10 Problems You May Face When Starting A Small Business And How To Overcome Them.
These are from my personal experience starting a Commercial Aquaponics Farm and STEM Learning Garden consultation installation business. No particular order and just in the order i could think of ten no matter how big or minor the hurdle.
1. Client Acquisition
The hardest thing to do when you are starting out and no one knows you , your business, and in our case what the heck aquaponics is (growing food without soil) we had a lot of educating the consumer to do (both B2C and B2E consumer in our case).
Customer discovery is the best process for this. Test all your assumptions with real world people, ideally who have no affiliation to you (as in not friends and family although they are likely going to be your first customers). For us we learned the sustainability of what we were doing was not as big of a selling point as being local and being fresh. Our assumption of how we grow our food and how sustainable the method was was going to sell our product was completely wrong. It also changed how we packaged our produce and how we went about selling it.2. Insurance
For us, being a new style of farming, and no previous experience in growing, or selling food insurance was impossible to get. We ended up getting an insurance agent who found a surplus lines carrier that would take us on, after a few years no claims we were able to upgrade to standard coverage.3. Legal
Should I be an LLC, a C Corp and S corp. Legalzoom can be a good place to start but at some point you'll want to get professional council and actually tailor it around your longterm goals and visions.4. Taxes
Get an accountant whos good in your field of practice. If you are a farmer like us get one who works with farmers and understands the tax benefits you can take advantage of.5. Cash Flow
Having trouble making ends meet with you core product or service. GO back to your clients and customers you do have and ask them what they are missing and what other products or services they would like around what you do. You may find a new revenue stream via a product or service you didnot consider. For us this was consulting and service contracts. Basically our customers wanted more hand holding and white glove service than we anticipated initially.6. Marketing
Always Be selling is the mantra for any business owner but know what your value proposition is and make sure its out there on all channels and all forms of consumption. Make videos, blogs, graphics you name it. You should have materials for in person and digital assets for all social and digital outlets.
This also goes along with customer discovery. Unsure what to market or how to highlight what you do. Go back to interactions with customers. Listen to what wuestions they ask, these are areas to educate with blogs and videos etc. Also listen to what they tell you they like about your product or service. Not only can you use as a testimonial but double down and make that your focus when marketing what you offer.7. Over Compensate and Over Deliver to Overcome Price (or other shortcomings)
Have competition, offer what they can't. Whether that be hands on customer service, offering options that they cant (delivery for example). When you are new you are flexible and you can chase where most established businesses don't need to. These early clients and customers should above all feel they are getting a better value from you that they can't find anywhere else. That's how you get people talking about you and that's how you get more clients and customers.
You likely can't beat your competitions price but you should be able to beat the quality of the customer experience. If you can't try harder or try something else.8. Bookkeeping
Like taxes, legal and tons of other administrative duties you'll have to do as a business owner. Get out of your own way and hire professional help for the stuff you are not good at. Maybe thats hiring an employee or maybe thats hiring a service provider. For me it became clear quickly that quickbooks and my disdain for spreadsheets was not a good combo for keeping our books. Hiring a bookkeeper for a few hundred a month was well worth the effort i could direct elsewhere not to mention the stress reduction.9. Hire your own comeptition
WHat i mean is as you start you will need to be a jack of all trades but when you hire hire for the stuff you don't excel at. You dont want to be CEO CFO CMO etc. and you can't be. SO hire people who would put you out of that job(s) and move on to what you do better than anyone else.10. Bad Clients/ Saying No
As much as i preached taking any and all business. You have to be willing to fire unproductive clients and or customers. If you are not netting a positive return in some way then that relationship needs to be reconfigured or ended. Just because you took on a client in a desperate moment does not mean that you need to be with them for life. By that same token if you can see a deal or offer is going to be a drain more than it is a gain (and don't measure that only financially) then don't agree to it. When we started breaking even or even taking a bit of a loss could make sense if other factors were beneficial enough. Gaining legitimacy and exposure for instance with institutional clients cannot be overlooked. Loss leads are tough when staring out but make sure they LEAD to something before you take on the commitment.11. Compensation
You likely don't have a ton of money to hire or contract out services. Find a way to offer other incentives to get the quality you need to keep growing. This is so hugely important. Starting out we could not offer health insurance, or competitive wages for our industry. What we could offer was the excitment of being involved in something from the ground up, feeling and getting (in equity) the ownership of that and appealing to peoples moral nature in working for a company that was environmentally and socially progressive. We found people who were willing to a bit of a paycut to do meaningful work and join our mission and purpose.
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