How will your first year in business look like?

You may have just started your first business or maybe you are probably thinking about starting one, obviously that is why you are here and reading this.

Or maybe you are just curious.

Either way, if you are like me with no actual ‘super powers’ then you can’t time travel to the future and see how your business will turn out to be in the next one year. So you probably want to know how it will be from this article.

Well I can’t tell you exactly how it will turn out for you.

That is because every business is different, even if they are in the same industry offering the same services they are still different because they are run by different entrepreneurs.

Much of how you view your first year and how it will be is up to you, the entrepreneur.

But true, they are similar experiences that many of them do face and you will most likely go through that same roller-coaster type of experience too.

When an experienced entrepreneur tells you that you will have your ups and downs, they are spot on.

In your first year you are building and validating your idea, you are testing the market and putting in place everything you need to run your business, so if you are a first time entrepreneur chances are your thoughts will be all over the place and you too will be all over the place.

You may have planned out how it will be in the beginning but you will soon learn that plans rarely go exactly as planned. It may serve as a road map to where you want to go but your plan will in no way tell you what obstacles you will meet on your journey and how you will react to them in that moment.

A lot of things will go wrong in your plan and the People you will want to count on will let you down quite often and most likely most of your schedules won’t be met on time because of that.

To make sure things happen as expected you will have to do it yourself or find highly reliable people.

And that must be one of the key lessons I have learned so far, that ‘finding someone you can really rely on in a business is golden’.

When going through all the motions, almost everything will seem to be stressful and it will most likely be.

I’d like to emphasise that you will hit new levels of stress, you will doubt yourself and you will feel like you are being crushed by all the pressure. Building a team , assessing the market, building an MVP and all the financial insecurity that comes from going out on your own is a good recipe for stress.

You should be wary of self-doubt though, the moment self-doubt grows that will spell the end of your journey.

And don’t be surprised if you want to get a job, that feeling does come to almost everyone.

But just as much as you will have your down moments there will be some good times.

You will have some small wins and you will have big wins, you should relish each one of them. You will hit some milestones and when you do, the satisfaction and joy you get will be priceless.

These moments will push you to even do more, so use them as your fuel.

You will pick up new skills, meet new people and you will get out of your comfort zone and experience satisfying growth.

All of those feelings are amplified when you have no safety net beneath you, when failing actually does mean FAILING for you. So if you are all in, then brace yourself.

At the end of the day though, you will write the story of how your first year in business will be for you, with your effort, your belief and your perspective on every challenge that you will face.

You could enjoy the fact that you are working on a dream of yours and every lesson and hardship you face and overcome will bring you closer to your goal, making your first year in business a memorable one.

Or you can focus on the hardships and remember you first year in business as a terrible one.

What are your thoughts on this? What was or is your experience in your first year of business? Leave a comment and share your thoughts in the section below.

Thanks for Reading :)