Many people will say, “Everything.” And to a certain extent, they are right. By definition a small business is small. Resources are at a premium, so you don’t have room for a big staff. That means you are the staff. That is a change from corporate America where most small business owners come from.
Never Underestimate Your Capacity to Not Know.
I am going to make the assumption that you have a sound product and are adequately financed. Those two things are not negotiable. You have to have them. Which means you can argue either of them is the most important thing to have, which could translate into “the hardest,” but I am taking those as given for the purpose of this question. Which leads me to what is not a given that is hard?
Two things. Marketing and time management. A small business owner should never underestimate their ability to underestimate what they don’t know. Product and finances are tangible, measurable qualities. You can look at those and get to a yes or no answer. Marketing and time management are not. Frequently, in both you don’t know what you don’t know. That makes both of those areas, which are essential for success, hard.
Work On Your Business, Not Just In It.
When you run any business ─ but especially a small business ─ a few things tend to come first. Make your product. Serve your customers. Sell your product. Pay your bills. Manage your employees. Those things always happen. They can take your entire day. And, they can be exhausting. Marketing and time management can, and frequently do, take a back seat. But they are just as essential to the success of your business as anything else. Plus, they aren’t second nature to most people. But they still have to be done.
What is the solution? Do them, despite their difficulty, no matter how hard they are. Make time management come first. If you do that well, then you have time to do everything else plus market. How do you do it? Delegate non-essential aspects of production, service, selling, etc. That should give you time to work on your business and not just in it.
If you never reach a point where you are working on the business, you end up always working in it. Delegate and always set aside a part of your day for marketing and you will succeed. How many businesses with great products fail due to inadequate marketing? How many great marketing plans elevate an adequate business to success? It is very safe to say the latter number is larger than the former.
Marketing + Time Management = the Single Hardest Thing.
In the end, what is the hardest thing about owning a small business? Learning to manage your time to where you always ─ always ─ have time left over to spread the word.
Read more about business ownership here on our blog.
Running a successful business on your own is hard.
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