In this episode...

Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies

Laura Hargrave: Welcome everyone here at Boss It. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boss It community by heading over to our website, bossitclub.com, and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community of fellow Boss It BFFs, and we want you to be a part of it.

Okay, Sophia Noreen, let's dig into this. I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here.

Sophia Noreen: Welcome to the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen and I took an Etsy startup and launched it in big-box retailers within 12 months. As a creative with an entrepreneurial drive, I left my full-time career in healthcare to find better harmony between career, family, and self-care. We believe you can have it all. Yes, you can launch and run a successful scalable business while maintaining harmony in all aspects of your life. We believe we can learn from each other and draw on many experiences to create the best life possible. During each episode, we will share proven life hacks that will keep you on top and striving every day.

There should be no hesitation. Make a plan. Take action. We are here for you!

Sophia Noreen:What's up everyone? Welcome back to the boss at podcast. My name is Sophia Nare, and today we're gonna chat about a few of the reasons why entrepreneurs give up and why you should know this and how you can avoid these common pitfalls.

Because we know that if you are an aspiring entrepreneur or you are already running your business and you wanna elevate it to the next level, we all know that it's difficult and it's a marathon and it's not a sprint. And it's not a get rich fast situation, like those things don't exist and anybody who tells you otherwise is lying to you.

So again, it's marathon and there are a few common reasons why entrepreneurs give up. So let's get into that today, and I'm gonna give you my opinion on how you can avoid those situations or when you're faced with those situ. How you can basically have the armor ready to go and say, Hey, I remember when Sophia talked about this and this is how I'm gonna deal with that problem.

So let's get into it. First common concern for many entrepreneurs is money. Money causes a lot of stress. Having money to start the business can be very, Hard because you need to have your own capital or you need to go and fundraise or you need to go and ask the bank or a lender for money and this can be very, very difficult.

Yes, that was a meow. My cat has joined us for the recording, so if you hear her periodically in the background, you can just ignore the meow She is. If you are watching us on YouTube, I'll show you a snapshot of her. She's literally sitting in my chair. She tends to do that. She tends to wanna just chill with me in my office and I said, Why not let her join for the recording today?

But anyways, if you're listening to us on the podcast, you can always click the link in the show notes and you can head over to the YouTube and hit the bell and subscribe because that always is helpful for us as new YouTubers and of course for you if you wanna catch me on video. So anyways, money, capital, lending, all of that, very stressful, especially if you're a new entrepreneur.

If you are considering leaving your traditional nine to five position, or you are working perhaps some side gigs in between doing your business, Money is essentially causing grief on the other side of the fence too, where you're trying to have a livelihood and live a life that is fulfilling to you without the discomforts of an entrepreneurial life.

So again, money is one of the number one reasons why preneurs will stop their entrepreneurial career or gig and move back into a traditional 90. And one of the ways I found for us that worked was I didn't quit my full-time position right away. I actually started my business as a side hustle, and right now we are going through the transition of figuring out if I should be jumping ship completely and putting all focus on the business because I have the seasonal business.

Also, Sophia, it hasn't been as required because I work the evenings and at night and it's been. But we're getting to a stage in our business growth where it may not be possible moving forward for you if you're starting and you can work your business in the evenings and at night, and times when you're not dedicated to your other position or school.

That is my recommendation. I've said it multiple times, quitting your job or going full-time into an entrepreneurship endeavor when your first-time entrepreneur is very risky and it's not as comfort. I find that you will likely have more stamina if your finances are more secure, because then you'll feel more secure to take the risks that you may need to take in business, such as risking a little bit of money for marketing.

Remember, you can build an amazing product or service, but if you don't tell anybody about it, you're not gonna make any sales. And when you run a business, it's sales that really counts. You need to attract people to your business and then you need to sell them the product or the. So my recommendation to avoid this pitfall of lack of capital is to try to work your nine to five.

Or some type of other career in the background and or job. So that way you can work on your business in the nights and evenings, while in the evenings and on the weekend while you're seeing if there's traction for your product or your service. And this will help you with the whole discovery phase, as I coined it, where you're trying to figure out what will fit, what will work when it comes to your product or your.

Remember, entrepreneurship is an experiment. You are experimenting to see if your business or your service actually is what your customer needs. And if it's not what your customer needs, then you have to iterate. And sometimes this can take many years to get right, and if you have quit your job and you are running out of perhaps savings for your runway, it will not allow you to have the time that you require to iterate and experiment with your product.

So that is the reason why I say do not quit cold Turkey. See if you can work just to ensure your livelihood. If you are doing a project or a business that requires capital and you need to go do fundraising, that's a whole other conversation for another podcast. But for me, to you, it's about your livelihood to keep you comfortable enough so you can continue to work on your business without sacrificing your lifestyle or basically sacrificing your live.

You may have to sacrifice your lifestyle. You may not be able to have that steak dinner or your expensive noodles every night, but you can in the end, take some time away and work on your business in the evenings and on the weekends, so that way you have the time during the day if you are working or you're in school, to then bring in the money for your livelihood.

