Starting a business and continuing it is quite similar to rearing a child. Time, attention, patience, energy, money and lots of love are the requisites for the success of a start up business. You would try to impart toilet training to your baby as early as possible or wish that he can talk, walk, eat and learn on his own within the first few months. But hey guys! Go slow, for everything requires a certain amount of time and has a procedure of its own. You can’t just achieve everything overnight, and this is very true in the case of start up business too.
Your start up business contrary to your expectations would not run in a full-fledged manner the very next day; nor would the revenues swell or profits shoot up overnight because you need to bring up your start up business the way you bring up your baby. In other words, you have to accept the fact that it is a time-taking process and you need to go the hard way in order to allow your business to flourish. Name, fame and money would follow in a line if you are willing to struggle and sacrifice in the initial years of the business. Infinite passion and patience should be your driving forces in those initial years of struggle.
Not only the entrepreneur but the employees too have to traverse on a rugged course in the initial years of business start-ups. It involves a lot of sacrifices on their part. The major sacrifices they need to make may be discussed below:
• They will have no fixed hours of work. They will have to work ceaselessly beyond the bounds of time. This will leave them with hardly any time for their family, friends, near and dear ones, for their hobbies, interests and so on. But the experience one can get from a budding company cannot be matched by the experiences you get with an already established company. Since an employee will be required to handle more responsibilities and play various roles, the growth can be measured in terms of exposure and experience, rather than financial benefits.
• A cash crunch situation may arise and the payments they receive may not be worth their hard work. But they need to bear with the situation; they need to remember that they are the part of a team which is in its struggling phase and so they cannot be paid at the average market level.
• Lastly they must prepare themselves mentally to handle the stress of losses. In the initial years, a business start up may incur a great deal of loss and they need to be prepared for it and work with it.
Often the sacrifices they are required to make create a suppressed resentment among the work-force and they may want to leave the start up business and avail a better opportunity. The entrepreneur needs to play a vital role at this juncture. He must motivate and inspire his work-force in order to retain it. Proper motivation can build up infinite trustworthiness among employees and create a compassionate as well as cordial boss-employee relationship.