot in order to help more people!

Daniel Tolson

I stopped the bleeding fast! My business traditionally consulted face to face and held physical events, which required physical training manuals. In early 2020 when the borders shut down, we stopped the bleeding fast! We cancelled all live events, stopped purchasing physical training systems and adapted a 90% digital delivery system.

In addition, we scaled our events to live online events with over 1,300+ people in attendance. This was 2.5X the size of our normal audiences. Our psychology also needed to adjust.

Almost overnight we went from having human contact to none, from networking and shaking hands to zoom rooms and reminding people to turn on their microphones, from spending days travelling to minutes walking from our bedroom to the office and delivering training to million dollars businesses wearing polo shorts, underpants and slippers. Work / Life balance disappeared as the office outgrew the home and days being trapped indoors.

It didn’t take weeks to adjust, it took months to adjust and as the borders open again, we are relearning to interact in an environment where people have been relying on technology to communicate their ideas.

Clare Jones

As I’m sure you can imagine, the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically impacted our revenue due to the sudden drop in demand seen for physical workspaces across the country.

The growth of remote working practices and the introduction of various government mandates led to many businesses abandoning the office in favor of hybrid working models that pivoted between remote and in-office work depending on the situation at the time.

In response to the changing face of the workplace, we worked hard with office providers to highlight the COVID-safe steps being taken by workplaces to keep businesses safe.

In addition, we retooled our website and re-focused our marketing strategy to highlight spaces offering flexible lease terms, customisable amenities, and features unique to physical office space.

By shifting our efforts towards temporary offices and flexible terms, we were able to capitalize on the large number of businesses looking to leave their existing office spaces in favor of a more agile option.

We also pivoted our own working model, opting for a hybrid schedule that allowed for our employees to work both in-person and remotely, depending on their role in the company and personal preference.

This change resulted in higher productivity and lower turnover (relative to the rest of the industry), whilst also saving a substantial amount of money by allowing us to downsize our own office space.

Sanket Shah

The pandemic has been a rough phase for the entire world. InVideo has been a remotely working enterprise since 2017. However, the pandemic forced us to bring specific changes in our product and company operations.

We updated our online video creating tool with more features, templates and elements to suit social media video editing and creation. The pandemic escalated the production of social videos by manifolds. Our marketing strategies vigorously promoted social media video creation and videos for covid-awareness during the pandemic.

As for operational modifications, InVideo granted health support to each employee and leaves were granted to every employee to cope with both health and emotional crises. In addition, special goodies were sent to every employee to cheer up their spirits and online yoga sessions were held three days a week for overall wellness.

Ifty Nasir

For Vestd, it wasn’t so much a pivot as realising our extra relevance to businesses across the country.

Our core offering is a software that makes it easy to share equity with your team and as the pandemic progressed, it became clear that our product could help knit together newly remote teams. Prior to the #WFH revolution brought about by Covid, we’d served a core demographic of businesses that wanted (broadly) to offer shares to their team members as part of their compensation package.

However, the pandemic caused a crisis for a lot of businesses in terms of keeping teams aligned while everybody was working from different locations and at different times. We knew that share schemes are really powerful in terms of uniting everybody and keeping everybody aimed towards the same goals so we doubled our efforts to get that message out there.

So in a sense, it was more of a marketing pivot – ensuring that potential audiences knew about what our product could do for them. We saw a huge influx in different business demographics wanting to use our products and that hasn’t abated since. Covid has changed everything but for us, it’s certainly accelerated what we’ve been able to achieve.”

Nick Drewe

At the beginning of the pandemic, we noted that the shut downs resulted in a huge eCommerce spike, and we knew what had to capitalize on the opportunity it presented.

As one of the world’s largest eCommerce platforms devoted to consumer savings online, we wanted to surpass competitors services that average discounts and deals between 10,000-30,000 retailers, and that skew to big, brand-name retailers. No competitor was servicing niche and boutique retailers to the extent we knew we could, so we pushed to expand into that gap in the industry while people were at home scrolling through eCommerce sites.

