No matter what path you choose in life, you’re going to be faced with some type of challenge that will cause you to question just about every choice you’ve made. Luckily, for most entrepreneurs, we’ve taught ourselves how to push through that. Unfortunately, though, we do still have things that bring us down at times. Here are 11 entrepreneur struggles that we have all faced at some point.

1) Time Management

Managing your time is one of the most important parts of working for yourself. If you are unable to manage your own time and tasks, how are you supposed to grow your business to a successful spot. Even the most successful entrepreneurs have had their time management skills challenged at some point, but thankfully, they took this challenge as a lesson and became a better person for mastering this skill.

No matter what type of business you are running, you must be able to manage your time effectively. Yes, that does mean cutting tasks that are no longer worth your time. For example, if replying to emails consumes 40% of your work day, it’s time to look into delegating that task out to someone who might actually be more qualified to do that work for you. Time management is the top one of the 11 entrepreneur struggles.

2) Finding Customers

What’s a business without customers? A hobby. All joking aside, if you’re running a business, you’re probably going to rely on having a decent number of customers coming through your doors, visiting your website, or subscribing to your services. Without these customers, your business doesn’t survive. The biggest challenge that we usually face at the beginning is finding how to reach these customers and how to get them to purchase your product/service.

This is truly one of the hardest parts of starting a business, which makes this fall in at number two on our list of entrepreneur struggles.

3) Picking the Right Business

When starting out, you are under the impression that your idea is the most important part of your success; however, you later begin to realize that your idea isn’t necessarily the key to success. Pool noodles have made someone a multi-millionaire, but some of the most innovative technology that could change the way we live everyday has flopped due to poor marketing. At the end of the day, yes, your idea is pretty important, but it is only a small percentage of what makes a business successful. Your implementation, marketing, and ability to serve matter much more than your idea.

Unfortunately, most new entrepreneurs are heavily challenged at first with the incorrect thoughts of their idea being the number one most important thing. Overcoming this thought in your mind is a crucial part of success, which makes this one of the 11 entrepreneur struggles on our list.

4) Unsteady Income

Something that so many people overlook is the fact that your income as an entrepreneur can change dramatically over the course of a month. We’ve had months where we’ve made 50% of what the previous month provided for us with income, and it is never an easy challenge to overcome. You have to be able to effectively manage your money when you are self-employed, due to the fact that if you are unable to, you will get screwed over when that time comes.

It’s great to live it up when income is high, but when your income drops due to a decline in sales, cancelation in subscriptions, or lack of market interest after the initial launch, you can experience some truly tough choices as to where to head next. Plan ahead, and keep your business going.

Having unsteady income is a difficult one on our list of 11 entrepreneur struggles, but it is necessary to build a better life over time.

Looking to grow your income? Check out these tips on how to earn $100/day online!

5) Tax Season

Just like planning for a decline in sales occasionally, you need to start preparing for next year’s tax season the moment your taxes are finished and paid. You never want to be one of the people who gets completely screwed over in tax season, just because you’re actually building something and providing a service. It makes no sense why self-employed income tax is so much higher, but because we are, you need to plan for it. Make sure you have enough saved to pay it off with ease, and make sure that you are deducting everything (and I mean everything) you can.

Spend some extra money, and find a tax consultant/lawyer or accountant who knows what they’re doing! You could end up saving more than what you paid them, and it will take a ton of stress off your shoulders when you have questions. Pay someone to save you even more money. Trust us; this is extremely effective. Personally, I saved thousands last year from write-offs by having someone who knew what they were doing.

So many entrepreneurs struggle with tax season when they start out, so we felt it was necessary to add this to our list of 11 entrepreneur struggles.

6) Social Acceptance

Feeling accepted is something that most people have an overwhelming desire for. When you go down your own new path, though, that most people will never experience, you may start to feel like your friends no longer accept your choice. More often than not, you are bombarded with “friends” telling you all of these horror stories about people they have (only) heard of starting businesses and failing, only to end up where they were before they started the business.

Truth be told, it’s bullshit. If your business fails, accept that and move along. At the very least, you will have learned something new that you never would have experienced before. It’s a hard part to accept, but it is always going to teach you a lesson. At some point, you will probably have to cut out the negative influences in your life. It may be hard to cut people you love, but it’s sometimes necessary for personal growth.

Don’t worry about being accepted. Would you rather be accepted by other people or be accepted by yourself?

A large number of new entrepreneurs are faced with this challenge, which is why this falls in at numbers 6 on our list of 11 entrepreneur struggles.

7) Competition

Number seven on our list of 11 entrepreneur struggles is dealing with competition. When you’re just a consumer, you see competition as a good thing. It keep prices low, and it allows you to get better service when purchasing from a company. Competition for an entrepreneur, though, is a completely different story. While it keeps prices low for consumers, sometimes your competition can outprice you no matter how much you lower the price. Big businesses will do just about anything to get the sale, even if they lose money on one person. It’s why huge stores like Best Buy and Walmart will price-match. If they do this, they move inventory, make a sale, and move forward, even if they lose money on the product.

Most smaller businesses, though, can’t afford this cost when starting out, which makes some customers feel the need to go to the competition to get a better deal. To compete with this, though, most of the time, you’ll get 10x better customer care at a smaller business than you will a big-box store. Keep in mind that “most of the time” is not all the time…

Along with outpricing your business, your competitors also already has their own customers, ideas, suppliers, etc. The point here is that your competition is already establish, so you’re going to have to find ways to be better than them. If you’re going to charge a higher price, you’re going to be held to a higher standard. Fuck that standard. You need to go higher than what your customer expects, if you want to grow your business.

