Just like a messy roommate who simply won’t do their dirty dishes, the best way to resolve conflict is to directly communicate about it — not bottle up your arguably justified resentment for their poor cleaning habits. As a standard part of the human experience, we’ve all been in situations where we need to confront what’s facing us. This is especially important when it concerns other people that we interact with, and in a professional context of a work environment, this presents a number of challenges. Do you criticize someone at the expense of offending them? Do you let disagreements carry into your personal life? Conflict resolution and problem-solving is no easy feat when it comes to startup companies.
Our Small Business Lending Service In Los Angeles Helps Your Business Overcome Financial Barriers
Our small business loan providers are very experienced in dealing with startups and other small, fledgling businesses. Our specialty doesn’t lie in advising how to improve a company dynamic or culture, per se, but The Commercial Finance Group does excel in providing working capital and other loans for small businesses. Regardless of your company’s credit situation (and inner problems between employees), we can help you secure a small business line of credit or asset-based loan via your accounts receivable. Feel free to learn more about how our innovative approach to lending works.
In another post intended to help small companies — especially startups — overcome growing pains and identify issues within their company dynamic, we’re going to cover some of the most common startup challenges that companies tend to put off talking about. Gain some valuable business insight by continuing to read below!
A Lack Of Direction Or Planning
It’s not uncommon for startup companies to be fairly…ambiguous when it comes to their identity. Building off of the foundation of a great, innovative idea, it can be challenging to pinpoint what your product or service really is, how it can create value for consumers, and how to articulate that to your target market. Labeling yourself as a “grassroots multi-platform server connectivity aggregate-as-a-service” just isn’t clear, and even the most tech-savvy consumers won’t be able to see past this meaningless jargon. Even if you have a niche product or service, communicate what you do in a way that people can relate to and understand, no matter what you provide.
Not Having A Business Plan
Having a well-thought-out business plan, characterized by actionable business items and a clear roadmap following the projected growth of a company will help keep financial matters on track. A quality business plan will also help your employees understand the state of the company and what’s going on from a day to day, week to week and month to month basis. Many things can change in a relatively short amount of time with startup companies, so keep everyone updated as frequently as possible.
Outdoing The Competition
Unless your business is truly, truly unique, chances are that there’s one, if not a handful of competitors out there who provide a similar product or service — this is a capitalist market that we’re talking about, after all. Whether you’re trying to compete with well-established giants within your industry or it’s a race between startups to see who can effectively go to market first, competition will always be an inherent challenge with small businesses. Even worse is the fact that no self-respecting small business owner or their employees really want to admit that their company is inferior to their competitor, even when they truly are.
If you have an online business startup, navigating and anticipating the competition can be even more of a challenge. Whether you need to rile up your employees in order to motivate them to innovative faster or harder than the competition or you need to keep a close eye on your competitors’ operations to better strategize against them, remember that startup culture is a business-eat-business world.
Setting Unrealistic Expectations
Here’s an example of one of the most borderline delusional startup attitudes that many companies embrace all too quickly: “We’ll grow up to 20x within the first three months of launching, and that’s without any additional working capital loans from a reputable small business loan provider like The Commercial Finance Group!” Our shameless plug aside, it’s incredibly important to keep your expectations — especially as a founder of a small company —at a realistic level.
Sure, it’s important to maintain a healthy, positive outlook on the future and projected success of the company that you’ve worked so hard to build, but don’t set yourself up for failure and disappointment when you can’t reach goals that just aren’t manageable. Here’s a key takeaway: To succeed in the competitive business realm, startups should have somewhat high but controlled expectations by keeping view of the resources available, the extent of growth potential in mind, and other market factors that may or may not affect growth.
Hiring The Right People
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to any business of any size, or really dealing with just about anything in life, is people. People are the challenge. How do you start, grow and maintain a synergistic team that likes what they do, enjoy working with and next to each other, and legitimately believe in the work that they’re doing? For countless companies out there, that’s a tall order that’s near-impossible to meet.
Developing a healthy company culture and identity is a challenge, and it will probably be a learning experience as you make mistakes and celebrate victories. Follow your heart and intuition when it comes to hiring people, and bear in mind that there is a massive pool of qualified and motivated individuals available out there. It might hurt your company equity a bit, but if someone doesn’t work out, someone else will.
Having Ample Funding
This is where we set our own cue and step in as the small business lending heroes who save the day — or save your cash flow, that is. From a practicality standpoint, not having enough working capital to hire the workforce you need, acquire the necessary equipment to fund any other important items within your business is the most significant problem for startups and growing small businesses. That’s not even our biased opinion when it comes to the matter, but rather, that’s just a statement of fact.
Leverage Our Small Business Lending Company In Los Angeles
So after you get your company up and running, don’t expect to turn too much of a profit for the first year or two. Keep your head up, work hard, and use of our working capital funding services to your advantage. As always, feel free to contact The Commercial Finance Group to discover how our Los Angeles lenders can help your startup flourish!