We executed a multi-month service expansion of brokering deals to over 100,000 brands, and focused on smaller brands offering just as many discounts and promotions as their larger competitors. By delivering those deals, we experienced record traffic spikes and continue to hit traffic milestones of over 3 million visitors a month. A pandemic pivot paid off.

Kate Toon

From a financial perspective, the pandemic meant I had to cancel all my in-person events, including my annual copywriting conference CopyCon. I also lost additional revenue from speaking gigs.

In terms of customers I felt that they needed additional support during this difficult time. So to support this I reduced my top of funnel, new customer marketing and focused on those who were already members of my communities and courses.

Rewarding their loyalty with more attention. I spent more time supporting members with co-working sessions, training and one-on-one coaching-this resulted in a minimal membership number drop, and our members stuck with us.

I also created a new online course (The Sales Page Copywriting Course) and launched twice with no advertising, selling out both times to existing customers. Finally, we created bundles of templates in our copywriting shop and offered existing customers upgrades.

My approach was to stop banging the marketing drum and tooting our horn and instead stay quiet, listening to our customers and helping them with the products, services and support they needed.

Rune Sovndahl

Sure, businesses will take a long time to recover from what has been happening for two years now. And what the future looks like is not something I am able to predict. 2019 was a great year for FantasticServices.com. And then Covid-19 happened.

So many thoughts crossed my mind when the first lockdown was announced-fear, confusion, uncertainty. I knew the company is about to face difficult times. And I was right-we lost 50% of our bookings in no time, and I was afraid that I might lose my business.

I could lose 10 years of hard work and let go of the people that helped get FantasticServices.com to where it is now. I will tell you what-my childhood dream was always to run my own business.

It all started when I was about 8 years old, and my parents got me my first desk. I remember spending hours organising my pens and stapler, practising and pretending to run my own company, and this brought me so much joy as a child. Later on, through my adult life, I was always looking for the perfect opportunity.

And this is what motivated me to absorb my fears, face the financial hit, get back on track by adapting to the situation and simply just act. I decided to put everything I have into the business.

My focus, at the time, was to retain the 400 fantastic staff members and get ready for whatever comes. We started an online support group to stay in touch and help each other out with whatever we could. Now, I can only say a huge THANK YOU, as those people were working harder than ever! They were the heroes that saved the company.

The spark I saw in their eyes was the one thing that motivated me to keep going. We decided to come up with new ways to sell, book, and optimise our work. With all this came the buzz, as if I was launching a brand-new company. It was amazing! So we thought-what is important during a pandemic? Washing your hands. Hygiene! Sanitisation!

So, we introduced a number of antiviral cleaning services that were carried out with professional equipment and started using certified virucides. What we did is disinfect entire homes and office spaces with the use of a fogging machine that can cover an entire room with microscopic virucidal solution droplets.

We then did our best to popularise the service and make it available for everyone. We also shared our expertise with other cleaning companies to work together towards ending the pandemic.

The next thing we did is launch a franchise grant fund. We knew that many are either losing their jobs or experiencing financial struggles that affect their business. The grand was there to cover the expenses for starting a franchise business. This way, we were able to provide a great employment alternative for anyone that needs to restart their business in a sector of high interest.

Now that we’ve somewhat recovered, we also broadened FantasticServices.com into 20 new areas. Some of them being mobile beauty, pet care, and mobile car services, and further expanded our cleaning, plumbing and gardening services. We live in difficult times. And we need to adapt. I hope everyone has the ability and resources to do so.

Tom Shugg

The team at Meg Languages delivers language programs to more than 50,000 students every week but these lessons typically occur in the classroom with a whole class of students participating in a live lesson at the same time.

With the pandemic came the wholesale transition to learning from home and because of reasons around access to technology it became prohibitive to have students all dial in to a language lesson at the same time and there was a real concern of students without reliable access to internet being at a disadvantage.

As such, the pandemic pushed us to pre-record and digitise our whole curriculum in a way that students could experience our lessons whenever they had reliable access to a computer at home rather than just at the weekly scheduled time.

It was an additional product we had in the pipeline for the longer term but the sheer necessity of being able to provide a quality program during a sustained learning from home period compelled us to expedite this evolution of our program.

