Is your Business Struggling? Here are 13 Tips for You

The life of an entrepreneur is filled with rewards and frustrations. Running a business means that an entrepreneur will have to stay in motion always. At times productivity may experience a slump due to changes in the business environment. Factors like politics, labour market, environmental issues, or taxes may cause your business to fight for survival.

The article provides you with 13 tips that can help a startup or entrepreneur to support a struggling business to thrive. These practical tips will help you to convert barriers into a breakthrough.

1.   Embrace Change

Several external factors can disrupt your business. They include technologies, competitors, the industry itself and regulators. For instance, MySpace was disrupted entirely by Facebook, Amazon caused several retailers to close their shops while Craigslist affected local newspapers. However, such a disruption can be counteracted when a company embrace the underlying change. These adjustments create countless opportunities that you can take advantage of instead of allowing them to threaten your business. Resisting changes will cause the company to fail.

2.   Cut Costs

Keep your expenses as low as possible even if you’re generating revenue. Ensure that your cost is less than income in order to have a positive cash flow.

3.   Utilize Your Network

You can use your network to obtain advice on how you can pull through the productivity slump. They can also review and critique your strategy, products and services or even help you to find co-founders. You can also use this network for marketing your products and services.

4.   Change Your Strategy

The business could be struggling because you’re using the wrong strategy. Despite your efforts, the strategy is not yielding any results and therefore, you have to make some adjustments. For instance, you can improve your attitude, change your marketing strategy, increase working hours, expand your niche, or even modify the entire business model. An entrepreneur should not feel ashamed of changing the route to accomplish their business goals. Changing your path is not the same as quitting. Taking a different approach may help you do a better job.

5.   Hire Top Talents

One of the most significant challenges most businesses have is hiring the right people. The problem is common in all levels of companies, starting with startups through iconic brands like Apple, Google and Alibaba. However, you can counteract that challenge by spending time on it and investing in top talents. Having a good team could be the solution to the problem your business is experiencing.

6.   Continue Learning

Your business is struggling because you don’t know everything as an entrepreneur. However, you can fix this problem because it’s within your control. Study cases of successful entrepreneurs, read entrepreneur books and listen to podcasts. Research on areas you don’t understand or the most affected parts of your business. Make reading your hobby and apply the new ideas you gather from your reading.

7.   Focus on Value than Money

Instead of focusing on making money, you can concentrate on providing value. Look for a problem in the target market and solve it. The affected customers will be happy, stick with you and tell others about it. They will also believe in your business because if you’re able to solve one problem effectively, then you’re likely to do so to other issues in the market. This will ultimately increase your sales.

8.   Prioritize and Delegate 

As stated, all businesses need talented people to succeed. There is no business that can win alone. For that reason, you should learn to delegate to others who are able to do things well and faster than yourself. Delegating duties will help you to prioritize and concentrate on the essential tasks.

9.   Build Resilience

You may have had a dream of building a huge business empire; however, this was the start of the consumptive, nerve-racking, tremendous journey as an entrepreneur. On the other hand, where you end up will be determined by the amount of punishment you can bear, as well as the number of times you fall and getup. For that reason, you need raw endurance, focused perseverance, indomitable spirit, firmness of character and passion for realizing extraordinary accomplishment.

10.  Embrace Winners’ Mindset

An entrepreneur has two perceptions towards life; fixed mindset or growth mindset. These two business owners have to think and react differently. For instance, a person with a fixed mindset doesn’t change or improve their skills and knowledge. They die with the same level of knowledge they were born with. On the other hand, people with a growth mindset believe that they control their destiny. Therefore, they work hard, learn from experience, persevere, and they’re never afraid to fail.  In view of that, an entrepreneur should let go of behaviors and beliefs, holding them back from progressing.

11.  Maintain Your Vision

Having a soul-uplifting and inspiring vision is an important attribute in entrepreneurship. Therefore, you need a mind that can envision you becoming something unique or achieving your goal. This is what will make you do it. It would help if you told your mind and team that there is no limit and you’re boundless. The belief will push you further and improve your business.

12.  Revisit Your Past Successes

Reviewing your past will help you to rediscover your purpose, early successes and draw strength from them. You can revisit tweets, clients’ testimonials and personal highlights for motivation. This will remind you of past decisions that made you successful so that you can retrace the steps and navigate the present challenges.

13.  Seek Support

You can enrol in an incubator program, and talk to your mentors. This is the appropriate moment to utilize your network effectively. Ensure that the mentor you speak to has been in business for more than 18-24 months. That experience is enough to help them see what is working or not in your business.

Conclusion

The business could be struggling because of external factors inherent in the market such as competition, change in customers’ preferences, politics or regulations. On the other hand, you could be the problem, your team, strategy, products or services. You can seek assistance from your network or enroll in an incubator program. The above 13 tips can help to revamp your struggling business.