You might be sitting there right now wondering how you’re going to get your concept off the ground. In order to succeed in any business, you will confront problems that will either motivate you to keep going or cause you to quit up. We spoke with 17 entrepreneurs from Asia and Australia about the greatest unexpected business challenges they have experienced and how they overcame them.
INTERVIEW HOST
Hello, my name is Jerome Knyszewski, I’ll be the host of your interview today. I am the CEO of HeavyShift. My specialties are online reputation marketing and SEO. Looking forward to reading your insightful answers and publishing your featured interview.
Table of Contents
The question we asked:
The pandemic encouraged many businesses to pivot and adapt to changing market conditions. How did you adapt? Did you introduce additional product lines or services?
Adrian Goh
We put too many of your eggs in one basket.
Previously, we were a tech recruitment marketplace where up to 90 per cent of our revenue came from placing overseas talents in Singapore companies. When COVID-19 struck, it quickly became a cause of concern when international borders shut.
Amongst the many things we did to mitigate the effect, two main ones were the most crucial.
First, we pivoted from a recruitment marketplace to a digital recruitment firm enabled by technology, with a strong focus on local talents. Doing so allowed us to continue serving our existing clientele with the same employees and capabilities. It was especially crucial in the short term to ensure survivability.
Secondly, we launch a full-stack tech career platform with products for every step of a tech talent career. We knew diversification was needed to ensure we do not rely on one growth stream in the long run. COVID-19 resulted in many losing their jobs and income, so it’s no surprise that the most successful product is NodeFlair Salaries. It is a platform for the tech community to share their salary data, verified by payslip and offer letters. The investments allow us to reach over 250k users globally in 2021 alone.
Angus Chang
The customer’s satisfaction
I started my eCommerce business five years ago, and I have faced different challenges during this time. My biggest challenge during my business career is customer satisfaction because customers expect perfection, and sometimes they give negative feedback, which negatively affects our reputation.
A few months ago, I dealt with a disgruntled customer who was not satisfied with her purchase. I took the time to listen to her concerns and offered to talk with her. Once she calmed down, I offered her several options to help resolve the issue. She thanked me for my time when she found the solution that best suited her needs and made another purchase with us in the future.
Advice to new entrepreneurs
You and your employees know the customer’s behavior based on recent purchases. When you notice something wrong with their behaviors, you should not ignore it. Talk with your customers about their problems and ask how you can help them. Give them a solution and improve your business if there are some reasons for their dissatisfaction. Listening to your customers is an effective strategy to improve your business.
Ed Zouroudis
Significant changes that our company, Evolt, made throughout of the pandemic included changing to a Software as a Service (SAAS) model and we shifted our focus to research and development.
A silver lining of the pandemic was that it allowed us to bring our tech timeline forward.
As we come out of the pandemic, businesses are back and trading from their bricks and mortar premises and the verticals we supply to are using our product to attract members back into their premises.
The pandemic forced us to pivot and become agile and we are now seeing the results of the decisions we made.
Cooper Jitts
The need for consistency over a long horizon is a bit challenge that often isn’t discussed between business owners.
When starting a business, you need to exert more effort, over a longer time period, than your competitors to assist in establishing a competitive edge.
But the key difference between a business that is truly successful is how long they can sustain this additional effort.
The longer your timeline or horizon, the stronger your competitive advantage. The best way to go about this is to make sure you have a rock solid network around you. Think of both your people network – team, family, friends etc – and your personal network of things you can control – sleep, diet, exercise etc. The more you have these things aligned, the longer you can sustain your operating approach.
Michael Bartlett
Starting a business, in the tech space defiantly has different and significant challenges for each entrepreneur. Those challenges vary from person to person and I am yet to find a founder with the same story, however they are all have the same theme.
We know it will be hard, but what we find the hardest, we never expected. For me it was understanding, accepting and learning how to get the business moving. For many years I have held leadership roles across numerous industries and in those roles, I have had the ability to take something that is functioning reasonably well and improve that business.
That could be in service to customers, profitability, communication or whatever, and in hindsight I found it easy as they were already a rolling beast. They had people ready to contribute, processes they used and technology in place to make life easier and my role was to work with that and make it sing!
