When entering the world of entrepreneurship, you may have already anticipated that building a business takes work. In this space, we see so many stories of what seem to be overnight successes and businesses that just seem to really nail it on the first try. These stories inspire us to build a business around something we’re passionate about and that will also financially support us.
Even though they don’t mean to, sometimes these stories can also create unrealistic or high expectations. The part about building a successful business is absolutely attainable – what sets us up for disappointment is the idea that all of this will happen overnight or with quick and easy fixes.
Understandably, many new small businesses start out with a limited budget and in a business world very focused on ROI, we sometimes get too caught up with the return part of the equation (as in: what am I getting out of this?) rather than understanding that the investment part is equally as important.
When we create these high expectations without putting in the necessary planning, work and resources, it may feel like we’ve ‘failed’ when something doesn’t do as well as we had hoped. This feeling may lead to frustration, dropping projects or abandoning ship much too early, but only because the expectations were skewed!
The reality is that we should treat our business as the opposite of a ‘get rich quick’ scheme. We need to build a solid foundation and then nurture and grow the business organically. We need to do our research and create a business plan that focuses on who our customer is and how we are going to help them. And when we put our business out there into the world – whether it’s a product launch, or a new website or service, we’ll learn from it. We’ll adapt, plan, launch and learn again.
Going into the business building process with realistic expectations and optimism is essential. Understand that the effort that goes into building it will be thorough, involved (and sometimes challenging!). But, also have the optimism that when the right amount of effort is applied and the learning cycle is expected, you’ll be building a business with a solid foundation to continue growing upon.
© Danielle Thomas, DemGen Inc. 2014
