7 Powerful Ways Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Their Biggest Obstacles

It’s exciting to see companies grow and prosper. As a new online business, everyone achieves goals differently as they go through a journey. During a business quest, every business owner tackles new challenges as they gear up to make changes, which we talk about during our free webinar training. As a new company learns from mistakes, grows, and finds positive ways to improve online growth, here are 7 powerful ways to overcome some of the biggest obstacles.

Try something new

After your business starts up and already you find you’re bored; perhaps it’s time to start back at one. Entrepreneur recommends trying something new. You’re never “stuck,” so if something isn’t working don’t be afraid to try something else that’s a better fit for you.

You can’t let yourself become complacent. Fear of change is your enemy. Kick things up a notch by regularly trying something new and unexpected. Is there something you have always wanted to try, but never made time for? It could be something adventurous, like scuba diving or skydiving.

Surprise yourself by pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. Doing so will give your ingenuity and innovative side a boost. Plus, you will have discovered something new about yourself — perhaps a hidden talent or an ability to learn something you didn’t think you were capable of.

Along with trying new things, remember to give yourself time to have fun, relax and unplug from daily stress. Downtime gives your brain a chance to recharge and stay open to new experiences. Filling up all your time with work, tasks and obligations is a ticket to mental and physical fatigue. Push yourself away from your desk and remember to embrace life!

Forbes also recommends being self-aware and discovering more about your interests. To grow a business requires self-reflection and deciding what works best for you and your new business.

One of the earliest challenges to overcome is you. Learn to be self-aware and understand your personal habits. For example, if you’re someone who isn’t receptive to new ideas or open to listening, this will cause issues for your business, internally and with partners. You’ll need to step outside yourself to take a good look at your flaws. Growing a business requires being adaptive, which means being open to criticism and its different forms; everything will not always be sugar-coated.

Focus on self-care

Starting a business gets crazy, which is why Entrepreneur reminds us to focus on self-care. It’s easy to let your needs fall by the wayside, but don’t allow that to happen. Take care of yourself so you can continue to help your business prosper.

If you want to operate at peak performance, you must incorporate self-care into your daily routine. Are you eating nutritious meals and getting plenty of sleep? It’s going to be hard to feel your best if you are run ragged and are stuffing your belly with junk food. Are you making time to exercise and stretch?

When we work up a sweat, it releases the endorphins that build up with stress. In many ways, your body is like a machine. It needs to be tuned and tended to, or something is going to give. If you don’t care for your body, you may start to feel burned out and you may be more apt to get sick or feel overwhelmed.

Don’t forget that your mental well-being also needs to be nurtured. Take time to meditate and focus on the things you are grateful for. Taking time to replenish your mind and spirit is paramount to sustaining mental health and giving you a sense of well-being. And that is key to becoming and maintaining your best self, now and over the long haul.

Stay motivated

In addition to focusing on your self-care, you should also remain motivated. Entrepreneur explains how you can push forward the “bored” days and instead, look forward to exciting days ahead.

We all have days when we wake up just not feeling it. Those days when our brains won’t get going — we’d rather do anything besides working. But despite being low on energy or inspiration, you have to find a way to keep moving forward. Remember, progress is incremental. You have to find ways to keep that fire in your belly; to keep nurturing that deep desire to achieve.

Keep your motivation alight by taking time every day to reignite that internal flame. Read blogs and books or listen to TED talks or podcasts on topics that enthrall you. Write down your goals and post them where you will see them every day, so you are constantly reminded of your purpose.

Forbes adds to Entrepreneur’s thoughts by adding that staying motivated is all a part of a process. Not every day is going to be a blast, but there are many ways to stay motivated and engaged.

Not every day is a success, but each day is part of the process. While it might be tempting to feed off the highs you get from your successes, you’ll need to learn to stay motivated consistently by appreciating the failures as opportunities. If the only way to motivate yourself is the occasional adrenaline rush, it will pose a problem. Train yourself to be active and engaged, especially on the days that seem ordinary.

Focus more on social media

Many people think they're “active” on social media when in fact they aren’t. Lifehack suggests putting more of your focus on social media because it’s an excellent way to convert leads into customers and make more money online.

Social media for your business is as expensive (or inexpensive) as you want it to be, which is why it’s used by 71% of businesses that have websites. Entrepreneurs can benefit from a large budget for social media but real success comes from quality and consistent content on a variety of platforms. It’s important to know specifically which social media services will benefit your business. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the Big Three (Facebook specifically is used by 76% of companies with websites) but it can pay dividends to research your industry and discover what will generate the most leads.

Shopify recommends figuring out where you should focus your attention on the most. Figuring this out requires being active on a few channels and carefully gauging your audience’s responses.

Through all the actions we've covered so far, you'll get a sense of how your community perceives your brand, where you can improve, and even products you can add.

But one of the challenges with community management is limited resources.

Conversations can happen anywhere online, but you can't be everywhere online.

Figure out which channels your community is the most active on and where you're most likely to satisfy your main objectives, whether it's to build brand awareness, drive traffic, or maintain your reputation. Those are the channels you should prioritize.

You can also conduct a sentiment analysis to see how people generally feel about your brand.

There are tools like Social Mention (free) or Sprinklr (enterprise) that will scrape the internet and analyze mentions of your brand or a specific keyword, giving you stats like the ratio of positive-to-negative sentiment, how far these conversations reach, and who are some of the top accounts talking about it.

Keep in mind, however, that sentiment analysis tools don't 100% reflect the complexity of language and how the internet feels about a topic. They do offer a good place to start though.

You can also get product development insights either on an ongoing basis, listening to what customers tell you, or by asking for it directly through social media or in relevant communities on Reddit or in a Facebook Group.

Do something you love

Mind Body Green says to focus on doing something that you love. If you like what you do, then you’ll less likely get bored! If you want your business to succeed this should be the ultimate goal.

Turn the very life you're living into a fulfilling, rewarding one you give thanks for every day. From right where you are, create a reality that uplifts and inspires you. Simply do the administration and make the needed tweaks. For when our life supports us at being at our best, we attract the circumstances we are wishing to attract. When we love our lives, we are magnetic for that great relationship, dream job, deep healing, or financial breakthrough.

Effective time management

Another way to make your company thrive and overcome obstacles, according to Lifehack, is effectively using your time. And — if you end up having employees down the line — don’t be afraid to delegate tasks to them.

Time is one of the least available resources for entrepreneurs, with 55% of entrepreneurs agreeing that there’s not enough of it to do everything they need to get done daily. To overcome this, learn what tasks you can afford to delegate to other people on your staff. Do this by thinking hard about what needs your personality behind the work, and what’s mundane enough that the person behind the curtain isn’t significant. With that kind of consideration – and by heeding the other advice in this article – managing a business doesn’t become easy (it’s never easy, nor should it be) but it becomes doable.

Don’t let obstacles slow you down. Building a business online won’t happen overnight, but as you overcome challenging times learn how you can grow your business by making more money, which we cover in our free webinar training.

Sources: Entrepreneur, Mind Body Green, Forbes, Lifehack, Shopify