So that is one of the reasons why many people quit is because of lack of. Another common reason why an entrepreneur might give up prematurely is because they are afraid of competition. Business is a sport, as you would say, or a game, and there is going to be competition. That is just the facts around business.

That's the facts around most things in life, actually, competition is always around you. It just depends on how you want to frame it. Now I say it's good to have a little competition in business because it will help elevate your product or your service to meet the standards that your customer deserves and requires.

That's why you'll see many industries try to avoid the monopoly effect, where one business basically is a monopoly and then they don't have any competition and they set the standard. Well, they'll set the standard anyways, but the point is the customer doesn't have a choice in the matter. We see that a lot with our cell phones providers in Canada, unfortunately, but that is something that they try to avoid.

They do not want one single. Have the whole pot and the whole pie, because if they do, then the standards may start going down. So what that means is that competition is a good thing, it's a good thing for capitalism, and it's also a good thing for your customer and for your service, and for the service that's being provided to your customer.

If you can view competition like that, then you might be able to avoid this problem that a lot of entrepreneurs face when they say, oh, I'm scared of the competition. I'm gonna give up. Oh, so-and-so product is so much better than mine, or so-and-so already is doing that in the market. And you know, you'll have these excuses and that's all their excuses.

I always say there is more than one grocery store for a reason. Each grocery store has an individual customer, a specific customer demographic, psychographic. There is more than enough places for every customer to go to for a grocery store, meaning I can't go to a grocery store that doesn't fit my needs.

There'll be another grocery store for my needs, and, but that grocery store is for another particular customer. And what I'm saying is, as an entrepreneur, your service will not be the same as somebody else's service, or your product will not be the same as somebody else's product. And by you leaving the marketplace because you're scared of competition, means that you are not serving a particular product to a particular customer.

And now that customer has no choice particular to your competition. Competition is a normal part of business. And if you can reframe yourself, reframe your mindset to understand that, and you build up the tolerance to say, Hey, yeah, there is gonna be a competition, but there's more than enough sand in the sandbox to play, you will be fine when the competition does seem to come outta your peripheral vision.

And that's something else that I heard early on when I was studying entrepreneurship and under. Perhaps if I wanted to start a business or not. It's better to look forward at your vision of where you're going than looking side to side at your customer, at your competition. If you look side to side at your competition and you're not looking forward at your goal or your vision, you will likely get off path.

And we are towards our competition's goal cuz they're watching. As opposed to focusing on your own goal or your own vision for your own company. So as much as you can avoid looking at your competition, and this will help then for you to focus on what's really important, which is your goals for your company and vision for your company.

But again, if they come into your peripheral vision, if you see your competition perhaps doing something similar or something that you'd wanted to do, think of it as it's not really competition. It's sand in the sandbox. You can play well with other people in the sandbox, and there's always more than one grocery store for a reason.

You are serving a specific need for specific. And that other individual business may not be able to do the same thing. So if you can do that, that will save you from this particular reason why entrepreneurs fail. Another reason why entrepreneurs tend to give up is because they're afraid of failure. Now, running your own business is going to be risky.

Yes, you will be putting yourself out there and you will be trying to gain traction, but failure should always be reframed. If you can reframe failure to be lessons being taught to you, then likely you can avoid this as well. You're going to need to say to yourself, there will be points in your trajectory as an entrepreneur that you may fail.

And when I say fail, meaning you're not hitting the goal or the target or the metric or the key performance indicator that you wanted to hit, but is it actually a failure? So if you can reframe it to say it's not actually a failure, but a lesson, and you will iterate and change the process or improve the.

Later than you are actually just improving always. So if you can reframe your failures and not be afraid of failures, but say it's a lesson and you have to always change up what you're doing to fix the problem. So then you can actually hitch your indicators or you can hit your metrics or you can hit the sales volume or whatever it is that you're trying to.

Then you will likely be able to avoid this as well. Being afraid of failure has to be one of those things that many people are, say they don't even start, right? So if you say, I'm afraid of failure, I don't wanna do it, it's too risky, then you're never going to actually start your business. You're gonna be always sitting on the sideline, just watching and studying, and never actually executing because you're afraid of.

You might fail, and that's just a fact of the matter, but just don't call it failure. Just call it a lesson, and you have to own up to it. You have to say, yeah, I didn't make that goal because I didn't do X, Y, and Z. Or perhaps my goal was too ambitious for the time, or perhaps it was unrealistic. And be really raw with that truth.

Be really raw with the fact. Sometimes we are setting the bar a little bit too high and we do need to take the baby steps to get to that bar eventually. But if you can reframe your failures to lessons, then there is no failure, right? And you can get off the sideline and you can start executing in your business as opposed to sitting there frozen and paralyzed thinking, oh my gosh, I can't do that cause I'm gonna fail.