With Meg Languages having had 10 years operating in the online learning space we also made an effort to support our clients which are predominately schools in educating them in how best to adapt to this new learning from home model. We did this in the form of providing schools with a “School Continuity Plan” to better support staff with the abrupt changes occurring during the pandemic.

Prav Solanki

The pandemic has given us great opportunities as a digital marketing agency. With the shift to online activities, many businesses have to boost their online presence.

Thus, needing our services more than ever. But this didn’t spare us as well. The pandemic made the digital marketing industry more competitive. We have to develop a strong brand, invest in technology and upskill to remain relevant.

To stand out, we have to rethink our strategy and cater our services to offer flexibility that works for our clients and our business. We hired freelancers to provide exceptional work as needed, saving us overhead costs and real-estate expenses.

Graham Wynn

The pandemic had a significant negative impact on the recruitment industry. Private recruitment companies are paid only when placements are filled, so consequently, with many companies not recruiting, the income source dried up for many recruitment firms.

Superior People Recruitment restructured their business, to allow staff to work from home, and conduct meetings over Zoom, Skype etc, and in doing so relinquished physical corporate offices, which reduced overheads significantly. As a measure of good faith to all existing clients, those savings were passed on to the clients, by way of a reduction of their standard fees.

This assisted those companies still recruiting, by reducing the expense in doing so. This reduced fee was also offered to potential new clients, to also assist them in recruiting, and has been very well received, to the point that at present, the company is now dealing with more open job vacancies than pre-pandemic, which should see an increase in revenue in 2022, as compared to 2019, the year prior to Covid striking.

Saravana Kumar

After the pandemic, if there is one thing that employees are concerned about, it is – Safety. We have enabled remote work arrangements for all the associates across the organization. Employees require flexibility at this point of time. Our organization is well equipped to work cohesively with the help of a few collaboration tools.

One of the few tools we use here is Microsoft teams for internal communication, workspace chat, customer calls, demo calls and video conferencing etc. We also use our product- Document360 for knowledge management within the organization. These tools offer internal integrations that enable instant document sharing and responding to queries.

We have initiated organization-wide employee engagement activities to increase the productivity of isolated teams. In 2021, although we didn’t see any new product line, we came up with 60+ productivity updates in our knowledge base product-Document360.

Some of the key features are ticket deflector, workflow, JWT single sign-ons, full portal search etc. Our development team implemented 6+ different extensions and integrations like Salesforce, Drift, Belco to name a few.

The knowledge base has undergone some performance improvements in category types, search and bulk delete. 2021 was all about customer experience for us- focusing on improving the solution for existing customers rather than investing on a new product line. Our goal for 2022 is to ‘deliver more’. We are also working on a new product for the past one year and will be launching it by midyear.

Richard Clews

As the pandemic started, my businesses had to temporarily close. I was frustrated not doing anything, so I opened an online store – which raised $300,000 and is now profitable.

Here’s my story. I was already working with men’s garments. However, I’d never worked with pants and socks exclusively before. While shopping for myself early during the pandemic, I saw there weren’t many sites catering to men’s underwear.

So, knowing men’s brands and wanting to try e-commerce, I opened my current business. Now we’re doing quite well. We moved from my bedroom to an office last year. I also hired my youngest child to work with me full-time, which has been wonderful. Glad I made the pivot to e-commerce!

Chiraz Bensemmane

I’m Chiraz Bensemmane, a serial entrepreneur, founder of Pitch World Fast, a business development and consulting company. I created my company in 2015 focused on emerging markets helping companies and authorities to grow.

One of our signature projects has been taking the form of round tables for the ministry of health of Algeria which we were helping benchmark international good practices and with the Algerian authorities then discuss how to apply in Algeria and improve the healthcare system.

With covid-19, these kinds of meetings and events were not possible so we had to pivot, to think differently and see how we can leverage the situation. Part of our long term strategy has always been to replicate the project we were doing in Algeria with the local authorities in other countries, especially in Africa, and were in discussion with authorities in countries such as Tunisia, South Africa, etc… We therefore decided to rethink our round tables and from this, the African webinars were born.

