3 Most Annoying Things Small Business Founders Face

The moment when they decide to quit your 9-to-5 job and become your own boss is definitely one of the best in every business owner’s life. Once you take that plunge, your new life begins, a life of making your own decisions and building your own future.

Unfortunately for the vast majority of small business founders, the reality turns out to be far less upbeat as you soon realize founding and running a small company is far less complicated than anyone warned you.

The goal of this article is to let you know about these numerous obstacles that both annoy you and prevent you from building and growing your business they way you wanted.

In the end, maybe learning about them will also help you avoid them or find ways to reduce their impact on your new small business.

Endless Paperwork

Everyone is aware that paperwork is an integral part of running any business. It is a big part of working for someone, let alone running your own small business. The thing many SMB founders are unprepared, however, is exactly how much paperwork goes into founding and running a small company.

It does not matter where you live and which country you are starting your small business in, you will be absolutely drowned in paperwork. And this is even before you open the doors of your new shop, restaurant, B2B company, or whatever it is you are hoping to start.

You will be dealing with at least two or three levels of government, all with their own set of licenses, bonds, insurance and whatnot. You will be going from one agency to another and spending days on forms and forms and more forms.

Then, once you actually go searching for a space to rent and start hiring people, paperwork will only grow. Then you will start making money and the paperwork that will come with that will almost suffocate you.

And the worst thing is there is no avoiding it. You can only accept it and prepare mentally for it.

Do it.

Internet-related hiccups

Your small business needs to be online, there is no debating it. Your new company needs to have an online presence sooner than later and even though it does not have to be anything special; there are always things that go wrong with it.

For example, you find out that your intended domain name is already taken and that you will either have to rename your company or go with a domain name that will be a compromise. You go to register social media profiles and you find out that the same goes for social media.

Then, the web design company you hired does a poor job and your new business website looks like something from 1998. You find out that getting social media followers is hard work and once you do get them, there is little use of them. Your email marketing campaign returns less than spectacular results.

The important thing here is to understand that your online presence is not something you do along the way or wing it. It is an inseparable part of running a company in the modern world and you need to pay due respect to it.

This is even more important if you are starting an online business of some kind. In such a case, online problems will be enough to ruin you. Securing a good domain name, beefing up your cybersecurity and doing digital marketing the right way becomes a matter of survival.

No one cares

Okay, the ‘no one cares’ may be a bit too harsh, but this is something many new business owners learn once they open doors—not everyone shares their enthusiasm for their new venture. The worst thing is that this can manifest in a number of ways.

The most serious way in which this lack of enthusiasm can manifest itself is when startups find out no one cares about their product. The founders find themselves aghast at the fact that their brilliant idea was not as brilliant as they thought.

For other small companies, this can be seen in the smaller number of customers than expected, especially in the service industry. It soon becomes obvious there is a reason other companies do marketing.

Another annoying way in which SMB owners learn other people do not care as much about their new venture as they do is when they start hiring their first employees. They (hopefully) do structured hiring and they end up with people who seem the best fit for the new company. Only later do they realize that the vast majority of them mostly work to the T and could not care less about the wellbeing of the company.

When you are starting a company, it is important that you manage your expectations. Not everyone will be as invested as you are and you might end up meeting an underwhelming welcome. Even more dangerous is expecting to see a flood of customers just because you think you have a great idea. It is annoying, but it happens more often than not.

This is why you should always test your idea and do some market research.

Closing Word

There are plenty more annoying things that will plague your first months and years of being a business owner. Overcoming them is a big part of becoming successful and perhaps the best advice to leave you with is to accept these problems and never allow them to drive you insane.

Author: Nate M. Vickery is a business consultant and Editor-in-chief at bizzmarkblog.com. His fields of expertise are company management and efficient work environment through latest technology trends. Follow him @natemvickery.