The 17th and 18th century entrepreneur meant a person who organised or operated a business. Linguistic and practical arguments beyond that period, asserted that an entrepreneur meant a person who designed and grew new businesses. We agree with the latter and bear that in mind through the body of this post.

Starting out as an entrepreneur is often challenging - even after that, it is challenging for an entrepreneur. Hence, it may be a good idea for an entrepreneur to learn how to rise above the challenges and realise great results at lesser costs.

Considering cases of several entrepreneurs, over the years till date, we identified these three common challenges entrepreneurs often have to rise above:

Challenge #1

Self

As a human, the challenge of the self is often inevitable for an entrepreneur - as the self is the entrepreneur's main fabric of existence. The self is an embodiment of the entrepreneur's personality.

An entrepreneur always has to nurture beliefs, raise ideas, keep commitment, start action, observe reaction and uphold responsibility. The readiness of an entrepreneur to do these things and the quality with which the entrepreneur does them determines the entrepreneurial success.

Poor belief system, lack of ideas, feeble commitment, failure to act, misinterpretation of outcomes and neglect of responsibility are noted among major reasons for failure among most entrepreneurs.

Challenge #2

Skill

Skill is the most priceless possession of an entrepreneur - and it is rarely possessed abundantly enough for it not to be a challenge for the entrepreneur. Skill is the crude and readily available work ability of the entrepreneur.

Skill in its primary form of existence is often of only little potential. Hence, skill has to be trained and developed to its full potential and finest. Some skills wane with environmental development, entrepreneurs must always catch up.

Many entrepreneurs have suffered bitter startups and unhappy endings, owing to lack of skills or simply poor skills.

Challenge #3

Market

Without the market, an entrepreneur will starve - to death, maybe. This makes the challenge of the market as critical to an entrepreneur as that of the self and skill. The market is the demand point for the entrepreneur's services and products.

An entrepreneur's worse misery is that the market is uncontrollable - it is not within the control of the entrepreneur. The market may be nonexistent, its participants may be uninformed, the infrastructures may be underdeveloped or its operation limited. Mostly, no choice for an entrepreneur, but to leverage on whatever the state and manner of the market is from time to time.

Inability to leverage market situations and conditions towards entrepreneurial success has led to the surrender of many entrepreneurs to the fate of other endeavours.

Advice

For starting entrepreneurs, it is of great worth to look into these three areas of challenge and make major resolutions and preparations ahead of entrepreneurial pursuit. It may also be useful to keep them in mind throughout the entrepreneurial journey.

http://www.excellaid.com.ng/three-common-challenges-for-starting-entrepreneurs