Business owners: What are the most difficult aspects of owning your own business?

Question

Is it hard to stay motivated? Was funding the business very difficult? Did you find yourself out of your depth occasionally? Did your business hit hard times?

Answer 1

The biggest challenge for any business owner is getting their head round marketing.  It took us longer than it should and when we hit hard times we blamed everybody but ourselves until we got a firm grip on our marketing.

Other irritations are things like supply chain - getting things from suppliers and delivering goods to customers.  That can cause some real headaches as you don't have control over those other businesses.

This is the third question you've asked about starting in business.  Are you thinking about starting or have you started?  What's the reason for these questions?

If you're in the UK and thinking of starting, contact your local Business Link for some very good free help and advice.  If you're already up and running and would like an outside perspective on where you're going, again contact Business Link for a free business review.  We used them for one of our businesses earlier this year and it was extremely useful to have that outside input.

Good luck with whatever you do!

Answer 2

The worst was completing the every increasing number of forms for tax, insurance, VAT etc. Bad debts are always a problem but I took a very hard line with those that tried to pay late or not at all and after  the first 6 months I had no outstanding debts and I had more respect from my customers. Never, unless you really have to, take on a bank loan to fund your business. I just adds additional pressure on you and this could effect your performance and your relationship with your customers.

Answer 3

~~Yes to all your questions. We have had a business since 1984, starting in retail. Retail is horrible. You have to depend on employees and cover their mistakes, you feel as if you have a ball and chain around your ankle as you always have problems, either cash flow, employees not showing up, slow times, estimating your inventory needs, etc. Our business actually grew too fast and it was very difficult having the growing pain nightmares. We finally went into construction about 8 years. This has been much better as we have a little more time control, less employees, but there is still always cash flow problems. Get a large project and then your payments don't come in, that's a real nightmare! I'm not sure what the good stuff is, except my husband loves it. To me, there is always a headache and when you are an employee-you do your best job, but leave all the headaches to your boss. That's what I prefer, when you are home, you just get to enjoy your life. With a business of your own, there is no other life  (rarely anyway) it's always about business. My husband seem to thrive on the challenges and loves the wheeling and dealing. Just takes a strong and very dedicated personality, which I guess I don't have. I do thinks he gets burned out occasionally but then the gleam is back when an exciting project comes along.  

Answer 4

The unreliability of just about everybody and the parasitic desire of evrybody from the Revenue to the bank and the electricity company to charge you extra.  For all the blather spoken by government about supporting business therre are essentially a large number of  bureaucratic hangers on trying to ge a piece of the action without actually cultivating their own businesses.