Small Business Entrepreneur Blog

If you have already read my latest 2 posts: There is something wrong with entrepreneur’s minds and Commenting on SUSAN SCHRETER’s “What you need to know to start a small business” , then the best follow up is Sarah Winfrey’s What to Expect When Starting Your Own Business . She says she did a ton of research over the last year about starting a new business and she found out that (my comments as usual in between):

• “You will lose money. You could be facing a year or two of losses even if your idea is eventually successful. It just takes that long to make contacts, acquire customers who return time and time again, and drum up enough recognition for your product and your brand that people know it and trust you.” You can find more about this in both my previous articles!
• “Things will not go as planned. Something will go wrong. Most of the time, though, wrong turns slow down business growth.” That’s probably the underlying idea on my article about on entrepreneur minds. By the way, this is one of the reasons why I say some sort of business plan is needed each year. Business plans shouldn’t be done only at start-up times, a business plan a year will show you the direction you have to take, the goals and the challenges. (this makes me think I haven’t done one this year yet!)
• “Some customers will be unhappy. No matter how good your product or service is, there are always people who don’t like it. They will probably complain vociferously and harangue steadily, and there’s not much you can do about it.” That’s true. Most of the times, your services or products are simply not good enough, and you can’t do much about it. In other cases, you should “fire your customer”. Learn to say no to customers that don’t bring you any value, or you simply can’t match their expectations. Sure, you lose some business, but you at least have time to find the “good customers”, and in the end, losing a business is always better than loosing resources, time, money and other deals because of the patches you need to do just for that customer.
• “You will have to dig deep.Being an entrepreneur takes a lot of social, emotional, and physical energy, and it requires you to sustain high levels of those energies over long periods of time.” That’s probably one of the most ignored factor when starting the business. You can read more in my article about “entrepreneurial minds”
• “You will have to adjust your prices.Almost every case study I’ve read about an entrepreneur mentions a major price change somewhere in the formative stages of the business.” That’s somehow an understatement in my opinion. You will not only have to adjust prices, you might have to change your business model, fire your employees, shut the business down and start all over again with a better one, or simply do something else, or do some things or maybe all the things differently. You might have to shift your expectations, get partners that are smarter than you or anything else that gets things going further.
• “There will be slow seasons.Your product takes off, and you can’t believe the ride you’re on. Six months later, business is in the doldrums and you’re not quite sure what happened.” It seems that no matter how hard you try, or how well you plan ahead, there is a certain moment when the business will get so slow you will fear the worse. You can’t do much about it than spend wisely. Always!
• “Someone else will have a similar product.No great idea is created in a vacuum, so it’s invariable that someone else will come up with something similar to what you’re selling at some point” Great. You can read more about this, a real life case, by reading Jamie Lentzner’s article
• “Your family and close friends will face stress.If you think you’re the only one who will pay a price to get your business started, you couldn’t be more wrong. As an entrepreneur, you will miss important events. You will not get enough rest, and be tired and cranky.” Plenty of info about this on my 2 stress related articles: Entrepreneurship stress and Entrepreneurship stress follow up
• “You will pay more taxes.” Well, no comments on this one, as it doesn’t need any.
• “You will burn the candle at both ends. Starting a business takes time, particularly at the beginning where you’re the one doing everything–contacting vendors, advertising, making the product or performing the service, working on packaging, building an identity for your business, working with suppliers who may well be located in other countries, invoicing, etc.” CORECT!
• “Your work will be more rewarding.”
• “You will change in the process.”
• “You will always have something to talk about.”

I’m not commenting on the last 3 points because I really want you to go ahead and read Sarah Winfrey’s original article