5 Main Concerns of SMB-Owners and Ways of Overcoming Them

Launching a small business always brings certain concerns. Some of them originate from a lack of experience of new business owners. Others are common challenges that every business owner needs to face, regardless of their previous experience. 

It’s important to understand what to expect and how to react in such situations. If you resolve these inconveniences quickly and without any consequences, you’ll keep your business stable and competitive. 

So, here are five main concerns of new entrepreneurs, together with some practical solutions.

1. Lack of clients

When you’re beginning with your business story, you might be afraid that you won’t have enough clients to cover all your expenses. 

This is a reasonable concern, but if you play it by the book, you’ll manage to get around this problem. 

For starters, don’t start a business until you have enough clients, projects, and revenues to keep your venture rolling. Until that moment, work as a freelancer and enjoy the freedom of such work. 

As you land enough clients to finance all the costs that running a business incurs, start thinking about launching a business. 

Even when you have a steady number of projects and long-term clients, always make projections about your biggest projects. Keep negotiating with new clients to be ready to begin new collaborations as your old projects come to an end. That way, you’ll always have enough work to generate enough assets to run a growing enterprise. 

2.Unsteady cash flow

Closely related to the concern from the previous paragraph, unsteady cash flow is a serious problem for many new businesses. 

However, you can avoid it by applying the following steps. 

First and foremost, don’t hire employees until the number of projects exceeds your capabilities as a business owner and its sole employee. Even then, plan the recruitment process in detail and avoid full-time contracts. You won’t need permanent employees until you reach a certain threshold in revenues and projects. 

Moreover, if you’ve started a business and you have a fair workload, but the cash flow is slow, change the payment-collecting process. Schedule the invoices you send to your clients in the way that they’re due before your accounts payable. That way, you’ll have enough money on your account when your effective dates come to pay your expenses.

Apart from that, reduce your business expenditure as much as possible. Don’t rent an office if you can work from home. Saving money is also a practical way of ensuring steady cash flow and maintaining liquidity. 

3. High overhead expenses

We’ve opened the topic of overhead expenses in the previous paragraph. Indeed, high expenditure can have a negative effect on a new business altogether, even though that business might be generating a fair income. 

Apart from postponing migration to an office space, new business owners could reduce their overhead expenses by using cloud services. Instead of buying expensive software tools that cost thousands of dollars, you can use scalable cloud SaaS tools (software-as-a-solution). That way, you’ll pay only for the number and amount of services you need within a certain period. For instance, you can use various data storage, accounting, and data analytics services on the cloud. 

If the nature of your business is such that you have to rent an office, buy electronic devices and other equipment that is energy efficient. Also, avoid areas with high rents, but try to find something closer to your home, to spend less money on travel expenses.

4. Unbalanced growth

Some business owners are afraid of slow business growth, while others have the fear of too intensive development. None of these two extremes is good for new entrepreneurs, because most of them don’t know how to handle them.

That’s why you should try to pursue balanced and gradual growth. If you have a chance to work on a profitable but large project, calculate how much time and people you need for it. If it’s feasible, don’t miss such opportunities, but estimate everything in advance. Instead of hiring additional staff, you can work with freelancers or part-time workers via Upwork and other similar platforms. 

The staff is another reason why you shouldn’t be aiming at too quick development. Rapid growth requires fast recruitment, which is impossible if you’re working alone. It takes a lot of training to get a knowledgeable and committed worker. Therefore, keep your growth under control and bite only as much as you can chew. 

5. Insufficient online visibility

Running a business today means investing both time and assets in its online promotion. If you don’t ensure proper online visibility, your venture won’t be noticed by your target audiences. As a result, your growth will stall.  

So, the first stop on the way to proper online visibility is your business website. As explained by the experts from a Houston web design company, business owners need to go for an easily navigated and informative website. Avoid packing it with too many data that may confuse people. Stay concise but provide valuable and relevant information useful for your target audience. 

Apart from the website, be present in social media. Launch a Facebook business page and promote your business on Instagram, as well. Share blog posts you publish on your website via these social networks to generate more leads and draw attention to your business. 

Think about launching a YouTube channel, as well. As videosare becoming more and more popular, such a channel and promotional business videos or tutorials will add to your online visibility. 

New businesses need to overcome certain obstacles during the initial stage of their development. Once rookie business owners learn how to handle the cash flow and keep finances under control, they’ll get a powerful asset. And if they grow their ventures at a moderate rate and promote them on the Web, they’re more likely to turn their ventures into successful enterprises. So, if you have any of the concerns above, follow our tips and you’ll be successfully resolving them on your way to the top.