It was a new challenge as, besides the technical & logistical part that we had to learn, we didn’t have a network of African authorities and we know how data, information, and the internet are quite challenging on the continent. Nobody knew us and we are a private company therefore why would african authorities would work with us and show up. We needed to create something of value, something different also from the webinars that already existed.

We therefore decided to make it an exchange platform for the authorities as we had covid and the AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Area) as the new normal and reality so that they could learn from each other and for stakeholders know what is really going on on the continent and what can be done, what type of partnership can be created. This new project was launched June 2020 and became then a new service that we offer, as well as our signature project.

Our African Webinars on Healthcare & Economy are now monthly meetings with African authorities and experts to share their experience and discuss together how to improve our healthcare systems and economies in the continent and unavoidable meetings as well the go-to platform for peer to peer exchanges on the continent.

Jess Munday

In 2018 we were experiencing dizzying growth! Custom LED signs were the must have items for weddings and our business was incredibly buoyant. 2019 saw the onset of the pandemic that forced global lock downs, halting all weddings and events, effectively wiping out 60% of our business overnight.

We resisted sitting back and riding the wave. Instead, we decided to hit the problem head-on. We recruited additional team members, ramped up advertising spend and switched focus to corporate and business signage.

We gave away 10 X $500 vouchers to struggling businesses, and used their signage as content for our portfolio. Quickly establishing ourselves as professionals in the business signage sector. We closed the hire arm of our business and redistributed the staff to other departments. It was a risk, increasing marketing spend, but it paid off.

We saw a revenue increase of 163% during April 2020 to May 2021 .This propelled Custom Neon from a 7 figure business to an 8 figure business. Now, in 2022, we are on track to turnover $18 million. Whilst there are no positives to come from the devastation of Covid-19, the pandemic provided us with a catalyst for differentiation and growth.

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The post 26 Entrepreneurs From All Over The World Share Their Experiences On Pivoting During The Pandemic first appeared on Tekrati and is written by Jerome Knyszewski

Entrepreneurs On The Greatest Unexpected Challenges They Faced With Their Businesses

Jerome Knyszewski — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 14:58:48 +0000

Entrepreneurs On The Greatest Unexpected Challenges They Faced With Their Businesses

Entrepreneurs On The Greatest Unexpected Challenges They Faced With Their Businesses

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.

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.

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.

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

Entrepreneurs – Tekrati

53 Stories of Successful Entrepreneurs From USA that Will Inspire You on Your Journey

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

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Can you tell us the difficulties that you faced on your journey to becoming an entrepreneur/CEO?

Kristina Alexandra Kovalyuk

Matt Post

Chris M. Walker

Brett Larkin

Kate Lombardo

Adam Rossi

Devon Fata

Dain Dunston

Ryan Yount

Thomas Mirmotahari

James Parsons

William Cohen

Tim Absalikov

Gian Moore

Emily Cooper

Michael Dean

Becky Brown

Sherry Morgan

Stephen Keighery

Devin Schumacher

Erik Wright

Bryan Scudiere

Kathleen Steffey

Paul Sherman

Dragos Badea

Pati Recarte Iguaz

Kunal Gandhi

Lauren Petrullo

Barbara Bolotte

Renee Dominguez

Joseph Gardzina

Will Cannon

Adit Jain

Jonathan George

Dan Voss

Corey Tyner

Keron Howe

Sophie Chiche

Erin LaCkore

James Simmons

Shawn Plummer

Stephan Baldwin

Benjamin Rollins

Froswa Booker-Drew

Lauren Carroll

Lauren Cohen

Michelle Diamond

Logan Mallory

Mark Pierce

Marla Cormier

Peter Ord

Shaun Connell

Brianna Socci

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Various Entrepreneurs From Around The World Tell Stories Behind Their Success & Accomplishments

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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

Can you tell us the difficulties that you faced on your journey to becoming an entrepreneur/CEO?

Sweet Ha

Valentine Okoronkwo

Mapesho Mukanga

Nate Tsang

Alex Bryce

Aquif Shaikh

Meera Watts

Baidhurya Mani

Smita Das Jain

Adam Jacobs

Craig Schulze

Ashley Bellino

Bree Stedman

J.D. Drayton