We live in turbulent times, which makes starting a business in 2022 far from smooth sailing. That’s because modern entrepreneurs face untold challenges, from dealing with the effects of the pandemic to the ongoing European crisis.

The business world is also ultra-competitive, meaning there will always be someone to fight for you for the first spot. But what separates successful entrepreneurs from ordinary ones is that they relish the opportunity.

However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t familiarize yourself with the toughest challenges of the modern entrepreneurial world. To hopefully make your ride smoother, we will explain these challenges so you can better prepare.

With all that said, let’s start.

4 Challenges Facing Modern Entrepreneurs

The internet gives access to untold resources. We can use the internet to research all parts of business in hopes of mitigating risks. But we can also convey information through the internet. Therefore, every hopeful entrepreneur should familiarize themselves with these challenges. Let’s see what they are.

Skill Shortage Issues

If you want to become a CEO, this first challenge relates to you. Namely, modern entrepreneurs must possess a set of skills considered necessary to ensure the success of their business. While we could spend endless hours discussing these skills, what everyone must remember is that an unskilled CEO won’t make it far.

Prospective entrepreneurs must identify the key skills necessary to guarantee success. These skills are vital for success, from business communication skills to building strong self-confidence. Therefore, you must fill the skill shortage gap before you launch your business. Here are a few things to do:

• Master the essential skills
• Understand the potential of technology
• Collaborate with others
• Incorporate a growth mindset
• Focus on yourself

Only that can guarantee success and minimize risk, as going unprepared is never a good strategy.

Supply Chain Issues

From start to finish, every business uses raw materials to produce a finished product. However, explaining modern supply chain is far from an easy task. For example, businesses rely on other businesses to source raw materials, refine and deliver those materials, and produce a finished product.

There could be dozens, if not hundreds of actors between the start and finish process. So businesses rely on others to keep their supply chains untacked. Unfortunately, achieving total supply chain resilience is far from true. So modern entrepreneurs must find ways to optimize supply chains.

They can do this in a few ways. In addition, modern entrepreneurs must be clever enough to find ways to cope with supply chain difficulties, such as demand surges or shipping issues.

Some of the things modern entrepreneurs can do to mitigate supply chain issues are:

• Keep stockpiles of materials and supplies
• Diversifying your supply network to incorporate multiple manufacturers
• Use technology to predict supply and demand (risky as no model is flawless)

Recruitment Issues

Despite our best efforts, finding the perfect employee is anything but easy. Every entrepreneur dreams of it, but the employee hiring process is universally dreaded by employers.

That’s because of all the tiny steps between the start and finish processes. Not only that but hiring employees is very time-consuming. Nonetheless, it is a challenge we must discuss. So how can modern entrepreneurs solve the recruitment issue and streamline the process? One thing employers do is hire recruiters.

If you can afford to hire recruiters to review resumes and conduct interviews, you’re one step closer to solving the issue. But considering not everyone has the budget to hire a person solely for this task, the responsibility falls on our shoulders most often than not.

So when the latter is true, here is what modern entrepreneurs should do to solve recruitment issues:

• Make the job offer more attractive but difficult to qualify
• Be more strategic – find gaps in your organization and look to fill them
• Hire internally
• Use software to streamline the process

Employee Retention

By far, one of the biggest challenges modern entrepreneurs face is employee retention. CEOs will tell you that employee loyalty doesn’t exist anymore. While saying that is certainly a stretch, some industries have uniquely low employee retention numbers, such as IT. In this particular industry, there will always be someone to take an employee if you don’t give them the desired paycheck.

But saying the bosses are the issue doesn’t paint the full picture. To increase employee retention, you have to treat people with respect. Fortunately, this is one of the challenges that you can and should do something about it. If you don’t want to lose your employees, ask yourself if you’re treating them the right way.

By no means, are we saying you should cave into their demands, but you must find ways to keep talented employees on the books. Here are a few rules to help you retain employees:

• Pay employees a good wage
• Encourage employees to speak their minds
• Be respectful
• Endorse a feedback culture
• Be flexible
• Invest in your most high-performing employees

We can apply these to almost any sphere. So if you want to keep your employees and prevent others from poaching them under your nose, make sure to follow these rules.

Conclusion

Modern entrepreneurs face untold challenges that directly compromise businesses. While some are out of our hands, others aren’t. It’s no good focusing on the things that we can do nothing about. But it’s crucial for modern entrepreneurs to find ways to solve these problems to mitigate risk.

We hope this short guide explains these challenges and gives you ideas on ways to solve them.

Author Bio

Erik Bergman co-founded Catena Media and helped grow it to over 300 employees and a $200 million valuation before stepping away to start Great.com, an iGaming organization that donates 100% of its profits to environmental charities. In addition to running a successful online affiliate business, Erik also hosts the Becoming Great podcast, shares entrepreneurship tips with his more than 1 million social media followers, and contributes to sites like Entrepreneuer.com, Business Insider, Foundr, and Forbes.

Every Year many business owners typically make resolutions which they hope will improve their business success over the coming 12 months – the commercial equivalent of drinking less and getting more exercise.