So again, that is one of the number one reason. Entrepreneurs will eventually give up because they're afraid of failure. But that's all a mindset trick. And if you can basically change your mindset and say a failure actually is a lesson in disguise. I'm sure that was a quote from somewhere. Then you will be able to avoid that as well and hopefully, hopefully continues to move forward in the path because again, entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint, and you will have many, many lessons in disguise as you move forward.

So again, reframe that failure to a lesson and your gold. And the last point we'll cover today on why entrepreneurs. It's because of the lack of support, and this is a common one. I've faced this as well, that you may not feel you're getting the support from your family, from your friends, from your parents, from your loved ones, from your partner.

They don't understand. They're not there when you need them. They will say, your business is not really a business. It's not making any money. They won't encourage you, and a failure or a lesson in disguise pops up. They're gonna say, why are you wasting your. Yada, yada, yada. I've heard it all as well, and this is one of the reasons why you do need to either.

Be really cognizant on what you say out loud to certain individuals, but also why you probably should surround yourself with other like-minded entrepreneurs. I joined a couple of groups when I had just started out for this very reason, I didn't feel like I could connect with anybody around me. I had come from a space that was the healthcare setting.

Nobody was doing what I was. And even my colleagues thought I was wasting my time. But in the end, it's not about the external world. There's obviously something internally that's motivating you to even watch this video, listen to this podcast, and to be able to engage and understand that yes, entrepreneurship is hard and it's great to work with a community around you.

If you see other people working with you or besides you are in tandem with you on their own business, it helps you feel motivated to do the same. So my suggestion is to find a community of like-minded individuals, either online or through a network within your own community, like basically your community, not online, offline community.

Because having. Network will help you not only learn who's out there in the industry, but it will help motivate you to continue going forward. And it's almost not fair for us to expect our loved ones to fully understand because it's your internal desire to move forward into this path. Unless you have a family that is business oriented and perhaps owns their own businesses or grew up in that environment, they won't understand necessarily why you want to move into entrepreneurship because for all the reasons we've mentioned, it's a very risky endeavor.

But I always say there's something propelling you from within. That means that you have everything in your power to make it happen. I'll say it again. If something's propelling you from within, Then you have everything in your power to make it happen. So if you have a vision for your business, then you have the power to make it happen, and nobody really can tell you otherwise.

Even your best friend, your parents, your loved ones, your partner, no one will really understand or know. So again, it's good to surround yourself with a community. Now, luckily, social media is very powerful and there's many. Online communities, either here on YouTube or on Instagram. I'm sure TikTok is starting to pick up on a few communities.

Not so much about the podcast podcast, unfortunately, you hear the audio, but there's not much community around it. So I would say try to find a few of those other platforms I mentioned and try to tap into a community online. And then if you're very lucky and you're in an environment that has offline events, I would suggest tapping in on that as.

Because again, you never know who you're gonna meet in person, and I feel that in-person connection can really help. So again, guys, connecting with a community of like-minded individuals will help you feel like you are part of something bigger. It will help motivate you and inspire you, especially if you don't have that type of encouragement in your natural environment as it stands right now.

So all in all, there are going to be many reasons why you would want to give up. Entrepreneurship is hard. I think if you can basically take what we have said in this episode about the four reasons why entrepreneurs commonly give up, and you use those tactics to avoid those pitfalls, if they do arise, then hopefully you'll be able to have that long enough runway that, remember it's a marathon to test out your product and help your business get started.

You should be able to avoid those common reasons why people will give up. Again, guys, if it's funding related, if it's competition, if it's fear, or if it's your family, it doesn't matter any of those four. It really does also come down to your mindset. You can always reframe the situation, especially when it comes to competition and when it comes to fear, and obviously the community, that's also great because sometimes you know that you're not gonna get the support from your family and friends.

But again, with your mindset, you're gonna say to. We shouldn't expect that anyways, right? That it was coming from within. It's not coming from external forces. It's likely that you want to do this. So those three really, if you can reframe your mindset, that will be perfect. And of course, with funding, you have to have a bit of stamina to do both for a while if you don't want your lifestyle to be ultimately too affected by you starting your business.

Cause business takes capital and it's very difficult at the beginning if you're not bringing any money in. So my suggestion is to try to do both if you can. If you can't. You're gonna have to start dipping into your savings or get your PA runway of savings set up to go for at least a year, in my opinion.

So that way you're able to give enough time to your business to start getting some traction. Okay guys, well that's it for this episode. Remember, hit the bell and subscribe wherever you're catching us. You can follow us on Instagram at Boss at Club, and remember, we release a new episode every week, so you'll catch you again next.

And remember, make a plan and take action. And yes, you can have it all and I'll talk to you later. Take care. Bye.

Sophia Noreen: So my fellow bosses, did you enjoy that episode? Now is time for you to make a solid plan and take action. But first, remember to subscribe and follow the boss at podcast so you receive a notification.

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This list is exclusively for podcast reviewers, so don't miss out. Now, remember, bosses make a plan and take action in all aspects of your life. Yes, you can have it all.