The hardest thing about business

In today’s blog post, we dive into the most challenging aspect of business: making decisions. It can be daunting in many ways, and I wish someone had provided me with a comprehensive guide when I first embarked on this journey.

In business, preparation is paramount.

Understanding the challenges you’ll face is essential. The content we share here at Purple Yak is designed to be as transparent as possible about building and running a business, equipping you with the necessary knowledge and preparation.

We don’t sugarcoat things but also don’t use facts to scare people in business. I believe in honesty because, in my experience, it’s far more beneficial than attempting to sell unrealistic expectations. Business inherently carries risks.

It demands long hours of your life, relentless hard work, and sacrifices.

Even after stating all that, none of these things are the most difficult aspects of running a business. Today, I’m sharing the most challenging part with you, along with strategies to help you navigate it.

In business you’ll encounter numerous challenges, and today I don’t intend to discourage or deter you from pursuing your entrepreneurial aspirations. Instead, I hope throughout this, you’ll realise that you’re in for the long haul and you’ll say to yourself, I’m prepared to face these challenges and rise above them.

Knowing what to expect can alleviate anxiety and help you feel less overwhelmed when unexpected situations arise.

Knowing what to anticipate can provide a sense of comfort and reassurance, knowing that these challenges are a part of the journey.

It allows you to prepare a strategy to effectively manage and overcome them.

Today, I want to focus on the most challenging aspect of running a business, not just your specific journey.

As I mentioned earlier, long hours, hard work, and sacrifices are inherent to business.

Changing your life around to pursue your passion can mean missing out on free time with friends and doing hobbies, long holidays, or other things you used to enjoy. But most of us are happy to make these sacrifices in exchange for doing what we love and changing our lives in the longer run.

Being an entrepreneur is what we aspire to be, so we can live the life we want.

In my opinion and experience from working with hundreds of entrepreneurs, the hardest part of business is making difficult decisions. These are decisions you know you have to make, but they’re still incredibly hard to do.

These decisions could involve changing your product, pivoting your pricing, or changing one of your core values to align with your true self and what you represent. They could also mean firing someone on your team due to lack of resources or disappointing customers because you’re making long-term changes to your product, service, or business model.

These decisions can be tough because there’s so much emotion behind them. We don’t want to disappoint people, and we know that there’s going to be a reaction, whether it’s from our customers, team, friends, family, or even ourselves.

We might feel disappointed or like we’re not good enough.

Most people delay tough business decisions, but the longer you put them off, the longer their impact. This means you miss out on the benefits of making the right decision, whether it’s leaving money on the table or missing out on growth. Even bigger decisions can hurt your business’s growth and reputation.

As the leader of the business, whether you’re the CEO or founder, these tough decisions are on your shoulders. No one else can make them for you. You need to take responsibility and do them.

The hardest part is that you can’t outsource or hire someone else to make these decisions. You want to be a person of integrity and make decisions that you can communicate to your team and customers.

You can’t run away from these decisions, and that’s what makes them so challenging. You have to face them head-on.

Ultimately, the quality of your product, business, and company will depend on the quality of your decisions. That can be intimidating, but it’s important to remember that decision-making is like any other muscle or skill.

You need to train it, practice it, and get better at it. You can’t shy away from it, but there are strategies that can help you through the process. One of them is a simple mindset.

When making decisions about our businesses, products, offerings, or pricing, we often feel hesitant to change anything because we fear upsetting someone or facing backlash on social media. However, it’s crucial to adopt a different mindset.

Instead of viewing our businesses as mere extensions of ourselves, we should see them as separate entities, akin to nurturing a child. Just as a parent would do anything to ensure their child’s well-being, we should prioritise the success of our businesses.

While others may not understand or agree with our decisions, our primary concern should be the well-being of our businesses. This mindset shift allows us to make decisions without feeling guilty or burdened by external reactions.

Remember, our businesses are separate entities that we manage, not personal extensions of ourselves.

By adopting this mindset, we can avoid feeling guilty about decisions that impact our businesses and focus on their long-term success.

Imagine if your child had issues at school. You’d try to solve the problem yourself. If not, you’d remove your child from school and enrol them in a different one. This is similar to your business and working with suppliers, vendors, or service providers.

If they’re not performing their duties and serving your business, it’s straightforward. Clearly state that either they meet your expectations or you’ll find someone else. No one should blame you for that.

Don’t feel guilty about it. This can extend beyond your service providers to marketing partners, team members, consultants, and so on. Ultimately, you, your team, and your customers rely on you making the right decisions for your business.

Acknowledge that you’re the custodian of your business. Even the difficult decisions you need to make, as they impact your most important stakeholders, your team members who enable your business, your customers who pay you, it must serve them and, of course, yourself.

You can’t go bankrupt because you’re reluctant to make a decision. You can’t tank your business or your income because the purpose of an enterprise, company, or business is to provide income for yourself, your team members, and, in some cases, empower your customers to earn income through your platform or service.

If you don’t make decisions in the best interests of the company, it will suffer, and everyone will lose. As tough as it may be, making difficult, gut-wrenching, hard, and emotional decisions requires prompt action. One effective strategy is to view your business as a separate entity, similar to caring for a child.

Another great strategy I learned from Dan Martell, someone I follow and was my business coach for a long time, is to ask yourself, “If I were to buy my own company, what would be the first decisions I would make?” Consider the changes you’d implement and estimate the time it would take to make them.

You might think I’d immediately tackle the top things I’ve been delaying. This exercise encourages you to think outside your business and objectively assess potential changes. Imagine you were buying your company; what changes would you make and when?

To conclude today’s lesson, the most challenging aspect of running a business is making tough decisions. These decisions define our business and can propel us to success or failure. This is why I emphasise the importance of mental and physical health. When you’re not in the right state of mind, making decisions becomes difficult.

Tiredness, crankiness, upset, or feeling down can cloud your judgment and lead to decisions that don’t serve you. Another important point from my experience is that just because a decision is hard doesn’t mean it’s an iffy choice. Many people wonder why it’s so difficult.

Easy decisions should feel easy. Even when you logically know a decision is right for your company, it will still be challenging and emotionally charged. Remember this because we’re human beings and emotional creatures. Our decisions affect others, whether it’s customers, vendors, or service providers.

One sign that a decision is the right one is how you feel after making it. Do you feel better or worse? Often, if you start to feel better as the days go on, you know you made the right choice.

It’s just that initial blow can be tough because, as a human, you have a heart, and sometimes it’s hard to disappoint people. But hard decisions are called hard decisions for a reason.

As the founder of your company, you’ll face many of the hardest things in business, including making tough decisions. Why?

Because you’re taking on all the responsibility and risk, which means you can get the fair share of the reward. This is why many people don’t start businesses. They feel comfortable in a job because they don’t have to deal with big, tough decisions.

They don’t have to deal with disappointing people regularly, and they don’t have to get uncomfortable. But that’s just the law of economics.

If people aren’t willing to do something, but you are, you’ll be rewarded for it.

That covers everything for today.

If you found value in today’s topic, make sure to share with fellow entrepreneurs.

Thank you so much for reading.

Take care.