I could talk about competition in this list of entrepreneur struggles, so I’ll just leave it with this. You have to be able to compete, even if your competitors do everything to try to overthrow you. Keep going — always.

8) The Rich Impression

There seems to be this impression of entrepreneurs that we’re all loaded with millions in the bank, hundreds of thousands in the safe under the bed, and thousands in our wallets at any given time. While we would all love that, it’s just not the case. Yes, a lot of us do quite well for ourselves, but there are times where we’re strapped for cash with our money tied up in our business. There are months where our expenses outweigh our income. There are years where we take a loss on our tax forms. Trust me when I say this: it is a great life, but it is not filled with pools of money.

Entrepreneurs often treat themselves to nice watches, cars, houses, and other materialistic items, but it’s because most of us have created a cashflow business. With that, we can also have all of that stuff and still have months where we just get by.

Asking us for money is no different than asking anyone else for money. We’re normal people, but we’ve been given the stereotype of being loaded. Trust me, there are much worse stereotypes to be given, and I’m not complaining. I am, however, suggesting that maybe (if you ask people for money) you should consider why you chose them specifically.

This is something that most entrepreneurs are faced with at some point in time, whether it’s from friends or family or strangers. That’s why “the rich impression” makes it to our list of 11 entrepreneur struggles.

9) Hiring The Right Employees

Number 9 on our list of 11 entrepreneur struggles is all about hiring the right employees, which somewhat correlates to our number one biggest challenge that we listed; however, this is much more specific. When you first start hiring employees, you need to be able to ensure that they have your mission in mind. After all, these people are going to end up being a huge part of your company, and they could very well determine if you make it through a hard time in your business.

Without the right employees by your side, you are going to flop quickly. Not only will these employees be able to hold your company strong and show your customers what they are valued at, but they will also allow you to focus on the bigger picture while they are working on the day-to-day activities. Believe it or not, it isn’t necessarily hard to attract amazing employees into your business. It all start with you. You must provide a place that challenges your employees to grow into a better person, not worry about income, and give them benefits they will love.

No, you might not be able to provide the insanely awesome benefits that Google provide their employees, but you can provide enough to make their lives better, which will improve their focus and work ethic, in return making you more money. The higher value your team has in your company (monetary wise), the more benefits you should be giving them, even if it’s simple things.

Truthfully, pay only goes so far. Make sure that you are building a team that has a strong desire to succeed and grow. Hire people who want to do something to make a difference in the community or world, and I promise that within no time you’ll have a strong team beside you — not behind you. So many entrepreneurs struggle with hiring because they are looking just for someone to do the work, not help build and move the company forward. Don’t be afraid to ever listen to what your team has to say.

We often are afraid to give up some control, and because of that, we also end up losing opportunity. That’s why this is such a huge part of our list of 11 entrepreneur struggles.

10) Limiting Beliefs (Self-Doubt)

If you’re looking to fail, make sure that you have plenty limiting beliefs… These little things inside your head will bring you and your business down so quickly that you won’y even have time to realize what is happening, if they go undetected. Self-doubt is truly like a disease in most ways, but the good thing is, you can get rid of this with your mind. Listen, everyone has limiting beliefs at some point in their life, even if they don’t recognize it, but when you’re running a business, it is vital to the success of it that you shut out this doubt as soon as it comes through your head.

This could be anything from “that’s impossible” to “I don’t know how to…”. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s impossible, because I promise that one day, someone will do it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to do something, because I promise someone is teaching how it’s done. No matter what your doubt is, it can be fixed with a positive attitude and mindset. 90% of your success in business is all about having the right mindset to make it through your challenges and take advantages of opportunity. Likewise, though, this is also the reason that 90% of people fail — they don’t think they can do it. I can say with confidence that everyone who has failed has simply allowed themselves to do so because they were not able to have control over their thoughts.

This is the time where some will say that’s not true and that finances can cause a business to fail. You would be correct, but not 100% correct. Ask yourself this: why did the finances not work out for them? Most of the time, it’s because the founder got so caught up in the mindset that it couldn’t happen; therefore, they shut down their mind from finding a way to make it happen.

These limiting beliefs will bring you do quicker than anything, so you need to be able to pinpoint thoughts that do not serve you, and counteract them with a positive thought. Sound ridiculous? Good. You’re not here to settle for average and safe. You’re here to better yourself and live a life most never will.

Self-doubt is a huge part of failure, which actually our last point in our list of 11 entrepreneur struggles.

11) Failure

As I mentioned before, you have to be able to look at failure as a lesson. You need to be able to see the good in the bad if you want to grow to a new level and achieve success. I promise that every bad situation, no matter how awful it feels at first, has a good and positive side to it, along with a lesson to be learned. Look at it from a third-person perspective, and try to see if you can find what the good is. This will help you conquer this fear from being one the the 11 entrepreneur struggles you face.

Either way, failure is going to happen at some point. In fact, it’s probably going to happen quite a lot throughout your journey. So before you hold yourself back from chasing your dream because of your fear of failing, think about this. A child doesn’t learn to walk if they’re afraid of falling. Likewise, though, learning to walk changes their life forever — and for the better. The same thing can be applied into business. Once you get over that mountain, you will see the valley of success. It may take a lot of effort and time, but it is always worth it.

No matter what you go through, you have to get over the fear of failing. This is truly one of the most important of the 11 entrepreneur struggles that we listed. If anything, kick this fear before you do any of the other 10.