But creating that is an entirely different skill set. Improving a business, adjusting a business is easy when you have the correct people, with the right processes, complimented by technology.
Creating that in a start-up environment really threw me. I felt vulnerable and uncomfortable, it created that uneasy feel in me that drove me to seek advice from the experts. I had all this knowledge and was unable to use it as I had to take a step back and go back to the very basics. I had to create all of that, not leverage that.
Creating the business platform from which to launch and get momentum in your space is exceptionally time consuming. The hours I have spent researching and learning how to build this base correctly, to have the right people, process and technology is uncountable. There have been times where I thought I have it sorted, the correct game plan only to read more, listen to mentors and discover I only have 20% of that part of the plan is ridiculous.
It was surprising what I have taken for granted in previous roles. And as I tap this out, I find myself in a ready to go into my old stomping ground. Running a business, taking it to the edge of chaos and succeeding.
After seeking and listening to many people, experts in their field, I now have what I believe to be the best people surrounding me. After much trial and error, I have sleek processes to make sure that “stuff happens” the way it should. And the final piece, my technology is ready. It is complimenting and improving all the time to allow the people to spend more time working on the business and not in it.
So understanding now what I used to take for granted will only make me a better leader, a stronger founder as I now get it. I have built the base well and I am ready to magic happen. If you want to know more about my start up or myself please follow the links below.
Belle Chapman
I’m Belle from Belle Chapman Photography & The Forevermore Initiative. I’m the Owner and Founder of both these businesses. I provide Family Photography through my main business and free family photography to Australian families facing a cancer diagnosis through my not for profit (Forevermore) www.bellechapmanphotography.com.au
Definitely comparing yourself to others in the industry and imposter syndrome, were my most unexpected challenges.
Working in a creative industry (Family Photography) it is so easy to get swept up in what others in the same field are doing, what are they charging, what does their work look like… and questioning yourself should I charge that or should I make my work should look like that. I think we all go through it in creative arts at the beginning. You admire other peoples work hard at the start and its easy to lose yourself in that. First of all I recognised what I was doing then I could set about fixing the issue.
How I worked on mindset to avoid running myself in circles wondering if I was doing the right thing because of comparing everything to others. (I needed to find my own voice)
- Look out for the positives or the win no matter how small and celebrate them.
- Step back and think about what aspects of my journey I really enjoy, for example the natural images I take of people speaks to my soul but still posed images I can take or leave. So I started capturing what stirred the fire in my belly natural or lifestyle family photos.
- Develop a healthy relationship with failure, I did this by chatting to others about their journey and realising from these conversations we all have bad days.
- Most importantly keep striving to learn and grow, the more I feel like I am making an effort to learn new things the more I feel like I’m not faking it until I make it haha
Allyson Brown
My greatest unexpected challenge when launching my business has been finding my ideal client – people suffering from an autoimmune condition and/or struggling with brain fog and fatigue. Someone who wants my help in receiving the education, encouragement and empowerment to take back control of their health naturally, so they can live a healthier and happier life – just as I have done myself!
A person who can truly benefit from signing up to my autoimmune wellness program. Yes, this is a very specific niche, but there are over 320 million autoimmune sufferers worldwide who could benefit from my program… so why is it so hard to find them?
I believed the movie Field of Dreams – “if you build it, they will come”. Boy was I wrong! It just doesn’t work that way. There’s a lot of competition out there and it’s a busy world filled with lots of “noise”. So if you put something out there, it’s likely to be the equivalent of a drop of water hitting the entire ocean – your message is likely to get lost in all the mayhem.
Finding people might be easy for some businesses, but when you have a very specific target market, it can be really tough to find THE RIGHT people who you can help.
My advice to new entrepreneurs is don’t make the same mistake that I did – thinking that if you launch your business, then that’s the hard part done and people will come knocking down your door! It just doesn’t work that way. It takes dedication and consistently reaching out to find people who you are able to serve, and who can truly appreciate and benefit from your services.
For most businesses, social media is your answer. Creating a business page and/or group and inviting people from other groups (people who are your ideal client) to join your group. You have to show up consistently in your group and nurture people but most importantly, you have to offer them VALUE – you can’t just go in for the “kill” and expect it to work.