But with a triple-dip recession expected to be on the cards this year and with the retail sector particularly very vulnerable, which aspects of business success could they focus on in order to improve their chances of survival if trading conditions do get worse?

Here are ten aspects of business success and survival that the majority of business owners should be seeking to avoid or do less.

1. Debt

Despite the calls for banks and other funding institutions to lend more to the small business sector it is absolutely vital that you think carefully before taking on or increasing your levels of business or personal debt. Unsustainable national debt was the main cause of the current economic downturn and the burden of debt can ultimately harm or restrict a small business’ ability to realise its potential or ability to continue to trade if sales dry up. If you can avoid taking on debt from the outset and rely less on borrowing once you’re up and running then make sure you do so by bootstrapping or bartering instead.

2. Disputes

Commercial disputes with suppliers, landlords, customers, partners (directors and share holders) and even employees prove to be costly, unnecessary distractions for tens of thousands of business owners each year. When you become irreversibly embroiled in a dispute they are exhausting for all involved and attempting to resolve them once the dispute has heated up is generally too late to achieve a harmonious outcome or settlement. You need to spot potential areas for commercial disputes and business disagreements as early as possible and settle them straight away. If you let a dispute or disagreement fester, even a little, the poison will inevitably become more venomous and costly.

3. Delays within your business

There is a saying in business that the length of time remaining to complete a project is always exactly equal to the amount of time already spent on it. Delays in projects, production, deliveries or the launch of a new product or marketing campaign invariably mean loss of income and the opportunity to earn. The more instances in which you can identify, reduce or eliminate the potential for delays, the more you will be controlling your costs and increasing your income.

4. Laziness

Related to commercial delays are the activities and attitudes of people, especially your employees or sub contractors. If you have an inherently slow, lazy or under-productive member of your team, they could be costing you money every day. If they are unable to improve their productivity with extra support, coaching or training from you then place them on a formal performance review and (following proper legal procedures) they will leave your business.

5. Doubt

Not being able to make your mind up about a commercial decision isn’t good for business success or your own personal state of mind. Generally speaking, the longer you are in business the better you will become at being more decisive over issues you are not sure about. As a general rule, if you are in doubt about something then don’t do it and move on. Or make a decision one way or another quickly, because even if it is the wrong decision it probably will not harm you as much as continued procrastination and inaction.

6. Hype in the market place

Similar to hyped-up statements about enterprise and entrepreneurship being for everyone, you should be suspicious of hype from any of your suppliers or business partners and avoid using hype and superlatives in your own marketing messages. Hype is generally a mask covering defects and unpalatable facts, or a signal that those who spew it do not actually know what they are talking about. As well as being wary of hype from others, remember that others will be suspicious of hype from you. In any business situation you will find that honesty, modesty and realism get noticed and appreciated more by customers, suppliers and staff than hype ever will.

7. Waste

Every business, product or service involves some unavoidable slack, waste and inefficiency that can generally be reduced. In what ways is your business wasteful either in time, unnecessary spending, over-producing or over-stocking? If you look closely enough at every single aspect of your business you will be surprised at how many little ways you can find to be less wasteful – hence reducing your costs – which in turn will either increase your margin or give you room to be more competitive in your pricing.

8. Green

Being green, carbon neutral and environmentally friendly is great in principle but don’t let this become an obsession and get in the way of being able to trade viably. In many ways, being ethical and green can be a distraction and unwelcome cost, although when approached sensibly it can be beneficial to your business finances, external image and trading opportunities. Being green is about being ethical while remaining profitable. After all, an environmentally-friendly insolvency or a green bankruptcy is no use to anyone.

9. Perfection

In an ideal business situation you will be striving for the best you can achieve, and having a perfect, defect-free product or service should be part of the vision for your business. But perfection in any business is (almost) impossible. Striving for perfection is sensible and should be your driving force. But at the same time recognising that your efforts will fall short of perfection is more realistic and manageable. Not quite reaching perfection this month or this year doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t become best-in-class in your particular industry. Continually striving to improve, while remaining humble and occasionally admitting your faults will also get you noticed in the right ways.

10. Social Media

Before the emergence of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube how did business owners network or promote themselves around ten years ago? While it is now true that social media networks can provide useful and often productive platforms for business promotion in many sectors, it is important to remember that the ‘traditional marketing is dead’ messages from social media gurus are nothing more than self-promotions. Spending a little less time on social media and a little more on face-to-face prospecting, picking up the phone, writing a sales letter, updating your catalogue or improving your shop window display could make a noticeable difference to your sales. Building relationships in business is a major asset.

Apart from addressing some of these ten typical issues, the inevitable triple-dip recession, rising inflation, static consumer spending and the prospect of the UK falling off its own fiscal cliff, staying in business and gaining your black-belt in entrepreneurship should be no more of a challenge or hazardous than it has been in recent years.

Business Success: Final Thoughts

Fresh thinking requires a vision to see beyond the conventional. When you combine excellent quality with outstanding value for money you will begin to realise the full potential of creative and well presented business solutions. Together, the sky`s the limit. Have passion to learn and let the knowledge help you to be successful in life.

Business success is a journey, not a destination.

“Two little words that can make the difference: START NOW.”