What We Feel: No one can understand our challenges because they are so unique to your business. People say they have been through our problems but what we are doing is unique. What the hell do they know about my business?

Your problems are not unique. The first time someone told me this I thought they were insane. But it’s true. Every startup shares the same problems. First and foremost, we all suffer from the issues endemic to new and developing businesses—lack of capital, lack of qualified team members and a lack of time to execute across all parts of the company. You are faced with creating the building blocks of a business, building a business model, gaining market acceptance, creating operational capacity and doing so with strained or nonexistent resources. In addition, we all have to build the functional areas of a company—sales, marketing, finance, operations, technology, human resources and the list goes on. This is true whether you are opening a pizza store, launching a clothing line, building an online store or selling jewelry. These same problems exist in virtually every newly launched venture.

Suggest to entrepreneurs that their dilemmas aren’t unique and they are offended. Their first reaction is that you are insulting their business. They don’t want to hear that their business is “like every other business.” Instead they’ll interject: “Our product has never been created.” After all, they believe they are doing something special. If they have this perspective, they also believe that the problems they are experiencing are unique. They think that others don’t understand the issues they are experiencing.

They confuse their passion for their business with the notion that these problems exist for virtually all entrepreneurs. The key task for entrepreneurs is to separate their vision, product, or service, and the entrepreneurial experience of building it. In other words, you may have the most innovative new idea in the world, but the day-today challenges of bringing it to life are shared by many others. Additionally, the basic business principles you need to succeed, while sometimes applied differently in traditional companies, still remain basic road signs for everyone.

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