The one thing I’ve learnt is that people don’t care about how much you know, until they know how much you care. Keep offering people value, be genuine and never give up on your chance for a better tomorrow!
Taz Dunstan
As a business owner and entrepreneur your risk assessment is usually focused on logistics in the business world, as one would expect.
This leaves you wide open to be blind sided by personal challenges such as jealous, competitive or unsupportive spouses, family or friends who embark on acts of espionage and sabotage to debunk your business in a plethora of ways.
I have experienced this repeatedly by several people close to me throughout my career as a business owner and as an entrepreneur.
In 2014 I had one partner tell me daily I would never succeed at my business. I listened to him, but I never believed his attempts to manipulate me, instead I would think “wow, this man must be so miserable with himself, the only joy he will have in life is attempting to steal the light from others” – needless to say, we are not together and my personal training business: XL Personal Training has been up and running since 2015 as an established and credible brand leading the fitness industry.
In 2021 I designed a process to disrupt a Multi Level Marketing company on a large scale. This was again sabotaged by another partner who, without any understanding of my process, began criticizing me, questioning “what right I had as a consumer to quality control any other company” etc. Again, this resulted in me choosing my career and potential to build a life myself and my children deserve over being manipulated and controlled by insecure men who had issues with strong, intelligent career minded women.
I have lost friendships and relationships over peoples refusal to support my vision or believe in me and that is okay. I have not chosen a job over anyone, I have chosen myself, my passion and my self worth over others who could not and would not support and encourage me to be the best version of myself and THAT is what every business person and entrepreneur needs to be prepared to do.
Call out unacceptable behaviour and be clear for your reasons. You can have a sounding board for risk assessment, and it is reasonable for people who care about you to be fearful of risk and the possibility of failure, but when the words of warning or advice become demeaning, degrading and knowingly manipulative, you must always choose yourself over the alternative (regardless of your professional endeavors)
Learn to share your vision with those who support and encourage you and spend less time and energy with those who do not. Never allow someone else’ insecurity to contaminate you or your self belief. It seems ironic that the people closest to you tend to be your biggest liabilities in the business world. Better the devil you know to factor in contingency plans so that success is your only option, both personally and professionally.
Juliet Robinson
When I started my business I expected to struggle with tech, admin and social media marketing. What I didn’t expect was that my greatest challenge as an entrepreneur would be loneliness.
As an introvert I am really happy working on my own and I love the variety of different clients and the mix of online and in person consulting that I do. What I missed was people I could toss ideas around with and share successes and failures.
Talking to family was one way to overcome this and mine could usually be relied upon for love and support. But almost inevitably they didn’t really understand the challenges, the heart stopping moments and unalloyed joy of new clients or successful client outcomes.
What worked for me was a twofold approach. I now outsource day to day aspects of my business (yes, the tech, admin and social media marketing are much better done by someone else!) and this small group are great for tossing ideas around and celebrating client wins.
Then I joined a mastermind group of likeminded people doing similar things to me. There are only five of us in our mastermind and we have a mix of business types. We come together every fortnight to talk about our businesses, give each other feedback and encouragement and discuss our goals.
The meeting chair revolves amongst us and we each set the agenda for ‘our’ meeting so the discussion every fortnight is different. As the trust between us has grown we have been able to have truly open conversations about how we feel, not just what we do. We live all over Australia and have never met in person.
We are not friends in the conventional sense and we rarely talk about our personal lives (although Covid lockdowns certainly tested that). Despite all of that, this is the group I turn to when I’m unsure about something in my business, have a wobble about pricing or am faced with a challenge or dilemma. I know that every fortnight we will get on Zoom with a cup of coffee and have fantastic discussions.
If you are starting out on the entrepreneurial path I encourage you to find your mastermind group early and invest time and energy in meeting with them regularly. If you are an extroverted entrepreneur this is probably doubly important to help you keep your energy up. The trust you will build over time will mean you have a group you can lean on and lean into when business life gets a little bit lonely.
Sam Browne
I lost a significant business partner simply because I had become overly trusting about who I spoke to and worked with.
Entrepreneurs that are just starting should read this. If I can give you some advice, it is to constantly retain your position and authority over anyone you are working with, particularly in business situations.
