If you want to succeed, you will have to face business challenges with grit. Being an entrepreneur isn’t always easy. It is stressful, can be frustrating, and there lies a certain level of uncertainty about the future success. The challenges that come with running a business is the reason why most people give up when it gets tough. In order to face business challenges with grit, try some of the principles below to contribute to future success.
While 80% of small businesses succeed after the first year, 50% of small businesses fail after the first 5 years.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics 2017
What is Grit?
Grit can be defined as a force that pushes an individual to surge ahead despite the challenges, struggles, and setbacks. When you face business challenges with grit, this is the quality that can often keep you going. It is that extra spirit, willpower, and drive to never give up and keep testing, trying, and pivoting.
Beginning a business requires a deep passion for either something you love or as an avenue to reaching a goal. Some of the obstacles along the way are lack of profits, financial funding, and under-capitalization. All of which can be overwhelming to say the least. Business owners often underestimate how much capital is needed to operate. They also easily overestimate the time it takes for customers to start using their products and services in the marketplace.
When a business owner finds that they are running low on cash, they lost a competitive battle, they lost a loyal customer or great employee, the walls start closing in. You start wondering why you started the company in the first place. But when people ask you why you don’t quit, you don’t know the answer.
This requires a journey of grit – figuring out that the struggle is where greatness comes from.
It is a matter of getting the right sales efforts in place, publicity actions, and the right marketing tactics to create buzz in the marketplace.
Fail Fast Methodology and Face Business Challenges With Grit
This methodology has been around for several years. It stems from the book by Eric Ries, called The Lean Startup. It outlines an a more efficient and agile way of making product and business decisions quickly (without spending too much money and time). It’s all about how to create the right product market fit through a process that he calls build, measure, and learn.
This feedback loop is a basic framework for establishing how effective new products, services and ideas are. It helps businesses continuously improve on these things, so that when the time comes to launch, it is the best product market fit.
Biotech companies, for example, have more failures than successes along the way. This doesn’t mean they quit developing new drugs. They simply pivot and find ways to connect with the right investors to realize their vision.
Implementing this methodology is one of the most efficient ways to better understand what problems you are trying to solve and how to best address your customer needs – before building a product that doesn’t sell.
It’s about talking to a lot of people, getting all the different points of view, assessing their opinions, deciding what to do, scheduling it on the product roadmap, developing and testing it, and then releasing it.
The idea is to get something out there, and if it doesn’t work, fail fast, pivot, and try something else.
Embrace Economic Uncertainty
When there is a decline in consumer spending, it is typically a red flag, but don’t let circumstances determine your fate. Take action yourself, and influence the action of others.
Become an agent for change.
During times of economic uncertainty, it can often lead to scarcity. This is what drives innovation. It is a time where you can be your most creative. Constraints can spur creativity and incite action, as long as you have the confidence and grit to embrace them.
Take Control of Your Business and Financial Future
Sometimes it takes setting aside what you think is true in order to learn what is actually true.
As an entrepreneur, it is important to protect your profit, and at the same time cultivate a customer-centric approach for business.
Build the Right Financial Dream Team.
This is a good start to ensuring you know your numbers without skipping a beat. Understanding your sales, costs around wholesale, retail, customer acquisition, and operations to run your business is essential. This is what will guide you to make proper decisions around growth, and help keep your business on track long-term.
Cultivate a Customer-Centric Approach to Help Face Business Challenges With Grit.
Creating a vision that customers can embrace will lead to loyalty and repeat business. It attracts the right business partners and investors because this means you are growing. Remember, it isn’t just about offering great customer service, but also offering a great customer experience from the awareness stage, all the way through to the purchasing and post-purchasing process. This strategy of putting your customers first, should be the core of your business.
Final Thoughts
When embarking on an entrepreneurial journey, know that you are going to face challenges and experience setbacks. But you will need to persevere through the difficulties. An entrepreneur who can face business challenges with grit is a successful entrepreneur. Failure is an important part of success, and paying attention to the important leading indicators of success and failure will help you stand up to the pressure, face your fear, and tell it like it is.
There will always be a fine line between fear and courage, and most entrepreneurs learn that most important decisions test courage far more than intelligence. The right decision is often obvious, but the pressure to make the wrong decision can be overwhelming. It starts with small things, and like character, courage can be developed.
While the journey may not be smooth, having confidence, and the right amount of courage and character will be a driving force to keep your journey going.