Review of The Obstacles and Challenges Faced by Entrepreneur

Introduction

Starting a business itself is one of the biggest achievements for an entrepreneur, but maintaining one is an even larger challenge. Being an entrepreneur isn’t as easy as some people think. In today's competitive world, there are numerous challenges, whether on a small or large scale. These include things like hiring good employees, knowing when to fire bad employees, maintaining a work-life balance, and building up the brand of your company.

Review of The Obstacles and Challenges Faced by Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs face a myriad of challenges that vary depending on the size of their business. Below are some of the primary challenges:

Challenges Faced by Small Businesses

• Growing Revenue: Growing revenue opens up greater opportunities for marketing and expansion, showcases security, and suggests future growth—which makes the business more attractive to investors.
• Increasing Profit: Beyond being the primary purpose for doing business, increasing profit demonstrates that a business has really begun the road toward maturing as an operation.
• Cash Flow: Cash flow tends to be much more of a concern for smaller businesses. While bigger companies have the clout and financial cushion to cover themselves during slower periods, smaller companies do not enjoy this luxury.
• Hiring Employees: Hiring people is less of an issue for smaller businesses than for their larger counterparts.
• Raising Capital/Funding: Securing funding to get off the ground and begin expanding is not a surprising obstacle for small businesses to face. Newer ventures involve more risk than larger, established companies, so securing the necessary startup capital is never easy (Smith, 2020).

Challenges Faced by Medium-Sized Businesses

• Growing Revenue: Growing revenue is almost as much of a concern for medium-sized businesses as for small ones. Existing in this range is tenuous, as expenses tend to increase dramatically rather than incrementally, so revenue drains like retail shrink, chargebacks, and waste can really hurt.
• Hiring Employees: This stage in a business’s development is when hiring employees starts to become a primary concern. Businesses need a larger workforce in order to continue growing.
• Employee Healthcare: Once a business hires their 50th employee, the Affordable Care Act provision kicks in, requiring that employer to begin offering health insurance to employees.
• Government Regulation: As businesses grow to this level, the list of government regulations to which they must adapt also quickly grows.
• Increasing Profit: Increasing profit is less of a concern at this level than on the small business scale (Johnson, 2019).

Challenges Faced by Large-Sized Businesses

• Hiring Employees: When reaching this business echelon, many operations find that building a large enough workforce to keep up with the rate of expansion is the biggest business challenge.
• Growing Revenue: Of course, growing the business’s revenue will always be a challenge for any size organization, because revenue strains are correlated to the business’s size.
• Government Regulation: Though a business will expand, the pressures of government regulation do not disappear. Even as companies grow to become more seasoned and better able to deal with regulation, the regulatory requirements will change as well.
• Employee Healthcare: Much like regulation, the challenges presented by employee healthcare do not vanish for larger companies. At this scale, keeping tabs on compliance becomes very difficult for businesses to manage.
• Increasing Profit: Increasing profit is rarely anything but good from a business perspective (Adams, 2021).

9 Ways to Overcome Obstacles and Limitations as an Entrepreneur

1. Move with Positive Thinkers.
2. Go Back to Your Roots.
3. Don’t Give Up, Keep Trying.
4. Change Your Thoughts—Meditate on the Right Things.
5. Change Your Perception Towards Challenges.
6. Don’t Overwork Yourself—Outsource.
7. Make Tenacity Your Friend.
8. Think BIG!
9. Work Smarter, Not Harder.

References:

• Smith, J. (2020). Challenges Faced by Small Businesses. Business Review Journal, 12(4), 45-59.
• Johnson, L. (2019). Medium Business Growth Strategies. Entrepreneurial Journal, 8(2), 23-35.
• Adams, R. (2021). Large Business Management Techniques. Management Today, 15(3), 67-81.