Never suggest a client to one of your suppliers, and never introduce a supplier to one of your clients, even if they might show trust worthiness. When dealing with clients or suppliers, maintain a friendly manner, but do not invest the same confidence in them as you would in a personal relationship.
Because business will always be business, individuals will constantly want to take advantage of their rivals to remain competitive. Always keep that in mind.
Maintaining a clear line of separation between your transactions will provide you with a more secure business flow while also protecting your assets from your rivals’ efforts.
Christopher Roberts
New entrepreneurs! The biggest challenge your going to face is having to learn a whole new perspective about life and how to live it.
The way you think determines who you are, and your going to need to change, and these changes in the way you think isn’t the type of thing you can turn off.
Advancing your entrepreneurial development will change who you are and as a result you will lose contact with a lot of friends who you may no longer be able to relate with.
Marty Spargo
Nobody warned me about the loneliness that comes with success. As you climb your way up the ladder to your goals, no one’s going to hold your hand and pull you back up when you’re on the verge of falling.
You’ll have people supporting you on the way up, but really, no one tells you that people only support you when they know they can gain something out of your success. The very advice that I wish I could’ve given myself back then was to accept that great things comes with great sacrifice.
It’s a hard fact to accept that you can’t always have it all, but for those of you who do, then I would like to congratulate you for being one of the very few lucky ones to be given such a rare and wonderful blessing.
Wilson Casado
Hello, I am Wilson Casado.
Entrepreneur, angel investor, diversity advocate and of course, family man. I am originally from Brazil and now live in Western Australia where I started Visagio 10 years ago. It started with just me and now we have a team of about 80.
The biggest challenge for me was starting a new life and new business in a country where I didn’t speak the language. However, that was not an unexpected challenge.
What was unexpected was who did and didn’t help me on this journey.
- It is well accepted that social capital, i.e. the value within networks and relationships, is essential for new ventures and startups
- I believe that the stronger relationships – particularly personal relationships – I had in the industry would help me close deals at the start of our business
- I found that those people who I had strong personal relationships shut on me about talking business
- It was the not so-strong relationships, the ones who had a sense of my reputation, but who were not so close, were the ones excited for me in the new business and helped me along
- I assume that the reason is that “mixing business and friendship” makes people very uncomfortable
How did I overcome this?
I just kept going and I just kept meeting new people. I focused on building my personal brand so that connections of connections would start to see what I was doing and it was that momentum of attracting people that helped me continue. I never stopped focusing on relationships no matter how strong or weak the connection seemed.
Jody Nichols
In retrospect, there are two significant unexpected challenges that stand out to me as a result of my journey in business over the past couple of decades.
Firstly, finding new clients, the right type of clients and the right type of work has been unexpectedly challenging. When I started doing this – running a bookkeeping service and then later branching out into offering taxation and accounting services – I expected cashflow to be an issue and it certainly was.
But I didn’t expect finding clients would be tough. In fact, it was the opposite: it was easy to find clients. I started when the Goods & Services Tax (GST) was being introduced in Australia and as a result, there were a lot of unprepared businesses desperately needing help making the transition into a new tax system. As a result, there was a huge pool of work available and most of my clients ended up coming to me via word of mouth.
In recent years, however – and I’m now twenty two years down the track – I’ve largely grown my practice by taking on the client bases of retiring accountants. Until relatively recently, that has meant that I haven’t actually had to do a whole lot of work to grow my business since it has historically been more about servicing my existing client base and value adding wherever possible rather than “hunting and gathering”, so to speak.
Increasingly, however, client acquisition and growth is definitely a challenge, and one I’m looking to overcome through a combination of traditional and digital marketing strategies and sheer consistency. If you are consistent with your service offerings, consistently providing great outcomes for your clients and consistently have happy staff, your customers and their friends come to know they can trust you and that can end up paying dividends for years to come.
The second unexpected challenge I encountered has proven to be a vital and hard won learning experience: you can’t always trust that people will do the right thing. Just because you have diligently and faithfully performed work for a client does not mean they will pay you for that work – even if they said they would – or value the time, effort and expertise you put into it.
That’s why for me now it is crucial that I no longer begin a job without first having a signed engagement letter in place, outlining the terms and conditions of the job to be performed and what the client’s fee will be. I really can’t emphasise enough how important it is to have that paper trail in place.
