Hanging on: Surviving the Early Business Startup Years

Entrepreneurs all have at least one thing in common: they see potential. Potential excites them, motivates them and drives them. The idea of potential propels them forward and compels them to commit time and resources into their start-up business ventures because they have the hope of seeing that start-up succeed. However, almost any start-up business owner can attest to the fact that the early years can be challenging. The true test of launching a start-up company is making it through these rough first years, and below are a few tips on how to do that.

Remember to Have Perseverance

The most helpful advice that anyone in business can give someone who is slugging it out with a start-up is to keep going! It may come as a surprise at first, but the majority of successful business owners have more failures than successes. The only thing separating them from failure was their refusal to stop and their inability to simply call it quits. True determination is what kept today's heavy hitters in the game, and it is what will keep you going further than you thought you had the strength to.

Focus on Your Opportunities, Not Just Your Problems

One of the best ways to keep persevering is to remember to divide some of your time each week to working on opportunities. Often in the first few years of a start-up company’s existence, there are so many issues to troubleshoot and problems to solve that it can really pull one's attention away from opportunities. Over time, this has a negative effect on morale. In addition to this, focusing on the problems will ultimately stifle the creativity required in a start-up. –Remember, if you want your business to stick around, you need to commit some of your time to thinking about opportunities. Focusing on the opportunities and the potential is what ultimately energizes you. Work on the problems you face, but also carve out time to commit to new advances. Spend your time working on both, and you will be better for it. Ultimately, the difference between success and failure is that people who are successful have simply kept reinventing themselves after every failure. In the early years of a business start-up, survival hinges on constant effort. Though there may be a lot of difficulties to navigate through and it may feel like there are more failures than you bargained for, if you are able to stay committed and hang on then it is likely you will reap the rewards of this in due time. By following in the footsteps of business leaders who came before you and by holding on to the initial potential you saw, you will be able to overcome the early years when things do not seem to flow as easily as you initially hoped they would. Keep a strong presence of mind, focus on opportunities, and keep going. All of these differentiates a successful start-up from one that falters and fades out.