6 common setbacks you’ll face as an online business owner – and how to overcome them

There's so much satisfaction and joy that comes from running your own business. But, it's also inevitable that there were will challenges and setbacks from time to time. In today's episode, I outline the 6 most common setbacks in business and my strategies and tips to overcome them.

– How to persevere through the slow income growth phase of your business by following these 4 steps
– Why audience growth is a slow burn and the 2 options you could consider to speed up this growth
– Understanding that business ownership is a financial rollercoaster and how to deal with unexpected tax burdens
– The importance of trade marking your products to protect them from digital ‘copycats'
– Why prioritising YOU is super important to avoiding burnout and how to overcome it

 

Today, we're talking about setbacks and obstacles in business because I think it's pretty much impossible to run a business and not face a lot of setbacks along the way. I think back on my journey and all of the highs and all of the lows and even now when things are going good, I think, Hmm, what's the next thing that's going to go wrong? 

So I know they are pretty much impossible to avoid and even if you try your best to avoid them, you're probably still going to end up facing various setbacks along the way. 

So today I'm talking about six of the most common ones that you may face as a business owner and what you can do to overcome them and in some cases, even prevent them. 

 

Setback #1: Slow income growth.

Very common. You're doing all of the things and you think you're doing them right and yet your monthly income just isn't growing. And this is so totally normal because growing a business can take a while but then we're shown all of these beautiful overnight success stories that mislead you into believing otherwise. 

And this is one of the hardest places to be. Because this is that point where you've got a business, it's running but you're probably not earning as much as you would be in your job. Or you are earning as much, but you're working much harder than you were in a job. And you might be questioning, is this worth running my business or am I just wasting my time? Would it be so much easier if I just got a job? 

The ways to overcome this.

Firstly, I would say, stay focused on your vision. Because chances are you started your business for a reason other than as an income source, it might be that you wanted the freedom to travel. Maybe you wanted the freedom to be at home with your kids, the freedom to spend more time with your family.

Whatever the reason you started your business for, tune back into that. And remember that when you feel like you want to give up, when you feel like you're getting nowhere, next identify the source of your slow income growth. Is it that your business simply isn't reaching enough people? Or is it that you're not converting those people into buyers? 

A lot of the time when we think our growth is because our audience growth is too slow, it's actually not an audience growth issue. It's actually a conversion issue. People are coming into contact with our business. They might be visiting the website but then they're not buying or they're not inquiring, or they're not signing up to work with you. 

And then also with the clients that you do have, how well are you getting them to come back and buy from you again and again?

 

Setback #2: Slow audience growth.

This is similar to the last one, but not quite the same.

Slower audience growth maybe you are posting to social media, maybe you've got a podcast, you've been growing your email list but it's all just feeling so slow and you're ready to start growing faster but it's just not happening fast enough and that's because organic audience growth is slower. I have often said this, Instagram is not an audience growth tool. It's a nurturing tool for your existing audience. A podcast is the same. It's not an audience growth tool, it's a nurturing tool. 

So to speed up your audience growth right now, you have two main options. The first one is paid advertising — I probably wouldn't recommend doing this one until you've got clear messaging, you know that your sales processes convert. You have a strategy for taking somebody from cold to buying from you. And you know all of this is working. 

You're not just blindly throwing money into paid ads and you're like, oh, three people clicked. I don't know if that's good. I don't know if that's bad because you really don't until you have some way of knowing that people are going through this process and how many of them are converting.

The second way to speed up your audience growth, and this one you can do for free, and that is getting yourself in front of other people's audiences. Partnerships and collaborations. These are really effective. They sound really lame because everyone's like, yeah, collaborations but there are really effective ways to grow your audience.

Pitching podcast interviews, that's a collaboration. Pitching to teach somebody, online course or membership that's a collaboration. Speaking at somebody's event, that's a collaboration. These all get you in front of other people's audiences. Where then you can send them back to your audience.

 

Setback #3: Running out of cash.

Even if your business is technically profitable, your business can be not making money. It can be super profitable and you can still have no cash in your bank account. If you haven't retained enough cash to pay your tax bill or your GST or your sales tax bill. If we have employees, these things can be a little bit of a surprise. And you can suddenly end up with not enough cash in your bank account. 

Or maybe you've been withdrawing money from your business account to pay for lifestyle expenses. Those lifestyle expenses aren't a business expense. They're not showing up in your business, profit and loss. But they are coming out of your bank accounts. So they're affecting your cash balance. 

So how to overcome this? Get really good at budgeting for cash flow. Find a spreadsheet and it will allow you to forecast your cash inflows and your cash outgoings. So you can see what your bank balance will be in the future. And if you see that three months from now, your bank balance is going to hit zero because you paid that tax bill. Well now, you know, okay, you need to do something to make sure that you are bringing in enough cash now so that in three months' time, you're not going to run out of cash.

 

Setback #4: Unexpected tax bills.

When you start  making money, you also have to pay taxes and you might already have spent this money by the time your tax bill is true. But I would recommend, always get a good accountant, make friends with them, and ask them, Hey, what's my tax bill looking like for this year? 

 

Setback #5: Copycats and impersonators.

I get a lot of impersonators on Instagram, where somebody literally just copied my entire Instagram account and they're pretending to be me and then they DM my followers.

Just as a heads-up, I will never DM you and be like, Hey, you should buy my call. So you should buy this thing unless you have expressly said that you would be interested in it. So just be mindful of that and also never click a link that looks really weird because that is how you get scammed. So that's impersonation.

Copycats are somebody who is copying your intellectual property, your IP, and that might be your business name, it might be your course name, your course content, your podcast, your name, your eBooks, your designs, or your logo. Anything that is your property that you have created. It's like digital property. That is theft. 

If you think back to early two thousand when they had those wonderful ads, you wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal this. You wouldn't steal that at the beginning of like every DVD that you hired. Or every video that you hired. IP is similar, its property. That you can't physically hold onto and keep. And somebody can go and copy that and it is still stealing. 

So if your business name isn't trademarked and somebody goes and copies it. Most of the time, there's not much you can do.

Now, this varies from country to country. So always talk to a lawyer in your country. 

 

Setback #6: Burnout.

I've experienced this a few times in my business and I've seen this happen to a lot of my business friends over and over again and it's a big spectrum. Like on one end on the extreme end, burnout can look like severe depression.

But on the less extreme end and maybe like the earlier warning sign, is when you're experiencing a creative lull or you're not feeling inspired, and you're not enjoying what you do anymore. Super common, especially in the missy middle stage of your business. When you might be working really hard, spinning your hamster wheel and you feel like you're not getting anywhere and it's exhausting. 

Now with burnout prevention, it is much easier than fixing it. But it's really hard because it goes against what the natural tendency is, which for most of us, the tendency is to work harder. The tendency is to be overachievers. But preventing, it means prioritising rest. It means doing less. 

It means prioritising exercise, connection with friends and family, eating well. Not living off coffee and adrenaline nonstop, which I have gone through stages in my business where I have literally been living off coffee and adrenaline and it's not good for your body. It's not good for your mind.

And then that's when you stop feeling inspired, you stop feeling creative because you are literally in fight or flight. You're literally in survival mode and it gets to this point where your body's like, I actually cannot do anymore. And that's when burnout sets in. 

So once you are already feeling burnt out, you can't push your way through it. You can't just muscle your way through it and hope that it goes away on its own. Trust me, I have tried. You can't push through it. You have to do less, you have to rest. You have to allow yourself to be bored. 

 

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