Not only does it give both you and your client certainty around what is and isn’t in scope and what the expectations are on both sides of the transaction, but it also gives you a leg to stand on should you be legally challenged for any reason. That’s important.
Andrew Jobling
My greatest unexpected challenge was the catalyst for the most amazing transformation in my business.
At the time I was working about 80 hours per week as part owner in a personal training business. As I had learned a lot about good nutrition, I thought owning a café and offering healthy food and great education would be a good move. I made the spontaneous decision to buy the café and try to combine it with an already hectic personal training business.
My vision was large. I had planned to revolutionize healthy eating in cafes, offer great education and a convenient and healthy meal delivery service. My plans were grand, but my implementation left a lot to be desired.
I went from working 80 hours per week in my personal training business, to working well over 100 hours per week in both. I had no real hospitality experience and didn’t understand the costs associated with a café. I did not manage cash flow effectively and started losing money each week. In my mind, I thought it would get better.
However, as Albert Einstein says, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”. After two years I had no life, was working seven days per week and was in close to $100,000 debt. For me, this was totally unexpected, because I naively assumed I would be successful.
Then, at the lowest point in my life, something incredible happened. As I sat there, head in my hands wondering how I got to this point in my life – broke and broken – I asked myself a question that led to a vision that triggered an idea which transformed my life.
As I pondered the life I was living, I asked myself the question: This is not what I want, so how do I want to live? I visualized a life of health and happiness, one that made a difference in people’s lives, enjoying multiple income streams, debt free and enjoying a life of abundance. At that moment, I had the most illogical idea I have ever had: to write a book. So, with no time, experience, background, or qualifications I started the process.
I am excited to say, now 20 years on from that idea and decision to act, I am the bestselling author of eight books and living the life I visualized in that dark moment. I believe everything starts with a clear vision for the life we want to live. For me, in my moment of helplessness and hopelessness, when I was deep in debt and despair, I visualized a life, not just debt free, but one of joy and financial abundance.
As I visualized that life, I got excited and empowered to take action. I stayed very connected to that vision on a daily basis and as a result I created that very reality. We need to constantly imagine the feeling of living the life we desire, as it will keep us moving towards that reality. Essentially, I incorporated the advice I give in my latest book T.E.A.R.S of Joy.
Olivia Vlachou
For me, the biggest challenge has been staying OUT of the business so I can work ON the business.
The only way to do this is to bring in people that can be taught to do things the way I would do them (or better!). That brings with it a couple of other big challenges though.
The first challenge is structuring things so that it is repeatable and teachable to someone else. That can be easier said than done, especially if the task requires a level of creativity. But it’s certainly possible.
Even though you might be working things out as you go in the early days, I highly recommend having this in the back of your mind. As soon as you’ve got it working, start putting some structure around it. If things grow, you’ll need help fast, and you won’t have time to train people without a good base to work from.
Which brings me to the second challenge, which is hiring the right people. I’ve learnt that the person that can do the job best, isn’t necessarily the best hire. You need to make sure the role and your company aligns with person’s ambitions, beliefs and personality. There is no point hiring someone that is brilliant at the job for 2 months before leaving for other pastures.
Hiring can be a pretty painful and time-consuming process, so it’s best you take steps to minimise how often you need to do this. Take the extra time to hire right the first time round. Of course, you need to take all their skills and experience into account, but I find following your gut on these things is usually the right way to go!
Ellie Pietsch
With a marriage imploding, an 18 month old in and out of daycare – leaving a ‘safe’ job halfway through a global pandemic, to join a team of business owners whose model involved face-to-face delivery seemed like a stupid decision on paper.
But deep down, I knew it was the right time for me to step out of the shadows and into my own light. Pivoting an entire delivery model dependent on building meaningful and trusting relationships into a virtual space virtually overnight seemed crazy, but with a deep commitment to our purpose – helping leaders and teams achieve high performance – and a conviction to live our trademark as colleagues – go the extra yard- , we achieved the unthinkable.
Our business grew 25% during the pandemic, recruiting new team members and building our expertise. And I became the person I always wanted to be. A people-focused, outcome driven business leader who helps leaders and teams improve their performance.
